sure you can never win the friendship of anyone at the price of breaking with faith somebody else, because it will always be known that what has been done once can be done again. Those whose friendship you invite on the strength of a broken promise will always know that the promise you are making to them is worthless because, as you have broken one, you may break another. I am certain that both the Jews and the Arabs will remember the means by which His Majesty's Government were forced to change their policy and break their promises. My last point, therefore, is that this will not add to the prestige of this country anywhere in the world. On the contrary, political unrest will be encouraged everywhere, and that in turn, I fear, will impair our friendly relations with the United States of America which it was one of the objects of the original Balfour Declaration to secure. For these reasons I am unable to accept the Resolution submitted to us by the noble Marquess this afternoon.

TOM WILLIAMS, M. P.

HOUSE OF COMMONS, MAY 22ND, 1939

The most intensely criticised Secretary of State for the Colonies for many years. He has this consolation, if my reading of the White Paper is correct, that he has been able in one year and two days to destroy what it took a great War and many years' efforts of Allied statesmen to build up. I repeat that, if my reading of the White Paper is correct, the right hon. Gentleman has destroyed the very basis of the Balfour Declaration. In all previous Debates on this question I have been careful to explain that, whatever else hon. and right hon. Members on these benches think about Palestine, they have never been anti-Arab or pro-Jew as such; they have been pro-Palestine all the time; if they have any partial affections, their partial affections are for the workers of both races. I did not hear the right hon. Gentleman make reference to the workers, either Arab or Jew, during the whole of his long speech. He talked about the Nationalist movement, but I did not hear him make a single observation with regard to the Arab workers.

I will concede this to the right hon. Gentleman, that the Prime Minister landed him with one of the most complex problems that has ever confronted this or any Government. We have always recognised that any set of proposals would be criticised from some quarters. To satisfy the Arab Nationalists would obviously dissatisfy the Jews, and to satisfy the Jews would obviously dissatisfy the Arab Nationalists. To that extent some sympathy is due from us to the right hon. Gentleman. But, having said that, we also recognise that we cannot readily and easily get rid of our solemn pledges. We are living in an age when far too many pledges have been broken, when far too many treaties and gentlemen's agreements have been broken, and the whole world in general, and this country in particular, is now suffering as a result of those broken pledges. In any case, we in this House ought to be very jealous of the reputation of this country where pledges or treaties or gentlemen's agreements are being undertaken. This is our approach to this problem, and I hope we shall not deviate from that point of view.

What is our reading of the White Paper? The right hon. Gentleman not only explained very carefully the pledges given to one side and the other, but he talked sufficiently long to be able to satisfy some members of the House that in fact our pledges were not pledges at all, or that our pledges were so mutual as to cancel each other out, and we were left at the end of his speech without having made a pledge at all. It is my confirmed opinion that this White Paper and all that it implies is directly contrary both to the spirit and to the letter of the Balfour Declaration, and is in effect tantamount almost to its

abrogation. Even on the most generous interpretation of the right hon. Gentleman's proposals, they must conflict violently with the opinions expressed by those who devised the Balfour Declaration and by every statesman, be he British, Empire or American who has expressed opinions on the Balfour Declaration since. If our view is correct, this House certainly ought not to commit itself to that set of proposals. Perhaps, if we start at the very beginning and see exactly what our pledges were, we shall be better able to understand whether these proposals fulfill or whether they fail to redeem the pledges we made. The Balfour Declaration started with the Letter sent by Mr. Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild. It commenced as follows:

"I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet."

Then follow the contents of the letter which was to be sent to the Zionist Federation. I want to draw the special attention of the right hon. Gentleman to these words, because to me they are definitely fundamental:

* *

"The following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been approved by the Cabinet." What, in essence, are the Jewish Zionist aspirations? If they mean anything at all, clearly they mean that the Zionist movement is in existence to get away from that inferiority, born of being of minority status, which the Jews suffer in every country in the world. If that is the true interpretation of what the Cabinet approved, then the proposals in this White Paper are an abrogation of the very essence of the Balfour Declaration. If we abandon this, then the whole object and purpose of the Balfour Declaration has gone. Under Article 6 of the Mandate our obligations are more concrete and precise. Our obligations are defined as facilitating immigration and encouraging close settlement on the land. My reading of the White Paper is that it cancels both those obligations, as I shall try to show later. The facilitation of immigration and the encouragement of close settlement on the land will be no more at the end of five years from the acceptance of these proposals. Lest there should be any doubt about our statesmen's interpretation of the Balfour Declaration, one or two questions may not be out of place. Take Lord Balfour himself:

"As to the meaning of the words 'National Home,' to which the Zionists attach so much importance, he understood it to mean some form of British, American or other protectorate, under which full facilities would be given to the Jews to work out their own salvation and to build up, by means of education, agriculture and industry a real centre of national culture and focus of national life. It did not necessarily involve the early establishment of an independent Jewish State which was a matter for gradual development in accordance with the ordinary laws of political evolution.' No Government can guarantee that a Jewish State shall be set up in Palestine. Quite obviously, economic development will determine

the progress of immigration and the date, should there be a date, when a Jewish State can be set up. But it is clear that Lord Balfour did visualise the possibility of a Jewish State. That seems to me to be very clear. Then the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill), in one of his rare bursts of optimism, when he was Secretary of State for War, said:

"If, as may well happen, there should be created in our lifetime on the banks of the Jordan a Jewish State under the protection of the British Crown which might comprise three or four millions of Jews, an event will have occurred in the history of the world which would from every point of view be beneficial." The White Paper visualises the stoppage of immigration after five years, and it argues that the Government see no reason why they should be called upon permanently to facilitate immigration. At least the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping, who was a member of the Government when the Balfour Declaration became known, at some time in 1920, when he made that statement, did visualise a Jewish national home of far greater size than the one the Government now contemplate. It is true that the right hon. Gentleman could not have foreseen the possibility of a National Government, but he did see the possibility of 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 people going to Palestine, which at that time, of course, would include Transjordan. Then Lord Milner made this statement relating to Palestine and the Arab and Jewish question:

"If the Arabs go to the length of claiming Palestine, as one of their countries in the same sense as Mesopotamia or Arabia proper is an Arab country, then I think they are flying in the face of all facts, of all history, of all tradition and all associations of the most important character, I had almost said, the most sacred character. The future of Palestine cannot possibly be left to be determined by the temporary impressions and feelings of the Arab majority in the country at the present day.

There is one other quotation that I should like to make. It concerns America, and America, after all, is not altogether disinterested in this problem. President Wilson, stating the case for America, said:

"I am persuaded that the Allied nations, with the fullest concurrence of our Government and our people, are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish Commonwealth,"

It may be that any one, two, three, four or five of those statesmen were wrong, but surely they could not all have been wrong. If only some were right, two or three things were perfectly clear but the Government admit, on page 3 of the White Paper, that a Jewish State

"was not precluded by the terms of the declaration."

If it was ever intended by those who produced the Balfour Declaration that the Jews should remain a permanent minority in Palestine, why were those very careful safeguards provided for the non-Jewish population? It must have been clear to those who produced those safeguards that the possibility of a Jewish majority was there; to that

extent, a Jewish majority, a Jewish State, or Commonwealth were, rightly or wrongly, all visualised at that time. It might take 40, 50 or 100 years for that majority to be created, but as long as it was a question of economic absorptive capacity and as long as safeguards were applied, the Arabs need never be in fear of the domination of the Jews. The White Paper definitely cancels all those possibilities. On page 9, the Government deny that the Mandate required them to facilitate immigration for all time; but on page 4 are recorded these words from the Command Paper of 1922:

"But in order that this community should have the best prospect of free development and provide a full opportunity for the Jewish people to display its capacities, it is essential that it should know it is in Palestine as of right and not on sufferance." If the Jews can go to Palestine "as of right and not on sufferance," how can the right hon. Gentleman suggest that the Government have no further obligation to facilitate immigration? Moreover, if the Jews are going to Palestine as of right, quite clearly the Government are under almost a permanent obligation, as long as their mandatory authority continues, to facilitate immigration in accordance with the economic absorptive capacity, and I suggest that either that part of the White Paper is special pleading or the Government have misread their obligations. The White Paper states:

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"Nor do they find anything in the Mandate * * to support the view that the establishment of a Jewish National Home cannot be effected unless immigration is allowed to continue indefinitely."

The right hon. Gentleman repeated those words this afternoon. It all depends on the kind of home one has in mind. If one thinks in terms of the home envisaged by Lord Balfour, obviously immigration must continue. If one thinks on the lines of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping, of some 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 Jews making their home there, immigration will have to go on for a long time indeed. If one thinks in terms of a home where a happy, free and contented people are working out their destiny, that would be one kind of a home; but the White Paper seems to think in terms of a ramshackle council house-what has been described as a "territorial ghetto"-and which is not theirs to occupy, but where they are to be, like a lodger, in a position to be turned out at any moment. If the White Paper is correct, the same sort of reasonable immigration could have stopped five or 15 years ago, and the same sort of justification could have been given for it as has been given to-day. The right hon. Gentleman can find no more justification in the White Paper for establishing an Arab State and placing the Jews in a permanent minority than he can for doing the opposite. He is going to turn those Jews who have gone to Palestine into persons who have gone there not as of right, but only on sufferance, which is directly contrary to the words of the Command

paper.

The Government, on page 3 of the White Paper, categorically declare that the Arabs should not be made subjects of a Jewish State. It may be that the Government are correct: that the Arabs ought not to be subjects of a Jewish State; but they go on to turn the Mandate completely upside down, and to turn the Jews into subjects of an Arab State.