opportunity to discuss the matter with other members of the inner circle. In fact, Amery's
remarks were probably based on knowledge rather than internal textual evidence and
were aimed to get the motion accepted, with the understanding that it approved no more
than the principle of partition, with the details to be examined by another commission
later. This, in fact, is what was done.
Amery's speech is also interesting for its friendly reference to the Jews. He said that in
the past the Arabs had obtained 100 percent of what they were promised, while the Jews
had received "a raw deal," in spite of the fact that the Jews had a much greater need of the
country and would make the best use of the land.
To carry out the policy of partition, the government appointed a new royal
commission of four members in March 1938. Known as the Woodhead Commission, this
body had no members of either the Milner Group or the Cecil Bloc on it, and its report
(Cmd. 5854) rejected partition as impractical on the grounds that any acceptable method
of partition into two states would give a Jewish state with an annual financial surplus and
an Arab state with an annual financial deficit. This conclusion was accepted by the
government in another White Paper (Cmd. 5893 of 1938). As an alternative, the
government called a Round Table Conference of Jews and Arabs from Palestine along
with representatives of the Arab states outside of Palestine. During all this, the Arabs had
been growing increasingly violent; they refused to accept the Peel Report; they boycotted
the Woodhead Commission; and they finally broke into open civil war. In such
conditions, nothing was accomplished at the Round Table meetings at London in
February-March 1939. The Arab delegation included leaders who had to be released from
prison in order to come and who refused to sit in the same conference with the Jews.
Compromise proposals presented by the government were rejected by both sides.
After the conference broke up, the government issued a new statement of policy
(Cmd. 6019 of May 1939). It was a drastic reversal of previous statements and was
obviously a turn in favor of the Arabs. It fixed Jewish immigration into Palestine at
75,000 for the whole of the next five years (including illegal immigration) and gave the
Arabs a veto on any Jewish immigration after the five-year period was finished. As a
matter of principle, it shifted the basis for Jewish immigration from the older criterion of
the economic absorptive capacity of Palestine to the political absorptive capacity. This
was really an invitation to the Arabs to intensify their agitation and constituted a vital
blow at the Jews, since it was generally conceded that Jewish immigration increased the
economic absorptive capacity for both Jews and Arabs.
The Milner Group were divided on this concrete policy. In general, they continued to
believe that the proper solution to the Zionist problem could be found in a partitioned
Palestine within a federation of Arab states.
in March 1939 and repeated it in June of the same year. But on the issue of an immediate
and concrete policy, the Group was split. It is highly unlikely that this split originated
with the issue of Zionism. It was, rather, a reflection of the more fundamental split within
the Group, between those, like Amery and Salter, who abandoned the appeasement policy
in March 1939 and those, like the Astors and Lothian, who continued to pursue it in a
modified form.
The change in the policy of the government resulted in a full debate in the House of
Commons. This debate, and the resulting division, revealed the split within the Milner
Group. The policy of the White Paper was denounced by Amery as a betrayal of the Jews
and of the mandate, as the final step in a scaling down of Jewish hopes that began in
1922, as a yielding of principle to Arab terrorists, as invalid without the approval of the
League of Nations, and as unworkable because the Jews would and could resist it. The
speeches for the government from Malcolm MacDonald and R. A. Butler were weak and
vague. In the division, the government won approval of the White Paper by 268 to 179,
with Major Astor, Nancy Astor, Hoare, Simon, Malcolm MacDonald, and Sir Donald
Somervell in the majority and Amery, Noel-Baker, and Arthur Salter in the minority. On
the same day, a similar motion in the House of Lords was approved without a division.
The government at once began to put the White Paper policy into effect, without
waiting for the approval of the Permanent Mandates Commission. In July 1939 rumors
began to circulate that this body had disapproved of the policy, and questions were asked
in the House of Commons, but MacDonald evaded the issue, refused to give information
which he possessed, and announced that the government would take the issue to the
Council of the League. As the Council meeting was canceled by the outbreak of war, this