Truman’s Statement on Palestine Lauded in U.S. Iress; Trusteeship Principle Advocated

President Truman’s statement on Palestine advocating the admission of as many Jews from Europe as possible to the Jewish National Home and presenting the United States policy as favoring the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine if thas can be peaceably achieved, is commented upon favorably by leading American newspapers.

Pointing out that this is the first forthright enunciation of policy by the American government on the controversial question of Palestine, the New York Herald-Tribune, one of America’s leading newspapers, says in an editorial: “The President’s stand, now publicly announced, looking to the fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration’s promise of a Jewish national state, is the only one which Americans, in all conscience, could approve. The consensus here, is, we believe, that the White Paper was wrong, was an expedient of appeasement, and should now be corrected. This is the time to correct it. This nation, moreover, is directly concerned because of its adherence to the Balfour Declaration embodied in the mandate granted to Great Britain by the League of Nations in 1917, an adherence specifically backed by Congressional resolution. The fact that its fulfillment has been delayed and, in the turmoil of the last few years, jeopardized has dismayed men of good will here as elsewhere.

“The Palestinian problem is not just a British or a british and Jewish and Arab concern. It is a problem for the United Nations. No settlement of the peace can be complete without a decision on the future of Palestine. The trusteeship system projected by the United Nations organization would seem to provide both the agreement on principle and the machinery for a decision that can be acceptable both to the Jews and to the Arabs. The problem is not insoluble. The pressure of Jewish millions which frightens the Arab peoples may well be a chimera; for to many of even the uprocted refugees of Europe the call back home will doubtless prove stronger than the call of a strange and unfamiliar land. It is both hopeful and healthful that the President has posed the issue and clarified this nation’s stand upon it,” the editorial concludes.