In these circumstances, a European tradition of negotiated peace in scores of wars, might have led to peace at the end of 1916 or early 1917.
Into this gloomy winter of 1916 walked a new figure. He was James Malcolm, [S] an Oxford educated Armenian [T] who, at the beginning of 1916, with the sanction of the British and Russian Governments, had been appointed by the Armenian Patriarch a member of the Armenian National Delegation to take charge of Armenian interests during and after the war. In this official capacity, and as adviser to the British Government on Eastern affairs, [95] he had frequent contacts with the Cabinet Office, the Foreign Office, the War Office and the French and other Allied embassies in London, and made visits to Paris for consultations with his colleagues and leading French officials. He was passionately devoted to an Allied victory which he hoped would guarantee the national freedom of the Armenians then under Turkish and Russian rule.
Sir Mark Sykes, with whom he was on terms of family friendship, told him that the Cabinet was looking anxiously for United States intervention in the war on the side of the Allies, but when asked what progress was being made in that direction, Sykes shook his head glumly, “Precious little,” he replied.
James Malcolm now suggested to Mark Sykes that the reason why previous overtures to American Jewry to support the Allies had received no attention was because the approach had been made to the wrong people. It was to the Zionist Jews that the British and French Governments should address their parleys.
“You are going the wrong way about it,” said Mr. Malcolm. “You can win the sympathy of certain politically-minded Jews everywhere, and especially in the United States, in one way only, and that is, by offering to try and secure Palestine for them.” [96]
What really weighed most heavily now with Sykes were the terms of the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement. He told Malcolm that to offer to secure Palestine for the Jews was impossible. “Malcolm insisted that there was no other way and urged a Cabinet discussion. A day or two later, Sykes told him that the matter had been mentioned to Lord Milner who had asked for further information. Malcolm pointed out the influence of Judge Brandeis of the American Supreme Court, and his strong Zionist sympathies.” [97]
In the United States, the President’s adviser, Louis D. Brandeis, a leading advocate of Zionism, had been inducted as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on 5 June 1916. That Wilson was vulnerable was evident, in that as early as 1911, he had made known his profound interest in the Zionist idea and in Jewry.[98]
Malcolm described Wilson as being “attached to Brandeis by ties of peculiar hardness,” a cryptic reference to the story that Wilson had been blackmailed for $40,000 for some hot love letters he had written to his neighbor’s wife when he was President of Princeton. He did not have the money, and the go-between, Samuel Untermeyer, of the law firm of Guggenheim, Untermeyer & Marshall, said he would provide it if Wilson would appoint to the next vacancy on the Supreme Court a nominee selected by Mr. Untermeyer. The money was paid, the letters returned, and Brandeis had been the nominee.
Wilson had written to the Senate, where opposition to the nominee was strong: “I have known him. I have tested him by seeking his advice upon some of the most difficult and perplexing public questions about which it was necessary for me to form a judgment When Brandeis had been approved by the Senate, Wilson wrote to Henry Morgenthau: “I never signed any commission with such satisfaction.” “Relief” might have been a more appropriate word.
The fact that endorsement of Wilson’s nominee by the Senate Judiciary Committee had only been made “after hearings of unprecedented length” [99] was not important. Brandeis had the President’s ear; he was “formally concerned with the Department of State.” [100] This was the significant development, said Malcolm, which compelled a new approach to the Zionists by offering them the key to Palestine.
The British Ambassador to the United States (Sir Cecil Spring-Rice) had written from Washington in January 1914 that “a deputation came down from New York and in two days ‘fixed’ the two Houses so that the President had to renounce the idea of making a new treaty with Russia.” [101] In November 1914 he had written to the British Foreign Secretary of the German Jewish bankers who were extending credits to the German Government and were getting hold of the principal New York papers” thereby “bringing them over as much as they dare to the German side and “toiling in a solid phalanx to compass our destruction.” [102]
This anti-Russian sentiment was part of a deep concern for the well-being of Russian and Polish Jews. Brandeis wrote to his brother from Washington on 8 December 1914: “… You cannot possibly conceive the horrible sufferings of the Jews in Poland and adjacent countries. These changes of control from German to Russian and Polish anti-semitism are bringing miseries as great as the Jews ever suffered in all their exiles.” [U] [103]
In a speech to the Russian Duma on 9 February (27 January Gregorian) 1915, Foreign Minister Sazonov denied the calumnious stories which, he said, were circulated by Germany, of accounts of alleged pogroms against the Jews and of wholesale murders of Jews by the Russian armies. “If the Jewish Population suffered in the war zone, that circumstance unfortunately was inevitably associated with war, and the same conditions applied in equal measure to all people living within the region of military activity.” He added to the rebuttal with accounts of hardship in areas of German military action in Poland, Belgium and Serbia.[104]
It is noteworthy that the chairman of the non-Zionist American Jewish Committee responded to an appeal by the Brandeis group that all American Jews should organize to emphasize Zionist aims in Palestine before the Great Powers in any negotiations during or at the end of the war, by dissociating his community from the suggestion that Jews of other nationalities were to be accorded special status. He said that “the very thought of the mass of the Jews of America having a voice in the matter of deciding the welfare of the Jews in the world made him shrink in horror.”[107]
The new approach to the Zionist movement by Mark Sykes with James Malcolm as preliminary interlocutor took the form of a series of meetings at Chaim Weizmann’s London house, with the knowledge and approval of the Secretary of the War Cabinet, Sir Maurice Hankey.
A Programme for a New Administration of Palestine in Accordance with the Aspirations of the Zionist Movement was issued by the English Political Committee of the Zionist Organization in October 1916, and submitted to the British Foreign Office as a basis for discussion in order to give an official character to the informal house-talks. It included the following:
(1) The Jewish Chartered Company is to have power to exercise the right of pre-emption over Crown and other lands and to acquire for its own use all or any concessions which may at any time be granted by the suzerain government or governments.
(2) The present population, being too small, too poor and too little trained to make rapid progress, requires the introduction of a new and progressive element in the population. (But the rights of minority nationalities were to be protected).
Other Points were, (3) recognition of separate Jewish nationality in Palestine; participation of the Palestine Jewish population in local self-government; (5) Jewish autonomy in purely Jewish affairs; (6) official recognition and legalization of existing Jewish institutions for colonization in Palestine.[108]
This Programme does not appear to have reached Cabinet level at the time it was issued, probably because of Asquith’s known lack of sympathy, but as recorded by Samuel Landman, the Zionist Organization was given official British facilities for its international correspondence.[109]
Lloyd George, an earnest and powerful demagogue, was now prepared to oust Asquith, his chief, by a coup de main. With the death of Kitchener in the summer of 1916, he had passed from Munitions to the War Office and he saw the top of the parliamentary tree within his grasp. In this maneuver he was powerfully aided by the newspaper proprietor Northcliffe, [V] who turned all his publications from The Times downwards to depreciate Asquith, and by the newspaper-owing M.P., Max Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook).
With public sympathy well prepared, Lloyd George demanded virtual control of war policy. It was intended that Asquith should refuse. He did. Lloyd George resigned. Asquith also resigned to facilitate the reconstruction of the Government. The King then sent for the Conservative leader, Bonar Law, who, as prearranged, advised him to offer the premiership to Lloyd George.[110]
Asquith and Grey were out; Lloyd George and Balfour were in. With Lloyd George as Prime Minister from December 1916, Zionist relations with the British Government developed fast. Lloyd George had been legal counsel for the Zionists, and while Minister of Munitions, had had assistance from the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann; the new Foreign Minister, Arthur Balfour, was already known for his Zionist sympathies.
The Zionists were undermining the wall between them and their Palestine objective which they had found impossible “to surmount by ordinary political means” prior to the war.[111] Herzl’s suggestion that they would get Palestine “not from the goodwill but from the jealousy of the Powers,” [112] was being made to come true.
The Zionists moved resolutely to exploit the new situation now that the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary were their firm supporters.
Landman, in his Secret History of the Balfour Declaration, wrote:
Through General McDonogh, Director of Military Operations, who was won over by Fitzmaurice (formerly Dragoman of the British Embassy in Constantinople and a friend of James Malcolm), Dr. Weizmann was able, about this time, to secure from the Government the services of half a dozen younger Zionists for active work on behalf of Zionism. At the time, conscription was in force, and only those who were engaged on work of national importance could be released from active service at the Front. I remember Dr. Weizmann writing a letter to General McDonogh and invoking his assistance in obtaining the exemption from active service of Leon Simon, (who later rose to high rank in the Civil Service as Sir Leon Simon, C.B.), Harry Sacher, (on the editorial staff of the Manchester Guardian), Simon Marks, [W] Yamson Tolkowsky and myself. At Dr. Weizmann’s request I was transferred from the War Office (M.I.9), where I was then working, to the Ministry of Propaganda, which was under Lord Northcliffe, and later to the Zionist office, where I commenced work about December 1916. Simon Marks actually arrived at the Office in khaki, and immediately set about the task of organizing the office which, as will be easily understood, had to maintain constant communications with Zionists in most countries.
From that time onwards for several years, Zionism was considered an ally of the British Government, and every help and assistance was forthcoming from each government department. Passport or travel difficulties did not exist when a man was recommended by our office. For instance. a certificate signed by me was accepted by the Home Office at that time as evidence that an Ottoman Jew was to be treated as a friendly alien and not as an enemy, which was the case with the Turkish subjects.
[K] This new offer to Russia of a direct outlet into the Mediterranean is a measure of the great importance attached by Britain and France to continued and wholehearted Russian participation in the war. British policy from the end of the Napoleonic wars had been directed against Russia’s efforts to extend its conquests to the Golden Horn and the Mediterranean (threatening Egypt and the way to India). For this reason, Britain and France had formed an alliance and fought the Crimean War (1854-56), which ended in the Black Sea being declared neutral; no warships could enter it nor could arsenals be built on its shores.
But Russian concern for the capture of Constantinople was more than economic and strategic. It was not unusual for priests to declare that the Russian people had a sacred duty to drive out the “infidel” Turk and raise the orthodox cross on the dome of Santa Sophia.
In 1877, the Russian armies again moved towards Constantinople with the excuse of avenging cruelties practiced on Christians. Again England frustrated these designs and the aggression ended with the Congress of Berlin, and British occupation of Cyprus.
[L] Sir Mark Sykes, Secretary of the British War Cabinet, sent to Russia to negotiate the Tripartite (Sykes-Picot) Agreement for the Partition of the Ottoman Empire. M. Picot was the French representative in the negotiations. Neither Hussein nor Sir Henry McMahon were made aware of these secret discussions. Among other things, the agreement called for parts of Palestine to be placed under “an international administration.”
[M] Of the Warburg international banking family. Although ostensibly a second Secretary in the Wilhelmstrasse, Warburg has been reported as having the same postition in German counterintelligence as Adrmiral Canaris in World War II.
[N] Jacob Schiff, German-born senior partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and “the most influential figure of his day in American Jewish life,” wrote in The Menorah Journal of April 1915: “It is well known that I am a German sympathizer … England has been contaminated by her alliance with Russia … am quite convinced that in Germany anti-Semitism is a thing of the past.[64] The Jewish Encyclopedia for 1906 states that “Schiff’s firm subscribed for and floated the large Japanese war loan in 1904-05” (for the Russo-Japanese war). “in recognition of which the Mikado conferred on Schiff the second order of the Sacred Treasure of Japan.” Partners with Schiff were Felix M. Warburg and his brother Paul who had come to New York in 1902 from Hamburg, and organized the Federal Reserve System.
[O] An award for Morgenthau’s heavy financial support for Wilson’s presidential campaign.
[P] Later, Foreign Minister (1932-38) and Protector of Bohemia (1939-43).
[Q] Russian nationals resident in the United Kingdom (nearly all of them Jews), not having become British subjects, some 25,000 of military age, still escaped military service.[92] This prompted Jabotinsky and Weizmann to urge the formation of a special brigade for Russian Jews, but the idea not favorably received by the Government, and the Zionists joined non-Zionists in an effort to persuade Russian Jews of military age to volunteer as individuals for service in the British army. The response was negligible, and in July 1917 the Military Service (Conventions with Allies) Act was given Royal assent. Men of military age were invited to serve in the British army or risk deportation to Russia. However, the Russian revolution prevented its unhindered application.[93] [R] Half a million Frenchmen were lost in the first four months of war, 1 million lost by the end of 1915, and 5 million by 1918. Who can imagine that the Allies lost 600,000 men in one battle, the Somme, and the British more officers in the first few months than all wars of the previous hundred years put together?
At Stalingrad, in the Second World War, the Wehrmacht had 230,000 men in the field. The German losses at Verdun alone were 325,000 killed or wounded.
By this time a soldier in one of the better divisions could count on a maximum of three months’ service without being killed or wounded, and the life expectancy for an officer at the front was down to five months in an ordinary regiment and six weeks in a crack one.
[S] See his Origins of the Balfour Declaration: Dr. Weizmann’s Contribution .
[T] Born in Persia, where his family had settled before Elizabethan days. He was sent to school in England in 1881, being placed in the care of a friend and agent of his family, Sir Albert (Abdullah) Sassoon. Early in 1915, he founded the Russia Society in London among the British public as a means of improving relations between the two countries. Unlike the Zionists, he had no animus towards Czarist Russia.
[U] A reference to the 1914 invasion of Austria and East Prussia by the Russians with such vigor that many people believed that the “Russian steamroller” would soon reach Berlin and end the war. Only the diversion of whole army divisions from the Western to the Eastern Front under the command of General von Hindenburg saved Berlin, and in turn saved Paris.
There was a direct effort by certain groups to support anti-Imperial activities in Russia from the United States, [105][106] but Brandeis was apparently not implicated.
[V] Northcliffe was small-minded enough to have Lloyd George called to the telephone, in front of friends, to demonstrate the politician’s need of the Press.
[W] Associated with Israel M. Sieff, another of Weizmann’s inner circle, in the business which later became Marks & Spencer, Ltd. Sieff was appointed an economic consultant to the U.S. Administration (OPA) in March 1924. As subsequent supporters, with Lord Melchett, of “Political and Economic Planning” (PEP), they exercised considerable influence on British inter-war policy.
The Declaration, 1917
The informal committee of Zionists and Mark Sykes as representative of the British Government, met on 7 February 1917 at the house of Moses Gaster, [X] the Chief Rabbi of the Sephardic (Spanish and Portuguese) congregations in England. Gaster opened the meeting with a statement that stressed Zionist support for British strategic interests in Palestine which were to be an integral part of any agreement between them. As these interests might be considered paramount to British statesmen, support for Zionist aims there, Caster said, was fully justified. Zionism was irrevocably opposed to any internationalization proposals, even an Anglo-French condominium.[113]
Herbert Samuel followed with an expression of the hope that Jews in Palestine would receive full national status, which would be shared by Jews in the Diaspora. The question of conflict of nationality was not mentioned and a succeeding speaker, Harry Sacher, suggested that the sharing should not involve the political implications of citizenship.[114] Weizmann spoke of the necessity for unrestricted immigration. It is clear that the content of each speech was thoroughly prepared before the meeting.
Sykes outlined the obstacles: the inevitable Russian objections, the opposition of the Arabs, and strongly pressed French claims to all Syria, including Palestine.[115] James de Rothschild and Nahum Sokolow, the international Zionist leader, also spoke. The meeting ended with a summary of Zionist objectives:
1. International recognition of Jewish right to Palestine;
2. Juridical nationhood for the Jewish community in Palestine;
3. The creation of a Jewish chartered company in Palestine with rights to acquire land;
4. Union and one administration for Palestine; and
5. Extra-territorial status for the holy places.[117]
The first three points are Zionist, the last two were designed to placate England and Russia, respectively [118] and probably Italy and the Vatican. Sokolow was chosen to act as Zionist representative, to negotiate with Sir Mark Sykes.
The Zionists were, of course, coordinating their activities internationally. On the same day as the meeting in London, Rabbi Stephen Wise in the United States wrote to Brandeis: “I sent the memorandum to Colonel House covering our question, and he writes: ‘I hope the dream you have may soon become a reality.” [118a]
The reports reaching England of impending dissolution of the Russian state practically removed the need for Russian endorsement of Zionist aims, but made French and Italian acceptance even more urgent. This at any rate was the belief of Sykes, Balfour, Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, who, as claimed in their subsequent statements, were convinced that proclaimed Allied support for Zionist aims would especially influence the United States. Events in Russia made the cooperation of Jewish groups with the Allies much easier. At a mass meeting in March 1917 to celebrate the revolution which had then taken place, Rabbi Stephen Wise, who had succeeded Brandeis as chairman of the American Provisional Zionist Committee after Brandeis’s appointment to the Supreme Court, said: “I believe that of all the achievements of my people, none has been nobler than the part the sons and daughters of Israel have taken in the great movement which has culminated in free Russia.” [119]
Negotiations for a series of loans totaling $190,000,000 by the United States to the Provisional Government in Russia of Alexander Kerensky were begun on the advice of the U.S. ambassador to Russia, David R. Francis, who noted in his telegram to Secretary of State Lansing, “financial aid now from America would be a master-stroke. Confidential. Immeasurably important to the Jews that revolution succeed… “ [120]
On 22 March 1917 Jacob H. Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., wrote to Mortimer Schiff, “We should be somewhat careful not to appear as overzealous but you might cable Cassel because of recent action of Germany (the declaration of unlimited U-boat warfare) and developments in Russia we shall no longer abstain from Allied Governments financing when opportunity offers.”
He also sent a congratulatory cable to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the first Provisional Government, referring to the previous government as “the merciless persecutors of my co-religionists.”
In the same month, Leiber Davidovich Bronstein, alias Leon Trotsky, a Russian-born U.S. immigrant, had left the Bronx, New York, for Russia, with a contingent of followers, while V.I. Ulyanov (Lenin) and a party of about thirty were moving across Germany from Switzerland, through Scandinavia to Russia. Some evidence exists that Schiff and other sponsors like Helphand financed these revolutionaries.
In March 1917, President Wilson denounced as “a little group of willful men,” the non-interventionists who filibustered an Administration-sponsored bill that would have empowered Wilson to wage an undeclared naval war against Germany. The opposition to Wilson was led by Senators La Follette and Norris.
On 5 April, the day before the United States Congress adopted a resolution of war, Schiff had been informed by Baron Gunzburg of the actual signing of the decrees removing all restrictions on the Jews in Russia.
At a special session of Congress on 2 April 1917, President Wilson referred to American merchant ships taking supplies to the Allies which had been sunk during the previous month by German submarines (operating a counter-blockade; the British and French fleets having blockaded the Central Powers from the beginning of the war); and then told Congress that “wonderful and heartening things have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia.”
He asked for a declaration of war with a mission:
for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.
To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace that she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other. (emphasis supplied)
That night crowds filled the streets, marching, shouting, singing Dixie” or “The Star Spangled Banner.” Wilson turned to his secretary, Tumulty: “Think what that means, the applause. My message tonight was a message of death, How strange to applaud that!”
So, within six months of Malcolm’s specific suggestion to Sykes, the United States of America, guided by Woodrow Wilson, was on the side of the Allies in the Great War.
Was Wilson guided by Brandeis away from neutrality — to war?
In London, the War Cabinet led by Lloyd George lost no time committing British forces first to the capture of Jerusalem, and then to the total expulsion of the Turks from Palestine. The attack on Egypt, launched on 26 March 1917, attempting to take Gaza, ended in failure. By the end of April a second attack on Gaza had been driven back and it had become clear that there was no prospect of a quick success on this Front.
From Cairo, where he had gone hoping to follow the Army into Jerusalem with Weizmann, Sykes telegraphed to the Foreign Office that, if the Egyptian Expeditionary Force was not reinforced then it would be necessary “to drop all Zionist projects … Zionists in London and U.S.A. should be warned of this through M. Sokolow… “ [120a]
Three weeks later, Sykes was told that reinforcements were coming from Salonika. The War Cabinet also decided to replace the Force’s commander with General Allenby.
Sykes was the official negotiator for the whole project of assisting the Zionists. He acted immediately after the meeting at Gaster’s house by asking his friend M. Picot to meet Nahum Sokolow at the French Embassy in London in an attempt to induce the French to give way on the question of British suzerainty in Palestine.[121] James Malcolm was then asked to go alone to Paris to arrange an interview for Sokolow directly with the French Foreign Minister. Sokolow had been previously unsuccessful in obtaining the support of French Jewry for a meeting with the Minister; since the richest and most influential Jews in the United States and England, with the notable exception of the Rothschilds, who could have arranged such a meeting, were opposed to the political implications of Zionism. In Paris, the powerful Alliance Israélite Universelle had made every effort to dissuade him from his mission.[122] Not that the Zionists had no supporters in France other than Edmond de Rothschild, [Y]but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had no reason to entangle itself with them.[123] Now James Malcolm opened the door directly to them as he had done in London.
Sykes joined Malcolm and Sokolow in Paris. Sykes and Malcolm, apart from the consideration of Zionism and future American support for the war, were concerned with the possibility of an Arab-Jewish-Armenian entente which, through amity between Islamic, Jewish and Christian peoples, would bring peace, stability and a bright new future for the inhabitants of this area where Europe, Asia Minor and Africa meet. Sokolow went along for the diplomatic ride, but in a letter to Weizmann (20 April 1917) he wrote: “I regard the idea as quite fantastic. It is difficult to reach an understanding with the Arabs, but we will have to try. There are no conflicts between Jews and Armenians because there are no common interests whatever.” [Z] [124]
Several conversations were held with Picot, including one on 9 April when other officials included Jules Cambon, the Secretary-General of the Foreign Ministry, and the Minister’s Chef de Cabinet, Exactly what assurances were given to Sokolow is uncertain, but he wrote to Weizmann “that they accept in principle the recognition of Jewish nationality in terms of a national home, local autonomy, etc.” [125] And to Brandeis and Tschlenow, he telegraphed through French official channels: “… Have full confidence Allied victory will realise our Palestine Zionist aspirations.” [126]
Sokolow set off for Rome and the Vatican. “There, thanks to the introductions of Fitzmaurice on the one hand and the help of Baron Sidney Sonnino [AA] on the other,” a Papal audience and interviews with the leading Foreign Office officials were quickly arranged.[127]
When Sokolow returned to Paris, he requested and received a letter from the Foreign Minister dated 4 June 1917, supporting the Zionist cause in general terms. He hastily wrote two telegrams which he gave to M. Picot for dispatch by official diplomatic channels. One was addressed to Louis D. Brandeis in the United States. It read: “Now you can move. We have the formal assurance of the French Government.” [BB] [128]
“After many years, ‘ wrote M. Picot, “I am still moved by the thanks he poured out to me as he gave me the two telegrams … do not say that it was the cause of the great upsurge of enthusiasm which occurred in the United States, but I say that Judge Brandeis, to whom this telegram was addressed, was certainly one of the elements determining the decision of President Wilson.” [129]
But Wilson had declared war one month before!
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