unlimited right of the 450,000 Germans of Danzig to dispose of their destiny without any regard to the wider issues at stake? In any event that demand was admitted, and readily admitted, by the one person most entitled to speak for the Arabs, by King Feisal and by his Arab colleagues at the Peace Conference. Whether that admission involved or did not involve some limitation or qualification of what the Arabs thought was implied, either in the McMahon correspondence or in Dr. Hogarth's statement, is surely completely irrelevant to-day. Of course it is equally irrelevant for the Jews to go back to any expectations which they may have been encouraged to entertain before their position was definitely laid down by the Mandate and by the White Paper issued in 1922 by my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill). For the Arabs the Peace Negotiations, and for the Jews the Mandate and the White Paper, must mark the limit of their claims:

Of that final settlement of 1922, I would only say that it marked a drastic scaling down of Jewish hopes. It began by taking out of Palestine the larger and better half, the half more suitable to largescale colonisation, namely, Trans-jordan. That was the first partition. It also made it clear to the Jews that there was no question of Palestine ever becoming a Jewish State or a Jewish country in the sense in which England is English. It made it clear that not only the individual, civil and religious rights of the Arabs, which the Balfour Declaration affirmed, but the existence of the Arab community as such, with its culture and its language, had to be recognized. We took the view then, and I should have wished to see it maintained to-day-the White Paper does not maintain it-that Palestine, like Canada or South Africa, must always be a State in which two different elements had to recognise each other's rights. The essential fact was laid that they were equal rights. The Jews were to be in Palestine as of right, and not on sufferance, and no other consideration was to be allowed to prevent their free entry and free settlement as long as that entry and that settlement did not inflict direct injury upon the existing community, Jew or Arab. That was the meaning, the only possible meaning, of the test of economic absorptive capacity. To the principal of that test every British Government since has been pledged. My right hon. Friend has said that it is not in the Mandate. That is quite true, but the Permanent Mandates Commission and the League of Nations accepted it as a legitimate limitation of wider demands which the Jews might otherwise have been encouraged to advance. They never accepted it as a mere maximum which might be whittled down at the convenience of the administration at any moment.

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In November my right hon. Friend told us that he had adopted. from my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping the watchword "not partition, but perseverance." What is the watchword now? Partition has faded into the background; perseverance has oozed away. The watchword is, "appease the Arabs," appease the Mufti. Appease them at all costs. Appease them by abandoning the declared policy of every Government for 20 years past. Appease them at the cost of sacrificing all the prestige which we might have gained from either Jews or Arabs by consistency, by firmness, by justice to

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both sides. After all, stripped of all verbiage, what does the White Paper mean? It means, to begin with, that the Arab contention. that Palestine is an Arab country in which Arab point of view must prevail over all other considerations, is accepted without qualification. No, with one very important qualification-delay. The Jews are to be a permanent minority. After an interval their entry is to be on sufferance, and no longer as of right. After that they are to besubject to indefinite safeguards under a guarantee, which, we imagine, will be pretty worthless as a National Home carried on under the rule of the Mufti. In every pledge that we have given—and I need not delay the House by repeating all the pledges that have been given right through to the Debate last November; and it was repeated to a deputation by the Prime Minister only a few weeks ago the Jews were not to be placed in a position of permanent minority under the Arabs.

Why has this policy been adopted? The House is entitled to ask why there should have been this sudden and complete reversal of policy at this moment. Arab resistance in Palestine has been largely overcome. As far as Palestine is concerned, it may to-day prove easier to override the Arabs than the Jews. Is it the fear that Arab States will suddenly espouse the cause of the Axis Powers? They know better than that. If ever they should attempt to desert us, it will not be for anything we may do in Palestine, but because they have lost confidence in our power to defend them. These are not the reasons, even if they may be the excuse. The real reasons that have been brought us to the present position are not the inherent difficulties of the situation. They are not the difficulties either of the internal or external situation. They are lack of purpose, lack of that belief in one mission both to Jews and Arabs which underlay the policy of the Mandate, lack of faith in ourselves, sheer inability to govern. The state of Palestine is deplorable to-day, and is likely to be even more deplorable before long, as the result of what Burke once called "the irresistible operation of feeble councils."

Looking at the matter from the point of view of one who has had to administer Palestine, I ask myself, how is the new policy going to work out on the spot? The Arabs have had all their claims acknowledged. The actual settlement of these claims is relegated to the future. Jewish immigration will not be stopped for five years, self-government is to come, perhaps in 10 years. Knowing that what they have secured has been secured by violence, they will draw the obvious conclusion that, unless His Majesty's Government are kept on the run, by more intransigence, more violence, more pressure from neighbouring States, the hopes that are now raised may possibly never be fulfilled. The White Paper is a direct invitation to Arabs to continue to make trouble. As for the Jews, they are now told that all the hopes that they have been encouraged to hold for 20 years are to be dashed to the ground, all their amazing effort wasted-in so far as it was an effort to create a National Home-all the pledges and promises that have been given to them, broken. That is to be their reward for loyalty, for patience, for almost unbelievable self-restraint. Let us not forget of whom we are asking this. These are not like the Jews in Germany, a helpless, hopeless minority. They are a formida ble body of people. They are composed largely of younger men who have undergone military training and are quite capable of defending

themselves, of holding their own, if only we allowed them. They are people who have felt the breath of freedom and who mean to remain free. They are people who believe the land in which they are living is their own, not merely by old sentimental associations, or even international sanction, but because, such as it is to-day, they have created it. Does my right hon. Friend believe that these people will be contented to be relegated to the position of a statutory minority, to be denied all hope of giving refuge and relief to their tortured kinsfolk in other countries; that they will wait passively until, in due course, they and the land they created are to be handed over to the Mufti? That is not only my view, but the view of the Royal Commission, whose language I could give if I did not hesitate to keep the House much longer.

I wonder how the Government envisage the actual administration of Palestine under their new policy. New heads of departments are to be appointed immediately. They are to be "Palestinians," a blessed world, like Mesopotamia, under cover of which, the white paper shirks all the difficulties of the position. No Jew will accept office. No Arab dare do so, without the Mufti's express permission, without his visa. The Government still keep up the pretence of treating the Mufti as a criminal and an outlaw. But they made no attempt to exclude his nominees from the conference. I assume that they will make no effort to exclude them from these quasi-ministerial appointments. My right hon. Friend says that in the last resort they will be subject to the High Commissioner. If a man has to choose between two masters, one of whom can dismiss him, but who may find it very embarrassing to do so, and another who would have no hesitation in ordering his assassination, which master is he the more likely to obey? If any man is to be pitied in this world under the new project it is His Majesty's High Commissioner in Palestine. I wonder if Sir Harold McMichael was ever consulted about it. I wonder if General Haining was ever consulted, and I wonder if Sir Charles Teggart, who has worked so valiantly to restore order, was ever consulted. The whole of this policy is stillborn. If it is not swept away by the greater storm that may break upon us at any moment, it is bound to peter out in bitterness and confusion.

Meanwhile, this panic scheme is to be pushed in panic haste through Parliament. Why? The whole matter is to come up before the Mandates Commission in a few weeks. Would it not be wiser for the Government to make sure that the Mandates Commission are prepared to endorse so complete a departure from the conditions of the Mandate? Why should this House make itself look foolish by approving a scheme in advance which is more than likely to be rejected as a breach of our mandatory obligations? That was the view taken by this House even on so minor a question as partition two years ago. Again, two years ago this House insisted upon having something more definite than the Royal Commission's proposals. Those proposals were precision itself compared with the scheme which my right hon. Friend has asked us this afternoon to approve. With the exception of the one definite figure of Jewish immigration, the whole of it is vague and absolutely undefined. There is to be this scheme of new heads of Departments, which Departments? Is the Mufti to appoint his nominee to the department of Justice? Is his nominee to control immigration or land? We ought to know. Land, we are told is to

be under the absolute discretion, to sanction or veto transfer, of the High Commissioner, through his head of Department. On what principle? Within what area? We ought to know. What about the holy places? We were assured by my right hon. Friend in general terms that something is to be arranged about them. The Royal Commission made very definite provision in respect of the holy places. It said they should be permanently under British administrattion.

Lastly, we are told that when the independent State is set up Arabs and Jews are to share in the government in such a way that the essential interests of each are safeguarded. What on earth does that mean? Does it mean some equal voting power by which the Jews can veto legislation prejudicial to them? Is it a vague hint at some sort of quasi federation? If so, why are we not told? Why it is not made clear that no federal scheme is possible consistent with any fulfilment of the Mandate which does not give the Jews control of immigration and land settlement or does it just mean nothing at all? It is preposterous to ask the house to shut its eyes, open its mouth and swallow this half-baked project.

I hope even now the Government may accept the Amendment standing in the name of the hon. and gallant Member for Chippenham (Captain Cazalet), and secure the agreement of the House upon it. If not then we must each vote for or against the Government as our conscience may direct. For my part I feel that I cannot divest myself of a definite personal responsibility in this matter. For nearly seven years I was directly concerned in the administration not only of Palestine, but of Transjordania, Iraq and other Arab countries. I worked wholeheartedly for what I believed to be the interests of all the peoples of those countries, of every race. I believe that I enjoyed the good will and the respect of both Jews and Arabs. I could never hold up my head again to either Jew or Arab if I voted tomorrow for what, in good faith, I repeatedly told both Jews and Arabs was inconceivable, namely, that any British Government would ever go back upon the pledge given not only to Jews but the whole civilised world when it assumed the Mandate. In the absence of any alternative accepted by the whole House, I shall most certainly give my vote for the Opposition Amendment to-morrow. I should be ashamed to take any other course.

PHILIP J. NOEL-BAKER, M. P.

HOUSE OF COMMONS, MAY 22ND, 1939

My hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams) said this afternoon that we are against the policy which the Secretary of State for the Colonies explained. We are against it, not because we are anti-Arab or pro-Jew, but because we are pro-Mandate. We believe in the Mandate; we believe that we ought to carry out the trust we undertook; we believe that it is only by the policy of the Mandate that the problem of Palestine can be solved and that the real interests of the Jews and the Arabs can be served.

I saw the Mandate being made in Paris and Geneva 20 years ago. Day by day I talked about it with those, on the Arab side, on the Jewish side and in the British Foreign Office who worked it out. Perhaps it is because of that experience that I have never been able to understand why some people think that the Mandate does injustice. to the Arabs. I have never been able to understand how the Secretary of State could tell the House last November that if he were an Arab he would be afraid of the coming of the Jew. I thought it the more extraordinary that he should have made that statement last November because, in the very same speech, he told us that, thanks to the Mandate, thanks to the Jews, there were 400,000 more Arabs alive and prosperous to-day than there would otherwise have been. No one has forgotten the generous tribute he made last November, and which he repeated in a lesser measure this afternoon, to the work which the Jews have done, and to the way in which they have expanded the soil of Palestine and have enlarged the common patrimony of the country for both Arabs and Jews.

It was because I remembered what he said then that I was utterly mystified by what he said about the Hogarth Message this afternoon. He relied very much upon that Message. I leave aside the point that he put it upon almost equal footing as a pledge with the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate-a procedure which by any test is utterly grotesque. I leave aside also the point that a year after the Hogarth Declaration the Emir Feisal and the Arab delegation in Paris accepted the Mandate and the Jewish National HomeMr. MACDONALD. On conditions.

Mr. NOEL-BAKER. Yes, on conditions, which have been fulfilled, that the other Arab countries should be made independent; they have been made independent, except Syria and Transjordan, which are very nearly so. In 1919 the Emir Feisal wrote to the Jewish agency to say that Arabs looked forward to collaboration with the Jews, that he understood their plans, and that the Arabs would welcome them back to their Home. I leave aside those points, and I come simply to the text of the Hogarth Message itself.