In Palestine, as in India and probably in Ireland, the policy of the Milner Group seems
to have been motivated by good intentions which alienated the contending parties,
encouraged extremism, and weakened British influence with both. In the long run, this
policy was pro-Arab, just as in India it was pro-Moslem, and in both cases it served to
encourage an uncompromising obstructionism which could have been avoided if Britain
had merely applied the principles to which she stood committed.
The attitude of the Milner Group toward the Arabs and Jews can be seen from some
quotations from members of the Group. At the Peace Conference of 1919, discussing the
relative merits of the Jews and Arabs, Smuts said: "They haven't the Arabs' attractive
manners. They do not warm the heart by graceful subjection. They make demands. They
are a bitter, recalcitrant little people, and, like the Boers, impatient of leadership and
ruinously quarrelsome among themselves. They see God in the shape of an Oriental
potentate." A few years later, John Dove, in a letter to Brand, asked himself why there
was so much pro-Arab feeling among the British, especially "the public school caste,"
and attributed it to the Arabs' good manners, derived from desert life, and their love for
sports, especially riding and shooting, both close to the heart of the public-school boy. A
little later, in another letter, also written from Palestine, Dove declared that the whole
Arab world should be in one state and it must have Syria and Palestine for its front door,
not be like South Africa, with Delagoa Bay in other hands. The Arab world, he explained,
needs this western door because we are trying to westernize the Arabs, and without it
they would be driven to the east and to India, which they hate. He concluded:
“If the Arab belongs to the Mediterranean, as T. E. Lawrence insists, we should do
nothing to stop him getting back to it. Why our own nostrum for the ills of mankind
everywhere is Western Civilization, and, if it is a sound one, what would be the good of
forcing a people who want direct contact with us to slink in and out of their country by a
back door which, like the Persian Gulf, opens only on the East? It would certainly check
development, if it did not actually warp it. I suggest then that partition should not be
permanent, but this does not mean that a stage of friendly tutelage is necessarily a bad
thing for the Arabs. On the contrary, advanced peoples can give so much to stimulate
backward ones if they do it with judgment and sympathy. Above all, it must not be the
kind of help which kills individuality.... Personally, I don't see the slightest harm in Jews
coming to Palestine under reasonable conditions. They are the Arabs' cousins as much as
the Phoenicians, and if Zionism brings capital and labour which will enable industries to
start, it will add to the strength of the larger unit which some day is going to include
Palestine. But they must be content to be part of such a potential unit. They need have no
fear of absorption, for they have everything to gain from an Arab Federation. It would
mean a far larger field for their activities.”
The attitude of the Milner Group toward the specific problem of Zionism was
expressed in explicit terms by Lord Milner himself in a speech in the House of Lords on
27 June 1923. After expressing his wholehearted agreement with the policy of the British
government as revealed in its actions and in its statements, like the Balfour Declaration
and the White Paper of 1922 (Cmd. 1700), he added:
“I am not speaking of the policy which is advocated by the extreme Zionists, which is
a totally different thing.... I believe that we have only to go on steadily with the policy of
the Balfour Declaration as we have ourselves interpreted it in order to see great material
progress in Palestine and a gradual subsistence of the present [Arab] agitation, the force
of which it would be foolish to deny, but which I believe to be largely due to artificial
stimulus and, to a very great extent, to be excited from without. The symptoms of any
real and general dissatisfaction among the mass of the Arab population with the
conditions under which they live, I think it would be very difficult to discover.... There is
plenty of room in that country for a considerable immigrant population without injuring
in any way the resident Arab population, and, indeed, in many ways it would tend to their
extreme benefit.... There are about 700,000 people in Palestine, and there is room for
several millions.... I am and always have been a strong supporter of the pro-Arab policy
which was first advocated in this country in the course of the war. I believe in the
independence of the Arab countries, which they owe to us and which they can only
maintain with our help. I look forward to an Arab Federation.... I am convinced that the
Arab will make a great mistake . . . in claiming Palestine as a part of the Arab Federation