THE TRUTH ABOUT PALESTINE.
bald assertion that the Delegation is "truly representative of all the Arab inhabitants of the country" is gravely misleading. The members of the Delegation are fully entitled to a hearing; but it should be realised that they are in no sense the freely elected representatives of the Arab population.
ALLEGED PLEDGES TO THE ARABS.
The Delegation opens its case with the allegation that in carrying into effect the Balfour Declaration and the international engagements which embody it, Great Britain is violating pledges given to the Arabs of Palestine during the war.
It may be observed that even if these pledges were much more explicit than is alleged by the Delegates themselves, their existence could not in itself invalidate another set of pledges which are at least equally binding, which are wholly unambiguous, and which have deservedly secured for Great Britain the affectionate regard and the active sympathy of fourteen millions of Jews throughout the world.
In fact, however, there is no such inconsistency as is alleged. The pledge on which the Delegation relies is that which it contrives to read into a letter addressed by Sir H. McMahon in 1915, not to the Arabs of Palestine, but to the Sherif of Mecca. That letter, far from embodying any definite engagement even towards the Sherif, merely marked a stage and not the final stage, in what was recently described in the House of Commons by the representative of the Foreign Office[1] as "a long and inconclusive correspondence." It expressly excluded from its scope the areas in which Great Britain was not free to act without detriment to the interests of France—a qualification which, as was well understood, applied (inter alia) to Palestine. It has been summarised by Colonel Lawrence,[2] whom the Delega-
- ↑ Mr. Harmsworth, House of Commons, October 24th, 1921 (Official Report, column 461).
- ↑ "The Times," September 11th, 1919.
2
