Mandates Commission Majority Condemned White Paper, London Hears

Vice-Chairman Wilhelm Rappard of the Permanent Mandates Commission accused Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald, during his recent defense of the new British policy on Palestine, of “turning the mandate upside down,” it was revealed here today.

Writing in the Daily Herald, A.L. Easterman reported that Prof. Rappard’s stand had the support of the Dutch, Belgian, Norwegian and Portuguese representatives, all of whom condemned the British policy. Only Sir Morris Hankey, of Great Britain, and A. Giraud, of France, defended the White Paper by which Britain would set up an independent Palestine state with the Jews fixed as a one-third minority.

According to Mr. Easterman, Prof. Rappard, the Swiss representative on the Mandates Commission, took Mr. MacDonald severely to task for failing to create a Jewish majority in Palestine. He assertedly declared that to stop Jewish immigration after five years and make continued entry subject to Arab consent would be a unilateral denunciation of the mandate.

The Norwegian representative, Miss Dannewig, reportedly termed the British policy a betrayal of the Jewish people, declaring the whole world knew that Britain had promised the Jews a national home. To suggest that the Jews be fixed as a one-third minority, she said, would be considered an act of treachery and an insult to the Commission’s intelligence.

Mr. Easterman concluded that the majority members had decided to stand by the mandate “as authoritatively interpreted by the British Government in Churchill’s White Paper.” (The Churchill White Paper issued by the then Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill in 1922, gave a precise interpretation of the Balfour Declaration, stressing that Britain did not contemplate creation of a wholly Jewish Palestine, that the Jews were in Palestine as “of right rather than of sufferance,” and that Jewish immigration be regulated by the principle of economic capacity of the country).

Defending Britain’s Palestine policy as consistent with its policy in Europe, Mr. MacDonald asserted last nigh that the British Government could not continue to facilitate Jewish immigration to the Holy Land indefinitely unless it accepted the principle of rule by physical force. He spoke at the annual dinner of the Royal Central Asian Society.

“In Europe,” the Colonial Secretary said, “Great Britain stands for the principle that changes between and among peoples should not be made by physical force. How then, can they stand for the very opposite of that policy in Palestine?” He expressed certainty that if the “forces of moderation and reasoning are allowed to prevail, the logic of fact will bring agreement between Arabs and Jews.”