Philip Guedalla’s Speech at Congress on Attitude to Mandatory Criticized

(J. T. A Mail Service)

The controversy between Dr. Stephen S. Wise and Philip Guedalla at the Zionist Congress as to what should be the attitude of Zionists toward Great Britain and the charge that the Palestine Government’s policy is not in accordance with the spirit and letter of the Baifour Declaration and the Mandate are widel discussed in the Jewish press in this country.

The “Jewish Chronicle,” while taking Philip Gueaalla severely to task for his utterance that if Zionists continue to express mistrust in British Government, Great Britain will break her pledge as retaliation, states that the root of the difference between the Zionists’ and the British Government’s conception lies in the Churchill White Paper which the Zionist Executive has accepted.

“Dr. Wise, while complaining about the British Government, intimated his belief that its recession was more apparent than real, and that it was because the Zionist Executive had been lax in its representations that the Government had proved lacking in its assistance in the creation of a National Home for the “Jewish People,” the Chronicle writes. He evidently could not think of the Government of this country breaking its word or playing the Jewish people false. Not so Mr. Guedalla. His idea of the honor of the country as exemplified by the actions of its Government fell far below that which undoubtedly Dr. Wise held, judging by what he said. For the President of the English Zionist Federation, when he came to reply to Dr. Wise, offered the astounding opinion that if Zionists went on complaining about the British Government not keeping its word, it would break it as retaliation for not being trusted. That, we believe, was an altogether gratuitous aspersion on the Government, which a mere elemental sense of what is due by a British citizen, especially when speaking in an assembly composed of the citizens of many other States, should have forbidden.

“But it is more than probable that Mr. Guedalla was led into the very foolish retort, to be sure carelessly, but in consequence of the idea he himself holds of Zionism. Indeed, his speech gave painful indication of the ‘inferiority complex’ in matters Jewish. He regards the Zionist Movement as an effort of charity, and so the promise made in the Balfour Declaration and the rights conferred on our People by the Mandate as just political lollipops. dealt out to us in its beneficence by the British Government. Hence it follows, in his way of thinking, that if we are not duly grateful to the Government to the point of obsequiousness, or if we annoy it in any way, we shall be treated like naughty, ill-behaved children and deemed to have forfeited our lollipops.

“It would be a bad day for the Zionist. Movement, an infinitely worse one than the most pessimistic reckon the present, if the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate could not rightly be regarded as Treaties which this country entered into for good and sufficient reasons of its own interests with the Jewish People–Treaties the terms of which were honourable and desirable to both parties.” the paper writes.

“Dr. Wise administered to Mr. Guedalla well-deserved rebuke for his suggestion that the British Government could be capable of such curpitude as he described. Dr. Wise, however, threw stones at the wrong window when he blamed the British Government for what is happening in Palestine. He forgot or ignored the fact that before it formally accepted the Mandate, it issued the Churchill Memorandum, in which it declared, in so many words. that it intended to implement the Mandate in accordance with certain ideas which it therein detailed, and that it took care to obtain the concurrence of the Zionist Excutive in its recorded conceptions. Moreover, Dr. Wise forgot or ignored the fact that Congress has more than once confirmed what the Executive did. How, then, can he blame the Government? How can he now with any consitency blame the Zionist Executive because apparently Congress is only now waking up to the true meaning of the White Paper and its implications? He is at least as logically at fault as is Mr. Cornfeld, who compains because the Palestine Ordinance is framed as if the regulation of a religious community, and not that of a nascent National entity, were contemplated. For the Churchill Memorandum announced that precisely a religious commuunity was to be understod as the meaning of a National Home for the Jewish People spoken of in the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, and with that interpretation the Zionist Executive expressed cordial agreement. So that it is not the British Government that can be said to have broken its word, nor ought it fairly to be placed under the imputation made against it by Mr. Guedalla, that it is capable of doing so if anyone teases it, whatever may be thought of the unwisdom of the policy which the White Paper adumbrated.

“It has been said that the Executive was coerced–to use the mildest word–into expressing agreement with the Churchill Memorandum. But the Government is not likely to have believed anything of the kind possible, particularly seeing the terms in which the White Paper was accepted, and seeing, moreover, that it was urged with all the force he could command by the then High Commissioner, himself a Jew and a professing Zionist.” the “Chronicle” writes.