ds of them that obscured the sun. It seemed as if Nature had joined in the conspiracy against us. These locusts were of the species known as the pilgrim, or w

n the soil and depositing their egg-packets, and we knew that when they hatched we should

y brother (the President of the Agricultural Experiment Station at Athlit) and intrusted him with the organization of a campaign against the insects. It was a hard enough task. The Arabs are lazy, and fatalistic besides; they cannot understand why me

was a hopeless fight. Nothing short of the co?peration of every farmer in the country could have won the day; and while the people of the progressive Jewish villages struggled on to the end,-men, women, and children working in the fields until they were exhausted,-the Arab farmers sat by with folded hands. The threats of the military authorities only stirred them to half-he

ce hunger, tried to engulf everything in their way. I have seen Arab babies, left by their mothers in the shade of some tree, whose faces had been devoured by the oncoming swarms of locusts before their screams had been heard. I have seen the carcasses of animals hidden from sight by the undulating, rustling blanket of insects. And in the face of such a menace the Arabs remained inert. With their customary fatalism they accepted th