in the same sense as are the other countries of the Near East which are mainly inhabited
by Arabs.”
He then went on to say that he felt that Palestine would require a permanent mandate
and under that condition could become a National Home for the Jews, could take as many
Jewish immigrants as the country could economically support, but "must never become a
Jewish state. "
This was the point of view of the Milner Group, and it remained the point of view of
the British government until 1939. Like the Milner Group's point of view on other issues,
it was essentially fair, compromising, and well-intentioned. It broke down in Palestine
because of the obstructionism of the Arabs; the intention of the Zionists to have political
control of their National Home, if they got one; the pressure on both Jews and Arabs
from the world depression after 1929; and the need for a refuge from Hitler for European
Jews after 1933. The Milner Group did not approve of the efforts of the Labour
government in 1929-1931 to curtail Zionist rights in Palestine. They protested vigorously
against the famous White Paper of 1930 (Cmd. 3692), which was regarded as anti-
Zionist. Baldwin, Austen Chamberlain, and Leopold Amery protested against the
document in a letter to
the Prime Minister, and Sir John Simon declared it a violation of the mandate in a letter
to
Paper "betrayed a marked insensitiveness to Jewish feelings." As a result of this pressure,
Ramsay MacDonald wrote a letter to Dr. Weizmann, interpreting the document in a more
moderate fashion.
As might be expected, in view of the position of Reginald Coupland on the Peel
Commission, the report of that Commission met with a most enthusiastic reception from
the Milner Group. This report was a scholarly study of conditions in Palestine, of a type
usually found in any document with which the Milner Group had direct contact. For the
first time in any government document, the aspirations of Jews and Arabs in Palestine
were declared to be irreconcilable and the existing mandate unworkable. Accordingly, the
report recommended the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a
neutral enclave containing the Holy Places. This suggestion was accepted by the British
government in a White Paper (Cmd. 5513) issued through Ormsby-Gore. He also
defended it before the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations. In the
House of Lords it was defended by Lord Lugard, but recently retired as the British
member of the Permanent Mandates Commission. It was also supported by Lord Dufferin
and Archbishop Lang. In the House of Commons the motion to approve the government's
policy as outlined in the White Paper Cmd. 5513 was introduced by Ormsby-Gore. The
first speech in support of the motion, which was passed without a division, was from
Leopold Amery.
Amery's speech in support of this motion is extremely interesting and is actually an
evolution, under the pressure of hard facts, from the point of view described by Lord
Milner in 1923. Amery said: "However much we may regret it, we have lost the situation
in Palestine, as we lost it in Ireland, through a lack of wholehearted faith in ourselves and
through the constitutional inability of the individual Briton, and indeed of the country as
a whole, not to see the other fellow's point of view and to be influenced by it, even to the
detriment of any consistent policy." According to Amery, the idea of partition occurred to
the Peel Commission only after it had left Palestine and the report was already written.
Thus the commission was unable to hear any direct evidence on this question or make
any examination of how partition should be carried out in detail. He said:
“Of the 396 pages of the Report almost the whole of the first 368 pages, including the
whole of chapters 7 to 19, represent an earlier Report of an entirely different character.
That earlier Report envisaged the continuation of the Mandate in its present form....
Throughout all these chapters to which I have referred, the whole text of the chapters
deals with the assumption that the Mandate is continued, but here and there, at the end of
some chapter, there is tacked on in a quite obviously added last paragraph, something to
this effect: "All the rest of the chapter before is something that might have been
considered if, as a matter of fact, we were not going to pursue an entirely different
policy." These last paragraphs were obviously added by the Secretary, or whoever helped
draft the Report, after the main great conclusion was reached at a very late stage.”
Since the Milner Group supported partition in Palestine, as they had earlier in Ireland
and as they did later in India, it is not too much to believe that Coupland added the
additional paragraphs after the commission had returned to England and he had had an