It is natural that M. Picot should want to believe that he had played a significant part in bringing America into the war and therefore helping his country’s victory. The evidence certainly supports his having a part in helping a Zionist victory.
Their objective was in sight, but had still to be taken and held.
Although the United States was now a belligerent, no declaration of support had been made for the Zionist program for Palestine, either by Britain or the United States, and some of the richest and most powerful Jews in both countries were opposed to it.
The exception among these Jewish merchant princes was, of course, the House of Rothschild. From London on 25 April 1917, James de Rothschild cabled to Brandeis that Balfour was coming to the United States, and urged American Jewry to support “a Jewish Palestine under British Protection,,, as well as to press their government to do so. He advised Brandeis to meet Balfour.[134] The meeting took place at a White House luncheon, “You are one of the Americans I wanted to meet,” said the British Foreign Secretary.[135] Brandeis cabled Louis de Rothschild: “Have had a satisfactory talk with Mr. Balfour, also with Our President. This is not for Publication.” [136]
On the other hand, a letter dated 17 May 1917 appeared in The Times (London) signed by the President of the Jewish Board of Deputies and the President of the Anglo-Jewish Association (Alexander and Montefiore, both men of wealth and eminence) stating their approval of Jewish settlement in Palestine as a source of inspiration for all Jews, but adding that they could not favor the Zionist’s political scheme. Jews, they believed, were a religious community and they opposed the creation of “a secular Jewish nationality recruited on some loose and obscure principle of race and ethnological peculiarity.” They particularly took exception to Zionist Pressure for a Jewish chartered company invested with political and economic privileges in which Jews alone would participate, Since this was incompatible with the desires of world Jewry for equal rights wherever they lived.[137]
A controversy then ensued in the British press, in Jewish associations and in the corridors of government, between the Zionist and non-Zionist Jews. In this, Weizmann really had less weight, but he mobilized the more forceful team. The Chief Rabbi dissociated himself from the non-Zionist statement and charged that the Alexander-Montefiore letter did not represent the views of their organizations.[138] Lord Rothschild wrote: “We Zionists cannot see how the establishment of an autonomous Jewish State under the aegis of one of the Allied Powers could be subversive to the loyalty of Jews to countries of which they were citizens. In the letter you have published, the question is also raised of a chartered company.” He continued: “We Zionists have always felt that if Palestine is to be colonized by the Jews, some machinery must be set up to receive the immigrants, settle them on the land and develop the land, and to be generally a directing agency. I can only again emphasize that we Zionists have no wish for privileges at the expense of other nationalities, but only desire to be allowed to work out our destinies side by side with other nationalities in an autonomous state under the suzerainty of one of the Allied Powers.” [139] This letter stressed the colonialist aspect of Zionism, but detracted from the strong statist declaration of Weizmann. The Zionist body in Palestine was to be of a more organizational character for the Jewish community.
Perhaps feeling that his statement had been a little too strong for liberal acceptance, Weizmann also joined this correspondence in the Times. Writing as President of the English Zionist Federation, he first claimed that,
it is strictly a question of fact that the Jews are a nationality. An overwhelming majority of them had always had the conviction that they were a nationality, which has been shared by non-Jews in all countries.”
The letter continued:
The Zionists are not demanding in Palestine monopolies or exclusive privileges, nor are they asking that any part of Palestine should he administered by a chartered company to the detriment of others. It always was and remains a cardinal principle of Zionism as a democratic movement that all races and sects in Palestine should enjoy full justice and liberty, and Zionists are confident that the new suzerain whom they hope Palestine will acquire as a result of the war will, in its administration of the country, be guided by the same principle.[140] (emphasis supplied)
The competition for the attention of the British public and British Jewry by the Zionists and their Jewish opponents continued in the press and in their various special meetings. A manifesto of solidarity with the opinions of Alexander and Montefiore was sent to The Times on 1 June 1917; and in the same month at Buffalo, N.Y., the President of the Annual Convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis added his weight against Jewish nationalism: “I am not here to quarrel with Zionism. Mine is only the intention to declare that we, as rabbis, who are consecrated to the service of the Lord … have no place in a movement in which Jews band together on racial or national grounds, and for a political State or even for a legally-assured Home.” [141]
But while the controversy continued, the Zionists worked hard to produce a draft document which could form a declaration acceptable to the Allies, particularly Britain and the United States, and which would be in the nature of a charter of international status for their aims in Palestine. This was treated as a matter of urgency, as Weizmann believed it would remove the support from non-Zionist Jews [142] and ensure against the uncertainties inseparable from the war.
On 13 June 1917 Weizmann wrote Sir Ronald Graham at the Foreign Office that “it appears desirable from every point of view that the British Government should give expression to its sympathy and support of the Zionist claims on Palestine. In fact, it need only confirm the view which eminent and representative members of the Government have many times expressed to us … ” [143] This was timed to coincide with a minute of the same date of one of Balfour’s advisers in which it was suggested that the time had arrived “when we might meet the wishes of the Zionists and give them an assurance that H.M.G. are in general sympathy with their aspirations.” [144] To which Balfour remarked, “Personally, I should still prefer to associate the U.S.A. in the Protectorate, should we succeed in securing it.” [145]
The Zionists also had to counter tentative British and American plans to seek a separate peace with Turkey. When Weizmann, for the Zionists, together with Malcolm, for the Armenians, went on 10 June to the Foreign Office to protest such a plan, Weizmann broadly suggested that the Zionist leaders in Germany were being courted by the German Government, and he mentioned, to improve credibility, that approaches were made to them through the medium of a Dr. Lepsius.
The truth, probably, is that the Berlin Zionist Executive was initiating renewed contact with the German Government so as to give weight to the pleading of their counterparts in London that the risk of German competition could not be left out of account. Lepsius was actually a leading Evangelical divine, well known for his championship of the Armenians, who were then being massacred in Turkey. When Leonard Stein examined the papers of the Berlin Executive after the war, his name was not to be found, and Mr. Lichtheim of the Executive had no recollection of any overtures by Lepsius.[146]
In the U.S., in July 1917, a special mission consisting of Henry Morgenthau, Sr., and Justice Brandeis’s nephew, Felix Frankfurter, was charged by President Wilson to proceed to Turkey, against which the United States did not declare war, to sound out the possibility of peace negotiations between Turkey and the Allies. In this, Wilson may have been particularly motivated by his passion to stop the massacres of Armenian and Greek Christians which were then taking place in Turkey and for whom he expressed immense solicitude On many occasions. Weizmann, however, accompanied by the French Zionist M. Weyl, forewarned, proceeded to intercept them at Gibraltar and persuaded them to return home.[147] During 1917 and 1918 more Christians were massacred in Turkey. Had Morgenthau and Frankfurter carried out their mission successfully, maybe this would have been avoided.
This account appears in William Yale’s book The Near East: A Modern History. He was a Special Agent of the State Department in the Near East during the First World War. When I had dinner with him on 12 May 1970 at the Biltmore Hotel in New York, I asked him if Weizmann had told him how the special mission had been aborted. He replied that Weizmann said that the Governor of Gibraltar had held a special banquet in their honor, but at the end all the British officials withdrew discretely, leaving the four Jews alone. “Then,” said Weizmann, “we fixed it.”
The same evening, he told me something which he said he had never told anyone else, and which was in his secret papers which were only to be opened after his death. He later wrote to me, after he had read The Palestine Diary, saying that he would like me to deal with those papers.
One of Yale’s assignments was to follow Wilson’s preference for having private talks with key personalities capable of influencing the course of events. He did this with Lloyd George, General Allenby and Col. T.E. Lawrence, for example. Yale said he had a talk with Weizmann “somewhere in the Mediterranean in 1919,” and asked him what might happen if the British did not support a national home for the Jews in Palestine. Weizmann thumped his fist on the table and the teacups jumped, “If they don’t,” he said, “we’ll smash the British Empire as we smashed the Russian Empire.”
Brandeis was in Washington during the summer of 1917 and conferred with Secretary of State Robert S. Lansing from time to time on Turkish-American relations and the treatment of Jews in Palestine.[148] He busied himself in particular with drafts of what later became the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate for Palestine, and in obtaining American approval for them.[149] A considerable number of drafts were made in London and transmitted to the United States, through War Office channels, for the use of the American Zionist Political Committee. Some were detailed, but the British Government did not want to commit itself to more than a general statement of principles.
On 18 July, such a statement, approved in the United States, was forwarded by Lord Rothschild to Lord Balfour. It read as follows:
His Majesty’s Government, after considering the aims of the Zionist Organization, accepts the principle of recognizing Palestine as the National Home [CC] of the Jewish people and the right of the Jewish people to build up its national life in Palestine under a protectorate to be established at the conclusion of peace following the successful issue of war.
His Majesty’s Government regards as essential for the realization of this principle the grant of internal autonomy to the Jewish nationality in Palestine, freedom of immigration for Jews, and the establishment of a Jewish national colonization corporation for the resettlement and economic development of the country.
The conditions and forms of the internal autonomy and a charter for the Jewish national colonizing corporation should, in the view of His Majesty’s Government, be elaborated in detail, and determined with the representatives of the Zionist Organization.[150]
It seems possible that Balfour would have issued this declaration but strong representatives against it were made directly to the Cabinet by Lucien Wolf, Claude Montefiore Sir Mathew Nathan, Secretary of State for India Edwin Montagu, [DD] and other non-Zionist Jews. It was significant they believed that “anti-semites are always very sympathetic to Zionism,” and though they would welcome the establishment in Palestine of a center of Jewish culture, some — like Philip Magnes — feared that a political declaration would antagonize other sections of the population in Palestine, and might result in the Turks dealing with the Jews as they had dealt with the Armenians.[154] The Jewish opposition was too important to ignore, and the preparation of a new draft was commenced. At about this time, Northcliffe and Reading [EE] visited Washington and had a discussion with Brandeis at which they undoubtedly discussed Zionism.[155]
Multiple pressures at key points led Lord Robert Cecil to telegraph to Col. E.M. House on 3 September 1917: “We are being pressed here for a declaration of sympathy with the Zionist movement and I should be very grateful if you felt able to ascertain unofficially if the President favours such a declaration. “ [156] House, who had performed services relating to Federal Reserve and currency legislation for Jacob W. Schiff and Paul Warburg, [157] and was Wilson’s closest adviser, relayed the message, but a week later Cecil was still without a reply.
On 11 September the Foreign Office had ready for dispatch the following message for Sir William Wiseman, [FF] head of the British Military Intelligence Service in the United States: “Has Colonel House been able to ascertain whether the President favours sympathy with Zionist aspirations as asked in my telegram of September 3rd? We should be most grateful for an early reply as September 17th is the Jewish New Year and announcement of sympathy by or on that date would have excellent effect.” But before it was sent, a telegram from Colonel House dated 11 September reached the Foreign Office.
Wilson had been approached as requested and had expressed the opinion that “the time was not opportune for any definite statement further, perhaps, than one of sympathy, provided it can be made without conveying any real commitment.” Presumably, a formal declaration would presuppose the expulsion of the Turks from Palestine, but the United States was not at war with Turkey, and a declaration implying annexation would exclude an early and separate peace with that country.[158]
In a widely publicized speech in Cincinnati on 21 May 1916, after temporarily relinquishing his appointment as Ambassador to Turkey in favor of a Jewish colleague, Henry Morgenthau had announced that he had recently suggested to the Turkish Government that Turkey should sell Palestine to the Zionists after the war. The proposal, he said, had been well received, but its publication caused anger in Turkey.[159]
Weizmann was “greatly astonished” at this news, especially as he had “wired to Brandeis requesting him to use his influence in our favour … But up to now I have heard nothing from Brandeis.” [161]
On 19 September Weizmann cabled to Brandeis:
Following text declaration has been approved by Foreign Office and Prime Minister and submitted to War Cabinet:
1. H.M. Government accepts the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people.
2. H.M. Government will use its best endeavours to secure the achievement of the object and will discuss the necessary methods and means with the Zionist Organization.[162]
Weizmann suggested that non-Zionist opposition should be forestalled, and in this it would “greatly help if President Wilson and yourself support the text. Matter most urgent.” [163] He followed this up with a telegram to two leading New York Zionists, asking them to “see Brandeis and Frankfurter to immediately discuss my last two telegrams with them,” adding that it might be necessary for him to come to the United States himself.[164]
Brandeis saw House on 23 September and drafted a message, sent the following day through the British War Office. It advised that presidential support would be facilitated if the French and Italians made inquiry about the White House attitude, but he followed this the same day with another cable stating that from previous talks with the President and in the opinion of his close advisers, he could safely say that Wilson would be in complete sympathy.[165]
Thus Brandeis had either persuaded Wilson that there was nothing in the draft (Rothschild) declaration of 19 September which could be interpreted as “conveying any real commitment,” which is difficult to believe, or he had induced the President to change his mind about the kind of declaration he could approve or was sure he and House could do so.[166]
On 7 February 1917, Stephen Wise had written 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.” [167] In October, after seeing House together with Wise, de Haas reported to Brandeis: ”He has told us that he was as interested in our success as ourselves.” To Wilson, House stated that “The Jews from every tribe descended in force, and they seem determined to break in with a jimmy, if they are not let in.” [168] A new draft declaration had been prepared; Wilson had to support it.
On 9 October 1917, Weizmann cabled again to Brandeis from London of difficulties from the “assimilants” Opposition: “They have found an excellent champion … in Mr. Edwin Montagu who is a member of the Government and has certainly made use of his position to injure the Zionist cause. ” [169]
Weizmann also telegraphed to Brandeis a new (Milner-Amery) formula. The same draft was cabled by Balfour to House in Washington on 14 October:
His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish race and will use its best endeavours to facilitate achievement of this object; it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed in any other country by such Jews who are fully contented with their existing nationality and citizenship.[170]
It was reinforced by a telegram from the U.S. Embassy in London direct to President Wilson (by-passing the State Department), stating that the “question of a message of sympathy with the (Zionist) movement” was being reconsidered by the British Cabinet “in view of reports that (the) German Government are making great efforts to capture (the) Zionist movement.” [171]
Brandeis and his associates found the draft unsatisfactory in two particulars. They disliked that part of the draft’s second safeguard clause which read, “by such Jews who are fully contented with their existing nationality and citizenship,” and substituted “the rights and civil political status enjoyed by Jews in any country. In addition, Brandeis apparently proposed the change of “Jewish race” to “Jewish people.” [172] Jacob de Haas, then Executive Secretary of the Provisional Zionist Committee, has written that the pressure to issue the declaration was coming from the English Zionist leaders: “they apparently needed it to stabilize their position against local anti-Zionism. If American Zionists were anxious about it, Washington would act.” De Haas continues:
Then one morning Baron Furness, one of England’s unostentatious representatives, brought to 44 East 23rd Street, at that time headquarters of the Zionist Organization, the final draft ready for issue. The language of the declaration accepted by the English Zionists based as it was on the theory of discontent was unacceptable to me. I informed Justice Brandeis of my views, called in Dr. Schmarya Levin and proceeded to change the text. Then with Dr. Wise, I hurried to Colonel House. By this time he had come to speak of Zionism as “our cause.” Quietly he perused my proposed change, discussed its wisdom and promised to call President Wilson on his private wire and urge the change. He cabled to the British Cabinet. Next day he informed me that the President had approved. I had business that week-end in Boston and it was over the long distance wire that my secretary in New York read to me the final form as repeated by cable from London. It was the text as I had altered it.[173]
“It seems clear,” wrote Stein, “that it was not without some prompting by House that Wilson eventually authorized a favourable reply to the British enquiry.” Sir William Wiseman, “who was persona grata both with the President and with House, was relied upon by the Foreign Office for dealing with the declaration at the American end. Sir William’s recollection is that Colonel House was influential in bringing the matter to the President’s attention and persuading him to approve the formula.” [174]
On 16 October 1917, after a conference with House, Wiseman telegraphed to Balfour’s private secretary: ”Colonel House put the formula before the President who approves of it but asks that no mention of his approval shall be made when His Majesty’s Government makes formula public, as he had arranged the American Jews shall then ask him for approval, which he will publicly give here.”[175]
The Balfour Declaration, as stated, was issued on 2 November 1917. Its text, seemingly so simple, had been prepared by some the craftiest of the craft of legal drafting. Leaflets containing its message were dropped by air on Germany and Austria and on the Jewish belt from Poland to the Baltic Sea.
Seven months had passed since America entered the war. It was an epochal triumph for Zionism, and some believe, for the Jews.
On the other hand, two months before the declaration, Sokolow had written of a marked falling off in “le philo-sémitisme d’autrefois,” ascribed by some to the impression that the Russian Jews were the mainspring of Bolshevism; and on the day it was issued, The Jewish Chronicle complained of “the antisemitic campaign which a section of the press in this country, indifferent to the national interests, is sedulously conducting.” [176] There only remained certain courtesies to be effected. On November 1917, Weizmann wrote a letter of thanks to Brandeis:
“… I need hardly say how we all rejoice in this great event and how grateful we all feel to you for the valuable and efficient help which you have lent to the cause in the critical hour … Once more, dear Mr. Brandeis, I beg to tender to you our heartiest congratulations not only on my own behalf but also on behalf of our friends here — and may this epoch-making be a beginning of great work for our sorely tried people and also of mankind.” [177]
The other principal Allied governments were approached with requests for similar pronouncements. The French simply supported the British Government in a short paragraph on 9 February 1918. Italian support was contained in a note dated 9 May 1918 to Mr. Sokolow by their ambassador in London in which he stressed the religious divisions of communities, grouping “a Jewish national centre” with existing religious communities.”
On 31 August 1918, President Wilson wrote to Rabbi Wise “to express the satisfaction I have felt in the progress of the Zionist movement . . since … Great Britain’s approval of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” Brandeis joined in Zionist delight at the President’s endorsement and wrote: “Since the President’s letter, anti-Zionism is pretty near disloyalty and non-Zionism is slackening.” [178] Non-Zionist Jews now had a hard time if they wanted to disseminate their views; if they could not support Zionism they were asked at least to remain silent.
On 30 June 1922, the following resolution was adopted by the United States Congress:
Favouring the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people;
Resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. That the United States of America favours the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which should prejudice the civil and religious rights of Christians and all other non-Jewish communities in Palestine, and that the holy places and religious buildings and sites in Palestine shall be adequately protected.[GG]
All people tend to see the world and its events in terms of their own experience, ideas and prejudices. This is natural. It is a fact used by master politicians and manipulators of opinion who form their appeals accordingly. The case of the Balfour Declaration is a fascinating example of a scheme presenting a multiplicity of images according to the facet of mind on which it reflected.
There were critics of the Balfour Declaration, although among the cacophony of many events competing for attention, few but its beneficiaries concentrated on the significance of what was being offered. One was the Jewish leader and statesman Mr. Edwin Montagu, who had no desire that Jews should be regarded as a separate race and a distinct nationality.[181] The other was Lord Curzon, who became Foreign Secretary at the end of October 1918. He prepared a memorandum dated 26 October 1917, on the penultimate and final drafts of the Balfour Declaration and related documents, and circulated it in the Cabinet. It was titled “The Future of Palestine.” Here are some extracts:
I am not concerned to discuss the question in dispute between the Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews . I am only concerned in the more immediately practical questions:
(a) What is the meaning of the phrase “a national home for the Jewish race in Palestine,” and what is the nature of the obligation that we shall assume if we accept this as a principle of British policy?
(b) If such a policy be pursued what are the chances of its successful realisation?
If I seek guidance from the latest collection of circulated papers (The Zionist Movement, G.-164) I find a fundamental disagreement among the authorities quoted there as to the scope and nature of their aim.
A “national home for the Jewish race or people” would seem, if the words are to bear their ordinary meaning, to imply a place where the Jews can be reassembled as a nation, and where they will enjoy the privileges of an independent national existence. Such is clearly the conception of those who, like Sir Alfred Mond, speak of the creation in Palestine of “an autonomous Jewish State,” words which appear to contemplate a State, i.e., a political entity, composed of Jews, governed by Jews, and administered mainly in the interests of Jews…
The same conception appears to underlie several other of the phrases employed in these papers, e.g., when we are told that Palestine is to become “a home for the Jewish nation,” “a national home for the Jewish race,” “a Jewish Palestine,” and when we read of “the resettlement of Palestine as a national centre,” and “the restoration of Palestine to the Jewish people,” all these phrases are variants of the same idea, viz., the re-creation of Palestine as it was before the days of the dispersion.
On the other hand, Lord Rothschild, when he speaks of Palestine as “a home where the Jews could speak their own language, have their own education, their own civilization, and religious institutions under the protection of Allied governments,” seems to postulate a much less definite form of political existence, one, indeed, which is quite compatible with the existence of an alien (so long as it is not Turkish) government…
Now what is the capacity as regards population of Palestine within any reasonable period of time? Under the Turks there is no such place or country as Palestine, because it is divided up between the sanjak of Jerusalem and the vilayets of Syria and Beirut. But let us assume that in speaking of Palestine in the present context we mean the old scriptural Palestine, extending from Dan to Beersheba, i.e., from Banias to Bir es-Sabi… . an area of less than 10,000 square miles. What is to become of the people of this country, assuming the Turk to be expelled, and the inhabitants not to have been exterminated by the war? There are over a half a million of these, Syrian Arabs — a mixed community with Arab, Hebrew, Canaanite, Greek, Egyptian, and possibly Crusaders’ blood. They and their forefathers have occupied the country for the best part of 1,500 years. They own the soil, which belongs either to individual landowners or to village communities. They profess the Mohammadan faith. They will not be content either to be expropriated for Jewish immigrants, or to act merely as hewers of wood and drawers of water to the latter.
Mr. Hamilton Fish replied: “As author of the first Zionist Resolution patterned on the Balfour Resolution, I denounce and repudiate the Ben Gurion statements as irreconcilable with my Resolution as adopted by Congress, and if they represent the Government of Israel and public opinion there, then I shall disavow publicly my support of my own Resolution, as I do not want to be associated with such un-American doctrines.”[180]
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