Page:Syria and Palestine WDL11774.pdf/159

 industrially under no small obligations to assistance from without. Until recently the only railways were French. Oversea communications are still practically monopolised by foreign shipping. The one modern port is a foreign enterprise, and the country looks to similar support for further improvements to its harbours. Other important public works due to extraneous money are the electric tramways, the lighting and water supply of Beirut, and the electric trams and light at Damascus. Large undertakings of this character have, as a rule, been left hitherto to the foreigner, though since the beginning of the war there has been a tendency in Turkey generally to greater enterprise on the part of native capitalists. In finance, all the larger banking concerns are foreign, even that which has played the part of the official national bank being only thinly disguised; on the importance of the banks in the commercial system see p. 127 and p. 139 above. The insurance business has been entirely in the hands of alien companies.

A stagnating agriculture, affecting the prosperity of the whole country, has received some stimülus in Palestine from the Jewish and German colonies, and such advances as have been witnessed in the last decade or two are in no small degree the effect of their example. The spread of the colonies has also led to a substantial advance in the market value of agricultural land in their neighbourhood. Another of the few native industries of significance, the culture and spinning of silk, has rested largely upon French support, the enforced withdrawal of which during the war has been followed by a marked decline in production. Materially, the beneficial influence of external resources has thus been strongly felt, and they have been a not less potent factor in the promotion of the health and education of the people through the hospitals, schools, and other institutions which have been established and maintained by foreign benevolence.