Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 224, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 September 1916 — USE ARABS TO FIGHT LOCUSTS [ARTICLE]

USE ARABS TO FIGHT LOCUSTS

Soldiers Dig Trenches Into Which Hatching Pests Were Driven and Destroyed. Djemal Pasha put some thousands of Arab soldiers at my brother’s disposition, and these were set to work digging trenches Into which the hatching locusts were driven and destroyed. This is the only means of coping with the situation; once the locusts get their wings, nothing can be done with them. It was a hopeless fight. Nothing short of the co-operation 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-hearted efforts. Finally, after two months of toll, the campaign was given up and the locusts broke In waves over the countryside, destroying everything. As the Prophet Joel said: “The land is as the Garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness. The field Is wasted; the land mourneth, for the corn is wasted; the new wine Is dried up, the oil langulsheth.” Not only was every green leaf devoured, but the very bark was peeled from the trees, which stood out white and lifeless, like skeletons. The fields were striped to the ground, and the old men of our villages, who had given their lives to cultivating these gardens and vineyards, came out of the synagogues where they had been praying and wailing and looked on the ruin with dimmed eyes. Nothing was spared. The Insects, in their fierce hunger, tried to engulf everything in their way.—Alexander Aaronsohn, In Atlantic.