The Great War
Until mid-1914, the surface of European diplomatic relations was placid, reflecting successfully negotiated settlements of colonial and other questions. But certain British journalists were charged by their contemporaries “that they deliberately set out to poison Anglo-German relations and to create by their scaremongering such a climate of public opinion that war between the two Great Powers became inevitable.” (The Scaremongers: The Advocacy of War and Rearmament 1896-1914, A. J. A. Morris, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984)
Were they paid or pure? Every anti-German diatribe in British newspapers added to German government concern as to whether it was part of a policy instigated or condoned by Downing Street. Further, there were groups in every major European country which could see only in war the possible means to further their interests or to thwart the ambitions of their rivals. This is why the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir-apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne, on 28 June in Sarajevo, soon set Europe crackling with fire, a fire which naturally spread through the lines of communications to colonial territories as far away as China.
On 28 July, Austria declared war on Serbia. Germany sent an ultimatum to Russia threatening hostilities if orders for total mobilization of the Russian army and navy were not countermanded.
A telegram dated 29 July 1914 from the Czar Nicholas to the Emperor Wilhelm, proposing that the Austro-Serbian dispute should be referred to the Hague Tribunal, remained unanswered. At the same time Germany sent a message to France asking if she would remain neutral; but France, which had absorbed issue after issue of Russian railroad bonds in addition to other problems, was unequivocal in supporting Russia. Amid mounting tension and frontier violations, Germany declared war on Russia and France.
The French Chief-of-Staff, General Joseph Joffre, was prepared to march into Belgium if the Germans first violated its neutrality [38] which had been guaranteed by Britain, France, Prussia, Austria and Russia. German troops crossed the Belgian frontier (on 4 August at 8 a.m.) and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany.
First Pledge
Lord Kitchener, who had left London at 11:30 on the morning of 3 August to return to Egypt after leave, was stopped at Dover and put in charge of the War Office.[39] At the first meeting of the War Council he warned his colleagues of a long struggle which would be won not at sea but on land, for which Britain would have to raise an army of millions of men and maintain them in the field for several years.[40] When the defense of Egypt was discussed at the meeting, Winston Churchill suggested that the ideal method of defending Egypt was to attack the Gallipoli Peninsula which, if successful, would give Britain control of the Dardenelles. But this operation was very difficult, and required a large force. He preferred the alternative of a feint at Gallipoli, and a landing at Haifa or some other point on the Syrian coast.
In Turkey, the Sultan had taken the title of Khalif-al-IsIam, or supreme religious leader of Moslems everywhere, and emissaries were dispatched to Arab chiefs with instructions that in the event of Turkey being involved in the European hostilities, they were to declare a jihad, or Moslem holy war. A psychological and physical force which Kitchener of Khartoum, the avenger of General Gordon’s death, understood very well.
Kitchener planned to draw the sting of the jihad, which could affect British-Indian forces and rule in the East, by promoting an Arab revolt to be led by Hussein, who had been allowed by the Turks to assume his hereditary dignity as Sherif of Mecca and titular ruler of the Hejaz. Kitchener cabled on 13 October 1914 to his son, Abdullah, in Mecca, saying that if the Arab nation assisted England in this war, England would guarantee that no internal intervention took place in Arabia, and would give the Arabs every assistance against external aggression.
A series of letters passed between Sherif Hussein and the British Government through Sir Henry McMahon, High Commissioner for Egypt, designed to secure Arab support for the British in the Great War. One dated 24 October 1915 committed HMG to the inclusion of Palestine within the boundaries of Arab independence after the war, but excluded the area now known as Lebanon. This is clearly recognized in a secret “Memorandum on British Commitments to King Hussein” prepared for the inner group at the Peace Conference in 1919. (See Appendix) I found a copy in 1964 among the papers of the late Professor Wm. Westermann, who had been adviser on Turkish affairs to the American Delegation to the Peace Conference.
The Second Pledge
As the major ally, France’s claim to preference in parts of Syria could not be ignored. The British Foreign Minister, Sir Edward Grey, told the French Ambassador in London, Mr. Paul Gambon, on 21 October 1915, of the exchanges of correspondence with Sherif Hussein, and suggested that the two governments arrive at an understanding with their Russian ally on their future interests in the Ottoman Empire.
M. Picot was appointed French representative with Sir Mark Sykes, now Secretary of the British War Cabinet, to define the interests of their countries and to go to Russia to include that country’s views in their agreement.
In the subsequent secret discussions with Foreign Secretary Sazonov, Russia was accorded the occupation of Constantinople, both shores of the Bosporus and some parts of “Turkish” Armenia.[K] France claimed Lebanon and Syria eastwards to Mosul. Palestine did in fact have inhabitants and shrines of the Greek and Russian Orthodox and Armenian churches, and Russia at first claimed a right to the area as their protector. This was countered by Sykes-Picot and the claim was withdrawn to the extent that Russia, in consultation with the other Allies, would only participate in deciding a form of international administration for Palestine.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement was incompatible with the pledges made to the Arabs. When the Turks gave Hussein details of the Agreement after the Russian revolution, he confined his action to a formal repudiation.
Like the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, the Tripartite Agreement made no mention of concessions to Zionism in the future disposition of Palestine, or even mention of the word “Jew.” However it is now known that before the departure of Sykes [L] for Petrograd on 27 February 1916 for discussions with Sazonov, he was approached with a plan by Herbert Samuel, who had a seat in the Cabinet as President of the Local Government Board and was strongly sympathetic to Herzl’s Zionism.[41]
The plan put forward by Samuel was in the form of a memorandum which Sykes thought prudent to commit to memory and destroy, Commenting on it, Sykes wrote to Samuel suggesting that if Belgium should assume the administration of Palestine it might be more acceptable to France as an alternative to the international administration which she wanted and the Zionists did not.[42] Of boundaries marked on a map attached to the memorandum he wrote, “By excluding Hebron and the East of the Jordan there is less to discuss with the Moslems, as the Mosque of Omar then becomes the only matter of vital importance to discuss with them and further does away with any contact with the bedouins, who never cross the river except on business. I imagine that the principal object of Zionism is the realization of the ideal of an existing center of nationality rather than boundaries or extent of territory. The moment I return I will let you know how things stand at Pd.” [43]
However, in conversations both with Sykes and the French ambassador, Sazonov was careful not to commit himself as to the extent of the Russian interest in Palestine, but made it clear that Russia would have to insist that not only the holy places, but all towns and localities in which there were religious establishments belonging to the Orthodox Church, should be placed under international administration, with a guarantee for free access to the Mediterranean.[44]
Czarist Russia would not agree to a Zionist formula for Palestine; but its days were numbered.
The Third Pledge
In 1914, the central office of the Zionist Organization and the seat of its directorate, the Zionist Executive, were in Berlin. It already had adherents in most Eastern Jewish communities, including all the countries at war, though its main strength was in Russia and Austria-Hungary.[45] Some important institutions, namely, the Jewish Colonial Trust, the Anglo-Palestine Company and the Jewish National Fund, were incorporated in England. Of the Executive, two members (Otto Warburg [M] and Arthur Hantke) were German citizens, three (Yechiel Tschlenow, Nahum Sokolow and Victor Jacobson) were Russians and one (Shmarya Levin) had recently exchanged his Russian for Austro-Hungarian nationality. The 25 members of the General Council included 12 from Germany and Austria-Hungary, 7 from Russia…Chaim Weizmann and Leopold Kessler) from England, and one each from Belgium, France, Holland and Rumania.[46]
Some prominent German Zionists associated themselves with a newly founded organization known as the Komitee fur den Osten, whose aims were: “To place at the disposal of the German Government the special knowledge of the founders and their relations with the Jews in Eastern Europe and in America, so as to contribute to the overthrow of Czarist Russia and to secure the national autonomy of the Jews.” [47]
Influential Zionists outside the Central Powers were disturbed by the activities of the K.f.d.O. and anxious for the Zionist movement not to be compromised. Weizmann’s advice was that the central office be moved from Berlin and that the conduct of Zionist affairs during the war should he entrusted to a provisional executive committee for general Zionist affairs in the United States.
At a conference in New York on 30 August 1914, this committee was set up under the chairmanship of Louis D. Brandeis, with the British-born Dr. Richard Gottheil and Jacob de Haas, Rabbi Stephen Wise and Felix Frankfurter, among his principal lieutenants. For Shmarya Levin, the representative of the Zionist Executive in the United States, and Dr. Judah Magnes, to whom the alliance of England and France with Russia seemed “unholy,” Russian czarism was the enemy against which their force should be pitted.[48] But on 1 October 1914 Gottheil, first President of the Zionist Organization of America, wrote from the Department of Semitic Languages, Columbia University, to Brandeis in Boston enclosing a memorandum on what the organization planned to seek from the belligerents, with respect to the Russian Jews:
We have got to be prepared to work under the Government of any one of the Powers … shall be glad to have any suggestion from you in regard to this memorandum, and shall be glad to know if it meets with your approval. I recognize that I ought not to have put it out without first consulting you; but the exigencies of the situation demanded immediate action. We ought to be fully prepared to take advantage of any occasion that offers itself.[49]
In a speech on 9 November, four days after Britain’s declaration of war on Turkey, Prime Minister Asquith said that the traditional eastern policy had been abandoned and the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire had become a war aim. “It is the Ottoman Government,” he declared, “and not we who have rung the death knell of Ottoman dominion not only in Europe but in Asia.” [50] The statement followed a discussion of the subject at a Cabinet meeting earlier that day, at which we know, from Herbert Samuel’s memoirs, that Lloyd George, who had been retained as legal counsel by the Zionists some years before, [51] “referred to the ultimate destiny of Palestine.” In a talk with Samuel after the meeting, Lloyd George assured him that “he was very keen to see a Jewish state established in Palestine.”
On the same day, Samuel developed the Zionist position more fully in a conversation with the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey. He spoke of Zionist aspirations for the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish state, and of the importance of its geographical position to the British Empire. Such a state, he said, ”could not be large enough to defend itself.’‘ and it would therefore be essential that it should be by constitution, neutral. Grey asked whether Syria as a whole must necessarily go with Palestine, and Samuel replied that this was not only unnecessary but inadvisable, since it would bring in a large and unassimilable Arab population. ”It would,’‘ he said “be a great advantage if the remainder of Syria were annexed by France, as it would be far better for the state to have a European Power as a neighbor than the Turk.” [52]
In January 1915 Samuel produced a Zionist memorandum on Palestine after discussions with Weizmann and Lloyd George. It contained arguments in favor of combining British annexation of Palestine with British support for Zionist aspirations, and ended with objections to any other solution.[53] Samuel circulated it to his colleagues in the Cabinet. Lloyd George was already a Zionist ”partisan”; Lord Haldane, to whom Weizmann had had access, wrote expressing a friendly interest; [54] though privately expressing Zionist sympathies, the Marquess of Crewe presumably did not express any views in the Cabinet on the memorandum; [55] Zionism had a strong sentimental attraction for Grey[56] but his colleagues, including his cousin Edwin Montagu, did not give him much encouragement. Prime Minister Asquith wrote: “I confess that I am not attracted by the proposed addition to our responsibilities, but it is a curious illustration of Dissy’s favorite maxim that race is everything to find this almost lyrical outburst proceeding from the well-ordered and methodical brain of H.S.” [57]
After further conversations with Lloyd George and Grey.[58] Samuel circulated a revised text to the Cabinet in the middle of March 1915.
It is not known if the memorandum was formally considered by the Cabinet, but Asquith wrote in his diary on 13 March 1915 of Samuel’s “dithyrambic memorandum” of which Lloyd George was ”the only other partisan. ” [59] Certainly, at this time, Zionist claims and aspirations were secondary to British policy towards Russia and the Arabs.
Britain, France and Germany attached considerable importance to the attitudes of Jewry towards them because money and credit were needed for the war. The international banking houses of Lazard Frères, Eugene Mayer, J. & W. Seligman, Speyer Brothers and M.M. Warburg, were all conducting major operations in the United States, as were the Rothschilds through the New York banking house of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.[N] Apart from their goodwill. the votes of America’s Jewish community of 3,000,000 were important to the issue of that country’s intervention or non-intervention in the war, and the provision of military supplies. The great majority represented the one-third of the Jews of Eastern Europe. including Russia, who had left their homelands and come to America between 1880 and 1914. Many detested Czarist Russia and wished to see it destroyed. Of these Jews, not more than 12,000 were enrolled members of the Zionist Organization.[60]
The goodwill of Jewry, and especially America’s Jews, was assessed by both sides in the war as being very important. The once-poor Eastern European Jews had achieved a dominant position in New York’s garment industry. and had become a significant political force. In 1914 they sent a Russian-born socialist to the Congress of the United States. They produced dozens of Yiddish periodicals; they patronized numerous Yiddish theatres and music halls; their sons and daughters were filling the metropolitan colleges and universities.[61]
From the beginning of the war, the German Ambassador in Washington. Count Bernstorff, was provided. by the Komitee fuer den Osten, with an adviser on Jewish Affairs (Isaac Straus); and when the head of the Zionist Agency in Constantinople appealed, in the winter of 1914, to the German Embassy to do what it could to relieve the pressure on the Jews in Palestine, it was reinforced by a similar appeal to Berlin from Bernstorff.[62] In November 1914, therefore, the German Embassy in Constantinople received instructions to recommend that the Turks sanction the re-opening of the Anglo-Palestine Company’s Bank — a key Zionist institution. In December the Embassy made representations which prevented a projected mass deportation of Jews of Russian nationality.[63] In February 1915 German influence helped to save a number of Jews in Palestine from imprisonment or expulsion, and “a dozen or twenty times” the Germans intervened with the Turks at the request of the Zionist office in Turkey, “thus saving and protecting the Yishuv.” [65] The German representations reinforced those of the American Ambassador in Turkey (Henry Morgenthau).[O] [66] Moreover, both the German consulates in Palestine and the head of the German military mission there frequently exerted their influence on behalf of the Jews.[67]
German respect for Jewish goodwill enabled the Constantinople Zionist Agency from December 1914 to use the German diplomatic courier service and telegraphic code for communicating with Berlin and Palestine.[68] On 5 June 1915 Victor Jacobson was received at the German Foreign Office by the Under-Secretary of State (von Zimmerman) and regular contact commenced between the Berlin Zionist Executive (Warburg, Hantke and Jacobson) and the German Foreign Office.[69]
Zionist propagandists in Germany elaborated and publicized the idea that Turkey could become a German satellite and its Empire in Asia made wide open to German enterprise; support for “a revival of Jewish life in Palestine” would form a bastion of German influence in that part of the world.[70] This was followed by solicitation of the German Foreign Office to notify the German consuls in Palestine of the German Government’s friendly interest in Zionism. Such a course was favored by von Neurath [P] when asked by Berlin for his views in October, and in November of 1915, the text for such a document was agreed upon and circulated after the approval of the German Chancellor (Bethmann-Hollweg). It was cautiously and vaguely worded so as not to upset Turkish susceptibilities, stating to the Palestine consuls that the German Government looked favorably on “Jewish activities designed to promote the economic and cultural progress of the Jews in Turkey, and also on the immigration and settlement of Jews from other countries.” [71]
The Zionists felt that an important advance toward a firm German commitment to their aims had been made, but when the Berlin Zionist Executive pressed for a public assurance of sympathy and support, the Government told them to wait until the end of the war, when a victorious Germany would demonstrate its goodwill.[72]
When Zionist leaders in Germany met Jemal Pasha, by arrangement with the Foreign Office, during his visit to Berlin in the summer of 1917, they were told that the existing Jewish population would be treated fairly but that no further Jewish immigrants would he allowed. Jews could settle anywhere else but not in Palestine. The Turkish Government, Jemal Pasha declared, wanted no new nationality problems, nor was it prepared to antagonize the Palestinian Arabs, “who formed the majority of the population and were to a man opposed to Zionism.” [73]
A few weeks after the interview, the Berlin Zionists’ pressure was further weakened by the uncovering by Turkish Intelligence of a Zionist spy ring working for General Allenby’s Intelligence section under an Aaron Aaronssohn. “It is no wonder that the Germans, tempted as they may have been by its advantages, shrank from committing themselves to a pro-Zionist declaration.” [74]
It was fortunate for Zionism that the American Jews as a whole showed no enthusiasm for the Allied cause, wrote Stein, political secretary of the Zionist Organization from 1920 to 1929, “If they had all along been reliable friends, there would have been no need to pay them any special attention.” [75]
In 1914 the French Government had sponsored a visit to the United States by Professor Sylvain Levy and the Grand Rabbi of France with the object of influencing Jewish opinion in their favor, but without success. A year later, it tried to reply to disturbing reports from its embassy in Washington about the sympathies of American Jews [76] by sending a Jew of Hungarian origin (Professor Victor Basch) to the United States in November 1915.[77]
Ostensibly he represented the Ministry of Public Instruction, but his real mission was to influence American Jews through contact with their leaders.[78] Though armed with a message to American Jewry from Prime Minister Briand, he encountered an insuperable obstacle — the Russian alliance. “For Russia there is universal hatred and distrust … We are reproached with one thing only, the persecution of the Russian Jews, which we tolerate — a toleration which makes us accomplices … It is certain that any measures in favor of Jewish emancipation would be equivalent to a great battle lost by Germany.” [79] Basch had to report to French President Poincare the failure of his mission.[80]
At the same time that Basch had been dispatched to the United States, the French Government approved the setting up of a “Comité de propagande Francais aupres des Juifs neutres,” and Jacques Bigart, the Secretary of the Alliance Israelite, accepted a secretaryship of the Comité. Bigart suggested to Lucien Wolf, of the Jewish Conjoint Foreign Committee in London, that a similar committee be set up there. Wolf consulted the Foreign Office and was invited by Lord Robert Cecil to provide a full statement of his views.[81]
In December 1915 Wolf submitted a memorandum in which he analyzed the characteristics of the Jewish population of the United States and reached the conclusion that “the situation, though unsatisfactory, is far from unpromising.” Though disclaiming Zionism, he wrote that “In America, the Zionist organizations have lately captured Jewish opinion.” If a statement of sympathy with their aspirations were made, “I am confident they would sweep the whole of American Jewry into enthusiastic allegiance to their cause.” [82]
Early in 1916 a further memorandum was submitted to the British Foreign Office as a formal communication from the Jewish Conjoint Foreign Committee. This stated that “the London (Conjoint) and Paris Committees formed to influence Jewish opinion in neutral countries in a sense favorable to the Allies” had agreed to make representations to their respective Governments. First, the Russian Government should be urged to ease the position of their Jews by immediate concessions for national-cultural autonomy secondly, “in view of the great organized strength of the Zionists in the United States,” (in fact out of the three million Jews in the U.S. less than 12,000 had enrolled as Zionists in 1913), [83] the Allied Powers should give assurances to the Jews of facilities in Palestine for immigration and colonization, liberal local self-government for Jewish colonists, the establishment of a Jewish university, and for the recognition of Hebrew as one of the vernaculars of the land — in the event of their victory.[84]
On 9 March 1916 the Zionists were informed by the Foreign Office that “your suggested formula is receiving (Sir Edward Grey’s) careful and sympathetic attention, but it is necessary for H.M.G. to consult their Allies on the subject.” [85] A confidential memorandum was accordingly addressed to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs in Petrograd, to ascertain his views, though its paternity, seeing that Asquith was still Prime Minister, “remains to be discovered.” [86] No direct reply was received, but in a note addressed to the British and French ambassadors four days later, Sazonov obliquely assented, subject to guarantees for the Orthodox Church and its establishments, to raise no objection to the settlement of Jewish colonists in Palestine.[87]
Nothing came of these proposals. On 4 July the Foreign Office informed the Conjoint Committee that an official announcement of support was inopportune.[88] They must be considered alongside the Sykes-Picot Agreement being negotiated at this time, and the virtual completion of the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence by 10 March 1916, with the hope that an Arab revolt and other measures would bring victory near.
But 1916 was a disastrous year for the Allies. “In the story of the war” wrote Lloyd George,
the end of 1916 found the fortunes of the Allies at their lowest ebb. In the offensives on the western front we had lost three men for every two of the Germans we had put out of action. Over 300,000 British troops were being immobilized for lack of initiative or equipment or both by the Turks in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and for the same reason nearly 400,000 Allied soldiers were for all purposes interned in the malarial plains around Salonika.[89]
The voluntary system of enlistment was abolished, and a mass conscript army of continental pattern was adopted, something which had never before occurred in British history.[Q] [90] German submarine activity in the Atlantic was formidable; nearly 11/2 million tons of merchant shipping had been sunk in 1916 alone. As for paying for the war, the Allies at first had used the huge American debts in Europe to pay for war supplies, but by 1916 the resources of J.P. Morgan and Company, the Allies’ financial and purchasing agents in the United States, were said to be nearly exhausted by increased Allied demands for American credit.[91] There was rebellion in Ireland. Lord Robert Cecil stated to the British Cabinet: “France is within measurable distance of exhaustion. The political outlook of Italy is menacing. Her finance is tottering. In Russia, there is great discouragement. She has long been on the verge of revolution. Even her man-power seems coming near its limits.’‘ [94]
Secretary of State Kitchener was gone — drowned when the cruiser Hampshire sank on 5 June 1916 off the Orkneys when he was on his way to Archangel and Petrograd to nip the revolution in the bud. He had a better knowledge of the Middle East than anyone else in the Cabinet. The circumstances suggest espionage and treachery. Walter Page, the U.S. Ambassador in London, entered in his diary: “There was a hope and feeling that he (Lord Kitchener) might not come back… as I make out.”
There was a stalemate on all fronts. In Britain, France and Germany, hardly a family numbered all its sons among the living. But the British public — and the French, and the German — were not allowed to know the numbers of the dead and wounded. By restricting war correspondents, the American people were not allowed to know the truth either.
The figures that are known are a recital of horrors.[R]
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