There are 400 m. of metalled main roads in Palestine and 44o m. of secondary roads, serving 177 villages, of which 175 m. have been constructed or rebuilt since the estab lishment of the civil administration. Many hundreds of miles of tracks connecting scattered villages and settlements are used by motor and other wheeled traffic in the dry weather. In 1914 there was only one motor car in Palestine; there were in 1928 over 2,000 including over 9oo within the municipal area of Jerusalem. The military railway constructed by the army across the Sinai desert has been brought under the management of the Palestine Railway Department. A train service is efficiently run from Egypt to Haifa, from Jaffa to Jerusalem and from Haifa to Syria and a through train and car service has recently been inaugurated by Constantinople to Calais. Before the war postal services were maintained largely by separate agencies of European Powers; telegraphs were restricted, telephones unknown. There are now frequent daily deliveries of letters; 34 telegraph offices, 5o public telephone exchanges, and trunk lines to all parts of the country; and Egypt answers calls in English, Arabic and Hebrew at any hour of the day and night. Imperial Airways Ltd. opened in 1927 a station at Gaza and in 1928 The Eastern Telegraph Co. laid a cable connecting Palestine with Cyprus.
The Department of Health with the co-opera tion of voluntary organizations, notably the Rockefeller Founda tion, has directed intensive and successful efforts against malaria.
The hospitals of the country provide 1,984 beds of which 488 are in British, 36o in French, 107 in German and 90 in Italian mission hospitals, 668 in hospitals maintained by various Jewish organiza tions and 271 in government and municipal hospitals. The government and municipal hospitals are intended chiefly for the treatment of infectious diseases, and in addition a mental hospital at Bethlehem is maintained by Government. Trachoma affects more than 60% of the population and preventive measures are taken in the schools where some 64,00o children are kept under early treatment or medical observation, while the ophthalmic hospital of the British Order of St. John of Jerusalem plays a chief part in treating the complications and sequelae of the disease. Leprosy is gradually disappearing and there are now only 57 known cases; 27 infant welfare centres have been established, largely by non-official bodies, in 11 towns and a number of vil lages; 31 nurses and 71 midwives have qualified in the depart ment's training centres and 125 nurses and 31 midwives in volun tary institutions. Anti-rabic, cholera and smallpox vaccines are prepared in the Government laboratories, and quarantine and dis infection of pilgrims returning from Mecca, and of immigrants, is carried out. In 1927 the death rate was 28.01 while the birth rate was 50.35. The infantile mortality was 201.27 per 1,000 births.
In 1927 there were 835 schools with 67,000 pupils (42,500 boys and 24,500 girls), made up as follows: 315 Govern ment schools (20,000 pupils: 16,5oo boys, 3,500 girls), 53 Muslim non-Government schools (4,500 pupils: 3,65o boys, 85o girls), 275 Jewish schools (26,500 pupils: 13,850 boys, 12,65o girls), and 192 Christian schools (16,000 pupils: 8,500 boys, 7,500 girls). The estimated expenditure of the Department of Education for 1928 amounted to LP.143,619 of which £P.22,744 forms grants-in-aid to non-Government schools. The largest educational authority, after the Government, is the Palestine Zionist Executive, the upkeep of whose 191 schools (17,70o pupils) amounts to £P.ioo,000.
The £E.562,000 advanced by the military administration, mostly in small loans on security of land and crops, enabled peasants to buy animals and seed, and in many ways to recover from the devastation of the war. Subsequently a Department of Agriculture and Forests was established, which gives instruction in the villages and promotes the use of improved instruments and methods; it assists the farmer in dealing with animal diseases and plant pests, fumigates his fruit trees if af fected by scale, and protects his cattle from imported diseases by quarantine and veterinary control ; it has also planted about 1,000,000 trees, and, through its nurseries, has facilitated planta tion by others. Altogether, about 5,000,00o timber and fruit trees have been planted in these years in Palestine. A Govern ment Stud Farm has been established at Acre.
Jewish agricultural settlements came into existence during the past half century. Many were formed on uncultivated and un promising land which has been transformed into flourishing plan tations. The settlers have drained swamps, planted eucalyptus and pines, cultivated vine and almond and developed the orange trade of Jaffa.
At the outbreak of war there were 44 settlements of 87,800 ac.; in 1928 there were about 120 covering an area of 250,000 ac. (over io% of the cultivable area of Palestine) and supporting a population of about 25,00o. Of the older settlements most were founded or largely assisted by Baron Edmond de Rothschild or the Jewish Colonization Association acting as his agent ; the later mostly by the Zionist Organization. Largely owing to the lifework of Eliezer Ben Yahuda, a practical visionary of genius, Hebrew is definitely established as the vernacular as well as the literary language of Palestinian Jewry. The revival of Hebrew culture found in 1925 concrete expression in the formal opening by the Earl of Balfour of the Hebrew University upon Mount Scopus. Hardly less remarkable is the development in 18 years of Tel-Aviv from the suburb into the rival of Jaffa with a popu lation of over 35,000.