The Secretary of State read a little section of that message; I will read the whole of the last paragraph on which he principally relied It said:

"Since the Jewish opinion of the world is in favour of the return of the Jews to Palestine, and inasmuch as this opinion must remain a constant factor, and further, as His Majesty's Government view with favour the realisation of this aspiration, His Majesty's Government are determined that, in so far as is compatible with the freedom of existing populations both economic and political, no obstacle should be put in the way of the realisation of this ideal."

After what the Secretary of State told us last November of the economic work of the Jews and of the 400,000 Arabs alive and prosperous to-day who would not have been so but for that work, he cannot say to-day that the coming of the Jews imperilled the economic freedom of the Arabs.

So there remains their political freedom. How can the right hon. Gentleman interpret the Hogarth message as he did this afternoon unless he is ready to say that political freedom means that the Arabs must always be in a majority, in Palestine? That is what he does say. By all his talk about the fears of the Arabs of Jewish domination, the Secretary of State has got himself into a very strange position. He said to-day that it would be repugnant to our own national spirit and traditions, repugnant to the spirit of the Mandate and, if I understood him aright, repugnant even to the letter of the Mandate itself, to convert Palestine into a Jewish State against the will of the Arab population. So he arrives at this extraordinary result: That the will of the Arab population, or what the Mufti and his followers choose to call the will of the Arab population, must be decisive, and that, after a period of adjustment, the Jews must not exceed the number to which the Arabs will agree. Thus under the Mandate and the Balfour Declaration, the Arabs are to be in the majority for ever.

If the speech of the Secretary of State and the White Paper do not mean that, they do not mean anything at all. An ingenuous leader writer in the "Times" put the matter very plainly the other day in his comment upon the White Paper. He said:

"The unrestricted increase of Jewish immigration must in time contradict the terms of the Mandate by converting the Arab population into a minority and thereby varying or subverting their existing political rights."

That is the doctrine of the White Paper, writ plain and large. I challenge the right hon. Gentleman to deny, that in the light of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, that doctrine is utterly grotesque. The Balfour Declaration provided for the establishment of the Jewish Home; and went on to say that nothing should be done which "prejudice the civil and religious rights" of existing nonJewish sections of the population. Why "non-Jewish," if the Arabs were to be in the majority? In that case, it would plainly have been necessary to protect the Jews.

But look a little closer at the Balfour Declaration. The White Paper says that the Government did not contest the view of the Royal Commission that "the Zionist leaders at the time of the Balfour

Declaration, recognised that an ultimate Jewish State was not precluded by the terms of the Declaration." That is a very disingenuous version of what the Royal Commission actually said:

"The Jews understood that if the experiment succeeded the National Home would develop in course of time into a Jewish State."

Why did the Jews understand that to be the case? Because from 1918 to 1920 they were told so by the rulers of the world. They were told so by President Wilson, by Lord Balfour and by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George). Not one leader ever hinted that there would not be a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine in time to come. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs has said that the notion that Jewish immigration would be restricted never entered into anybody's mind because it would have been regarded "as unjust and as a fraud on the people to whom we were pledged." I know that is true, because I talked to the men day by day who made the Mandate. The Secretary of State reminded us to-day that the White Paper of 1922 tells us that we did not intend to make a wholly Jewish State. It went on to say something which is very important, that we "did not intend to stamp out or subordinate the Arab population, language or culture." Of course not; no one ever suggested such a thing. That White Paper may have repudiated the suggestion that Palestine was to be made as Jewish as England is English; but did anybody doubt that it was the intention that Palestine should be as Jewish as Canada is British?

The analogy is exact. The Secretary of State said this afternoon that we would not in any part of the world force immigrants on unwilling populations in countries that we rule. What did we do in Canada? We had a violent conflict with the French, and they were in a majority. We conquered Canada, and we sent immigrants there for centuries; and to-day the people live in harmony together, as some day the Jews and Arabs will in Palestine. In 1922, as in 1919, we meant to create a Commonwealth in Palestine in which Jews and Arabs would have common democratic rights and freedom, but in which the Jews would predominate in numbers. But for that, the experiment of a National Home would never have been attempted. As late as 1927, both the Royal Commission and the Government themselves in their White Paper said that the primary objective of Zionism, and, therefore, of the Mandate, was "escape from minority life." And, in this regard the present White Paper and the policy of the Secretary of State are in flagrant violation of the Balfour Declaration of the Mandate, and, indeed, of the whole policy which the British Government as Mandatory has hitherto pursued. The Royal Commission declared in 1937 that

"The primary purpose of the Mandate as expressed in its preamble and its articles, is to promote the establishment of a Jewish National Home,"

and the Government, in the famous letter written in 1931 by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, which has already been quoted this afternoon, recognised that that was an undertaking, not only to the Jews in

Palestine, but to Jews throughout the world. All these solemn pledges, these international obligations-for such they are the Secretary of State puts aside. For him, the primary purpose of the Mandate is no longer the establishments of a Jewish National Home, but the protection of Arab rights; and not the rights of the Balfour Declaration-political freedom and civil justice in a free State-but a new right which he has invented, the right that the Arabs shall be in a majority for ever. So he condemns the Jews for ever to minority status; minority status among Arabs-not minority status among the European peoples, or among the American people, whose countries they have left to go to Palestine; Minority Status, from which the whole purpose of the Mandate was that, after 15 centuries of dispersion and persecution, they should at last escape. This afternoon the Secretary of State tried to comfort us by talking of constitutional safeguards for the Jews. I ask him, what safeguards? I hope the Under-Secretary will tell us. He spoke of federation. In the Jewish unit of the federation, will there be freedom of immigration? I ask him to tell me. I wish he would tell me now. If he uses a word like "federation," he ought to have clear ideas on a fundamental point like that. I ask him, if constitutional safeguards will protect the Jews, why will they not protect the Arabs, especially with the great Arab hinterland behind? I ask him why, if the Arabs are afraid of Jewish domination, he never mentioned the Jewish offer of political parity which they have made, and have always stood by, from the very start? He cannot give us an answer to these questions, for there is none. By inventing this new Arab right to be in a majority, he has utterly destroyed the purpose and the meaning of the Mandate, and has violated its spirit in every possible way.

But in his White Paper and in his speech he not only violates the spirit and purpose of the Mandate, but he violates the letter of its articles as well. Article 2, which deals with immigration, lays it down that we as Mandatory shall not may or should but shall-facilitate Jewish immigration, and encourage close Jewish settlement on the land. As the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs has said no one at the time ever dreamt that there would be a restriction on that right of immigration; they doubted, rather, whether the Jews would really want to go. But a restriction was in fact instituted. As the Secretary of State said in 1922 the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) brought in the principle of economic absorptive capacity. It was a restriction on Jewish rights, on their right to go to Palestine; but it was accepted, however reluctantly, by the Jews. The Secretary of State said to-day that that principle does not mean that we must allow the Jews to go up to the limit of economic absorptive capacity; he challenged that interpretation completely. Has he forgotten that, when the White Paper of 1922 was issued, the Jews wrote a letter in which they gave exactly that interpretation to the new principle, namely, that they should be allowed to go to the limit of economic absorptive capacity? Has he forgotten that the British Government of the day sent that letter, together with the White Paper and their draft of the Mandate, to the League of Nations, without any dissenting note of any kind, and that it was on those three documents together that the Mandate was approved? Not only that, but the Government have gone on asserting almost ever since that the principle of economic absorptive

capacity means precisely what the Jews claimed that it should. I could quote a score of Government declarations; I will quote only one. Lord Swinton, who was then Secretary of State for the Colonies, said in 1933:

"It has always been the policy followed by the Mandatory Power and no other policy could possibly be pursued in Palestine in carrying out the idea of a National Home that the economic conditions of the country must govern the number of immigrants." Time after time, in 1933, 1934, 1935, and 1936, Government spokesmen have used the word "govern" or "determine" in that same sense. To-day, the Secretary of State challenges that principle; he says that political factors must also be considered-that if the Arabs are against continued immigration, it must stop. And so he substitutes for economic absorptive capacity what my right hon. Friend the Member for South Hackney last November called the principle of political absorptive capacity, with the consent of the Mufti and his colleagues as the test of the application of this new principle. I again without hesitation that that new principle is in open conflict with the Mandate and with the White Paper of 1922, and I am certain that, if the right hon. Gentleman who wrote that White Paper were here, he would agree. I cannot believe that the Mandates Commission of the League will approve of this new principle, or that this House should approve of it until it knows what that Commission is going to do.

This is not the first time that the Secretary of State's argument about political considerations has been put forward, and he, if anyone, ought to remember that fact. It was put forward in the famous and illfated White Paper of 1930, which was the Government's response, as this White Paper is, to Arab violence. It proposed, as the Secretary of State now proposes, to throw over the principle of economic absorptive capacity, and drastically to reduce Jewish immigration on political grounds. What happened? British opinion was so incensed that the Government were obliged virtually to withdraw the White Paper, abandon their restrictions on immigration and reassert the principle of economic absorptive capacity as the decisive and the only test. The restrictions proposed in that White Paper of 1930 were challenged at the time as a violation of the Mandate. They were challenged by Lord Baldwin, the late Sir Austin Chamberlain and the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery), who together said that it would have been contrary to the intention of the Mandate if the Jewish National Home had "crystallised at its present stage of development." They were challenged also on legal grounds by two of the greatest legal luminaries in the country, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Lord Hailsham, who together wrote a letter to the "Times" in which they analysed the White Paper, recited its restrictions on immigration, and then said:

"In all these respects the White Paper appears to us to involve a departure from the obligations of the Mandate. This country cannot afford to allow any suspicion to rest on its faith or on its determination to carry out to the full its international obligations. If, therefore, the terms of the White Paper are the deliberate and considered announcement of Government policy, we would suggest that immediate steps be taken to induce the

Council of the League of Nations to obtain from the Hague Court an advisory opinion on the questions involved, and that the British Government should not enforce these paragraphs unless and until the Court has pronounced in their favour." Such persuasion from such quarters brought Lord Passfield-with the help, if I remember rightly, of the present Secretary of State himselfto his knees. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald wrote the letter to which I have already referred, in which he laid down "that no political factor should affect the right to immigrate, and it should be based on purely economic considerations." And in another passage of that letter, the then Prime Minister said:

"The obligation to facilitate Jewish immigration

*

can be fulfilled without prejudice to the rights and position". the phrase that the Secretary of State quoted this afternoon, and on which he considerably relied—

"The rights and position of other sections of the population of Palestine."

That sentence of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald's letter demolishes, at a single blow, the whole case put up by the Secretary of State this afternoon. Nor is that the end. The point arose again in 1936. We then restricted immigration because of the troubles which began the year before. The Mandates Commission raised the question, and our Foreign Secretary was compelled to tell the Assembly of the League that it was a purely temporary expedient to meet a temporary situation. Will the Secretary of State accept the plan which the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed in 1931? Will he send the matter to the Hague Court. Will he let the Mandates Commission draft the question which is put? Will he accept the verdict given?

I do not believe that, in his heart of hearts, the Secretary of State greatly differs from much that I have said. He knows that he is proposing a change in the meaning and purpose of the Mandate. He justifies it because he says that to continue Jewish immigration means Government by force. None of us wants government by force; but in the present situation the Secretary of State's proposition is a euphemism for giving way to lawless force. It is a polite way of saying that we will surrender to the Mufti and his gang that, in the hope of getting peace, we must do another Munich on the Jews. When you contemplate a Munich the first question to ask is, "Shall we really get peace or shall we not?" What is the terrorism to which the Secretary of State is now surrendering? When did the present disturbances begin, and by whom were they organised? They began in 1935, at the time of the Abyssinian affair, when we were imposing our feeble economic sanctions on Mussolini. They were organised by the Mufti, who for nearly 20 years has worked against the Mandate, and who threatened to the Royal Commission that the Jews would be expelled when the Arab State had been set up. It was paid for and assisted by the aggressive Powers who have kept Europe in a ferment, and against whom to-day we are compelled to prepare for war. Money, arms, officers, organisers, everything came from Italy and Germany. Already in 1935-I am quoting the editor of the "Quarterly Review"-50 German agents were sent to Africa and the Near East. Their destinations, among others, were Haifa and Jaffa.