Colonel Lawrence No Opponent of Jewish National Home Earl Lytton Declares

The belief that Colonel Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) is opposed to the creation of a Jewish National Home and to the Palfour Declaration was contradicted this evening by the Earl of Lytton, former acting Viceroy of India, who is chairman of the Palestine Potash Company (Novemeysky Dead Sea concession) in an address to the Anglo-Palestine Club on the “Romance of a New Industry”. Dr. M.D. Eder, President of the English Zionist Federation and Vice President of the Club was in the chair.

Lord Lytton said that Colonel Lawrence had expressed himself about the future of Palestine by visualising it as the industrial centre of the new East. “The Balfour Declaration will be appreciated and its value realised”, Colonel Lawrence is reported to have said, “when the economic relations between the various countries in the new East will become so adjusted as to make them economically independent upon one another”.

Lord Lytton then described how he had become associated with Mr. Novomeysky in working the Dead Sea Concession. It was due to his relations with Dr. Weizmann, he said, that he was at first approached. Lord Lytton sought to disperse the anxiety expressed in some quarters that the Dead Sea industry would mar the Palestine landscape, saying that all the works will be carried out by oil engines and no coal will be used, so that smoke will be reduced to the minimum, The conditions of the workers on the Dead Sea, he said, are infinitely better and cannot in any way be compared with the conditions of the miners in England or Wales.

The public issue of the Dead Sea Company has not yet been made, Lord Lytton stated £250,000 were privately subscribed, but when a public issue is made, Palestinian and Transjordan citizens will be offered an opportunity to buy shares in accordance with the terms of minerals of the Dead Sea waters, but not the deposits of the Dead Sea or the Dead Sea shores, he concluded.