The League of Nations Secretariat has received from the British Government copies of the letter addressed on the 13th. inst. by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald to Dr. Weizmann constituting the official British interpretation of the Palestine White Paper issued in October, of the British policy in Palestine, for distribution among the members of the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations and of the League of Nations Council, the J.T.A. representative here learns.
There will be no doubt of the official character of the letter, Mr. MacDonald said in the House of Commons on the eve of its publication. It will be communicated to the League of Nations and embodied in the dispatch as an instruction to the High Commissioner.
In consequence of the decision of the last session of the League of Nations Council held in January not to summon an extraordinary meeting of the Mandates Commission, the White Paper and the Hope-Simpson Report will not come up before the Mandates Commission until its next ordinary meeting in June, and the members will by then have had ample time to study the new Government letter of interpretation, where in the case of the White Paper itself it had to postpone its consideration because it had been received by the members of the Commission only “a few days before the opening of the session, too late for their perusal”.
The fact that the Government letter of authoritative interpretation of the White Paper will already be available for the members of the Mandates Commission at the same time that the Commission will be considering the White Paper relieves the members of the Commission of the task of interpreting the White Paper for themselves.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.