Bevin Denies He Opposes Admission of 100,000 Jews to Palestine

British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin denies that he has disapproved the admission of 100,000 Jews to Palestine, and although opposed to a Jewish national state, favors a “Palestinian state of some sort,” Lord Inverchapel, British Ambassador here, informed Senators Wagner and Mead of New York in a letter of June 23, released today by the British Information Service.

Replying on behalf of the Foreign Minister to a cable from the two Senators protesting Bevin’s recent speech to the Labor Party conference, the Ambassador said that he had been asked by Mr. Bevin “to stress that in his Bournemouth speech he was concerned to put forward, in an atmosphere of realism, some constructive suggestions which he hopes may be of assistance” in the current Anglo-American discussions on Palestine.

The letter ignores the criticism by Wagner and Mead of Bevin’s statement that “the agitation in the United States, and particularly in New York, for 100,000 Jews to be put in Palestine is because they do not want too many of them in New York.”

Mr. Bevin instructed the Ambassador to point out to the Senators that “he did not say that he would not agree to the admission of the 100,000 Jews to Palestine. He said that if they were put there tomorrow, he would have to send another division of British troops there and that he was not prepared to do it. But although he drew attention to these difficulties,” Lord Inverchapel wrote, “he said that he would strive for a Palestinian state, from which the voice of the Jews in Palestine could be heard in the chancellories of the world. Mr. Bevin made clear that he was determined that the Jews should be given fair treatment; and that he would not agree to their being excluded from any country; and that he championed equal rights for them in whatever country they were settled.”

Lord Inverchapel once again expressed the view of the British Government that admission of the 100,000 “would involve certain heavy financial and other commitments which they could not carry alone.” The Ambassador expressed his “own deep conviction that in Britain, which has traditionally been a friend to the Jewish people, there is no less a sincere and widespread desire than in the United States to find a just and lasting solution of their tragic problem.”