Smuts Urges Britain to Confirm to Balfour Pledge, Recast Recent Plan, in Cable to Macdonald

gether with the late Lord Balfour and Lloyd George wrote a letter to the London Times last December urging a new commission to investigate the whole working of the Palestine Mandate and to carry out a searching inquiry into the major question of the policy and administration of the Mandate.

DEEPLY PERTURBED

General Smuts, in his cable to Premier MacDonald, declared that “as one of those who was responsible for the Balfour Declaration I feel deeply perturbed over the present Palestine policy. The government statement marks a retreat from that Declaration which was a definite promise to the Jews of the world that the policy of the Jewish National Home would be actively prosecuted and its intention was to obtain the powerful Jewish influence for the Allied cause at the darkest hour of the War.

“As such it was approved by the United States government and the other Allies and accepted in good faith by the Jews. It cannot now be varied unilaterally by the British government. It represents a debt of honor which must be discharged in full at all cost. The circumstances of the original Declaration were far too solemn to permit any wavering now. I most strongly urge the government to issue a statement that the terms of the Balfour Declaration be fully carried out in good faith and the government’s Palestine policy be recast accordingly,” General Smuts declared.