Dr. Weizmann’s View: This Statement of Policy Having Become Directive for Official Action Has in My

I was very glad to receive the letter from the Prime Minister, which, I understand, is going to be published tomorrow, Dr. Weizmann said to-day. In commenting on it, I can speak in my personal capacity only. Still, even though I speak under this reservation, I am sure that I voice the opinions and feelings of an important body of Jewish public opinion.

We have welcomed the opportunity which the Prime Minister and the Cabinet have given us of discussing our case with the Cabinet Committee. We have received a fair hearing and have reached clearness with regard to a number of fundamental issues of policy raised by the White Paper of October 1930. We were contending, not for gains, but for rights – the rights which are ours under the Mandate, and which in our view, had been seriously infringed by the White Paper of October 1930. The Prime Minister stated in the House of Commons on Thursday that the letter which he was good enough to address to me was to be read as the authoritative interpretation of the White Paper on the matters with which it deals, that it will be communicated as an official document to the League of Nations, and embodied in a dispatch as an instruction to the High Commissioner for Palestine. This Statement of Policy, having thus become the directive for official action, has, in my opinion, reestablished the basis for that co-operation with the Mandatory Power on which our policy is founded.

The lossess which the past year of severe political crisis has inflicted on our work are serious. Palestine has suffered from an economic depression which, while to a certain extent connected with the world-wide economic crisis, has been rendered very much worse by the political situation. The confidence which is required for economic enterprise and development has been lacking. A basis for co-operation having been restored, confidence in the economic future of Palestine should revive, and with redoubled World Jewry should resume its economic work in Palestine.

The work which we undertake for the sake of the Jewish National Home is bound to benefit Palestine as a whole. It will benefit the Arabs, who, too, have suffered severely through the economic crisis, and the suspension of our economic activities, and whose prosperity is naturally bound up with the prosperity of the country as a whole; and it will easee the position of the Palestine Administration, which, for the first time after many years, now suffers from a serious deficit in its budget.

I am hopeful, Dr. Weizmann concluded, that the three parties – the Mandatory Government, the Arabs and ourselves – will now come together and work out a constructive policu for the future good and the development of Palestine,