News Brief

curred by the Zionist Organization or the Keren Hayesod, and one-third for educational and social service, leaving only about two-fifths for economic work.

AGENCY MUST HUSBAND RESOURCES

“Such facts emphasize the importance of the Agency’s husbanding its resources through most effective administration. The situation should also be alleviated by the government assuming a larger part of these educational and social activities, similar to that in other countries. It is earnestly hoped that in the near future the Agency may with increased effectiveness and augmented resources concentrate upon its real task, the economic upbuilding of Palestine.

MUST GIVE CONSIDERATION TO EXECUTIVE’S PERSONNEL

“We will have to give earnest consideration to the personnel that should comprise the Executive and to the questions how their functions and responsibilities are to be defined. I think we all agree that the people selected to serve as members of the Executive must be of such status and quality that we may be able increasingly to put upon their shoulders as much power and responsibility and as much discretion as we should like to do. We have no doubt that some method will be agreed upon as to how an appropriate interchange of views between the members of the Executive and the Administrative Committee will be effected between meetings of the Administrative Committee, perhaps through some committee delegated by the Administrative Committee or through the officers of the Agency.”

Discussing recent activities in the United States of interest to members of the Administrative Committee, Mr. Warburg recalled that over $2,600,000 were collected in the U. S. for the Palestine Emergency Fund, of which $2,450,000, he said, had already been allocated. He also discussed the meeting of American business men interested in the economic development of Palestine who met in Washington last November at the behest of Judge Brandeis to lay the groundwork for a business corporation in Palestine.

Speaking of the Joint Distribution Committee, Mr. Warburg declared that by its action in contributing to the surplus of the Palestine Economic Corporation, “all J. D. C. investments in the capital shares of the corporation amounting to $1,164,000 and a further balance still to be paid of $550,000, thus bringing the J. D. C.’s contribution to a total of $1,714,000, the Palestine Economic Corporation, after giving eeffct to the plan of re-organization, will have assets of $2,893,000, with a total surplus of $1,790,000, exclusive of reserves amounting to about $370,000.”

He also mentioned some of the recent activities of the Palestine Economic Corporation, which included an appropriation of $250,000 for building workingmen’s houses in connection with certain colonies and the allotment of $100,000 towards the Haifa Bay project.

SUBMITS AGREEMENT FOR ALLIED JEWISH CAMPAIGN

Mr. Warburg also submitted to the committee the agreement for the joint campaign to be conducted in the United States by the Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Agency, and expressed his regret that Paul Baerwald, Morris Rothenberg, David Bressler and Judge William Lewis, the four co-chairmen of the campaign, were not present to report on the opening of the drive. He also presented to the committee the resolution adopted at the opening of the Allied Jewish Campaign in Washington, which wished Dr. Weizmann and the Administrative Committee success.

DR. WEIZMANN’S ADDRESS

Pointing out that the Jewish Agency had peen pursued by a malignant fate since its inception, Dr. Weizmann recalled the riots, the death of Louis Marshall, the world-wide financial collapse and the death of Lord Balfour. The Agency, he said, was comprised of men who came from different sections of the world, with different conceptions, and it was natural that they should need time to learn to speak a common language, to evolve an apparatus for working together.

Dr. Weizmann said that the Zionist experts had declared that Palestine today could hold 50,000 additional families of Jewish peasants and that if this were true for every properly settled family on the land so many more people could come to the towns and that there was room and a potentiality of a vast immigration.

The most important consequence of the Palestine events was not the actual damage to life or property, Dr. Weizmann continued, but the fact that the whole question of the Mandate, the Balfour Declaration and “of our deeds in Palestine” and the government’s behavior there had been taken up and set before the tribune of the world. The position now was similar to that in the day of San Remo, he said.

POSITION NOW MORE DIFFICULT THAN AT SAN REMO

“There we pleaded our cause before the powers. The only difference between then and now is that the San Remo conference was held at a very different time. The world had thawed and was fluid and receptive to great ideas. Only such a world could understand our case, the comprehension of which requires tremendous vision and a great sense of justice. Today the world is frozen. We beat our heads in vain against ice floes. There is no place in the world for great ideas. The world is weary and bleeding from all its pores. From this point our position is more difficult but on the positive side we have something which at the time of San Remo we did not have.

“The Jewish people have shown that they took the Balfour Declaration seriously…. We look back upon great achievements in Palestine and these achievements in Palestine must weigh more heavily than any other arguments. Nevertheless we must not forget we are now again facing the world, unfortunately a world that takes less account of justice than of material, geographical or ethnological arguments and with these we now have to deal.

“It is my profound belief that the Administrative Committee, which represents all of the great Jewish communities of the world, must solemnly declare that we have a right to Palestine, publicly and formally recognized, just as much as those who already live there. No force exists which could prevent or stop us from returning to our homeland.” Here Dr. Weizmann said that while the August events had shaken Jewry, the Jews of Palestine had stood fast and defended themselves despite “voices which were heard that put us in a difficult position.” Continuing, Dr. Weizmann said: “We heard from the eminence of the Hebrew University platform that we were not sufficiently peaceable, that it was our duty to give up certain things. At a moment when the dead of Safed and Hebron still lay unburied, we were told that it was a sign of strength to negotiate.

NO NEGOTIATIONS UNTIL ARABS RECOGNIZE JEWISH RIGHTS

“We refuse these negotiations so long as the Arab people do not realize that we are entitled to build our home in Palestine just as they have a right to build theirs. We do not wish to displace Arabs. We have not displaced them. It is untrue that we are creating a landless proletariat. It is a lie which is insinuated against the Jews…. We stand in the pure sight of the world when our colonization methods are compared with those applied elsewhere.

“We do not regard Palestine and the 160,000 Jews already there as an end in themselves. These Jews are only the vanguard of the vast masses suffering oppression and dispersion in Eastern Europe. Neither the Jews nor the world could allow this dismemberment any longer and we mustn’t spare efforts to provide space for at least a portion of them. In other words we regarded this section as a section of the great Jewish problem which is weighing on ourselves and on the world. For this reason we mustn’t belittle the National Home, for we know the pressure to which our people are subjected, or else we would be branded as cowards by the tribunal of history.

ADMINISTRATIVE COMMITTEE MUST LAUNCH CALL TO GREAT DEEDS

“We are approaching a difficult time but these would be no darker than