The remains of Lord Herbert Samuel, first unbaptized Jew ever to serve as a member of the British Cabinet and first High Commissioner for Palestine under the League of Nations mandate, were interred today after private funeral services. He died yesterday at the age of 92. The family announced that a memorial service will be held for him at the West End Synagogue here on February 18.
Among the tributes were expressions of high regard from Jo Grimond, leader of the Liberal Party, and Lord Attlee, ex-Premier and former leader of the Labor Party. Mr. Grimond’s condolences pointed to Lord Samuel’s role in the House of Lords where, for years, he was leader of the Liberal Party faction. Both Mr. Grimond’s and Lord Attlee’s tributes recalled that Lord Samuel was regarded here, as a political leader, as the bridge between liberalism and Socialism.
Long obituaries and warm appreciations of Lord Samuel’s career were printed in every leading newspaper in Britain today, many of the editorials emphasizing his achievements as the first High Commissioner for Palestine under the Mandate given Britain by the League of Nations. The Times noted that, by the time Lord Samuel left Palestine at the end of his tenure there, in 1925, he had “achieved vastly more, in the way of order and prosperity for the country, than had seemed possible. ” The Guardian stated he had achieved “orderly progress” in Palestine “to a remarkable degree, ” and noted that “he had appeared as a modern Nehemiah, the first Jew who governed the Holy Land in nearly 2,000 years.”
Among other facts in the life of Lord Samuel, it was recalled today that he was appointed in 1911 to undertake a special mission to Russia on behalf of the Government’s aroused protests against the Czar’s anti-Semitic advisers. Although assured by the Russian Ambassador here that Russia would give him special treatment, he declined such privileges at the hands of an Czarist anti-Semitic Government, A year later, during the Mendel Beilis blood-libel trial in Kiev, he openly wrote to The Times on that issue, engaging in a public controversy with the Czarist Ambassador here.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
