THE TRUTH ABOUT PALESTINE.
If it be asked why that pledge was given, a partial answer is supplied by the Delegation itself. The Delegation is circulating a brochure entitled "The Case Against Zionism," which betrays by its tone the fact that it was prepared in New York for American consumption in circles disposed to be anti-British. It is there observed that:—
"The Balfour Declaration is a bit of clever underhanded [sic] diplomacy, worthy of the shrewdest politician. During the world war it insured for the Allies the loyalty and financial support of the Jews all over the world, and assured England of a permanent suzerainty over the Southern portion of Syria for the protection of the Suez Canal, which is the spinal cord of England's colonistic [sic] Empire."
This is a small-minded and distorted account of what was, in fact, a great piece of imaginative statesmanship; but it is sufficient to show that the Arabs are themselves well aware that the Balfour Declaration was at any rate not a gratuitous lapse into ineptitude. Great Britain had and has in the Eastern Mediterranean strategic and political interests which make it impossible for her to regard the future of Palestine with indifference, and which give her every motive for desiring to see its empty spaces filled up by a stable and well-disposed population, able and anxious to co-operate in rendering it self-supporting.
But beyond these self-regarding considerations are other of a loftier character. For two thousand years Palestine has remained the lodestar of Jewish idealism. If the Jews now ask for an opportunity of rebuilding their National Home, they base their claim not merely on the existence of a Jewish State in remote antiquity, but on the unwavering concentration upon Palestine of Jewish hopes and prayers from the moment of the Dispersion to the present day. It is in the interests of the new world order that the discord in the Jewish soul should be
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