British Journals Sympathetic to Zionist Aspiration in Discussing Inquiry Report

An almost unanimously friendly attitude toward the Zionist aspirations is expressed in the leading week-end journals of Great Britain, in discussing the Inquiry Commission’s report. While admitting that the Commission exceeded its terms of reference, the majority of the articles, however, endeavor to cover the Commission by suggesting that its findings be considered as the basis for a necessary and deeper investigation.

‘The “Statesman” and “Spectator” urge that the Commission’s advice for a scientific inquiry into the possibilities of intensive farming be undertaken and that the government should establish a comprehensive land policy on its findings. The most outspoken on the matter, however, is the ‘Weekend Review,” which says that the Commission, “instead of discharging its comparatively simple task, has written a long and elaborate essay on everything that has to do with the Mandate.”

After pointing out that it was unfortunate that the Commission had exceeded its terms of reference, the “Review” terms the report as “in the main a white-washing report, according to which no person is particularly to blame for what happened.”

The “Review” also comments on the fact that “a Commission of which the chairman was a Colonial Judge, could not be expected to criticize freely a Colonial administration but it was even less competent to make excursions into high international and imperial policy.

…One sentence in the report reveals an amazing misconception of the whole situation, namely that the outbreak was not a revolt against British authority; but the whole basis of British authority in Palestine was the Jewish National Home and the Mandate to secure it. How then can it be said that the Arabs, who never ceased to resist the Mandate, are still loyal to British authority?”