I Am Very Pleased My Efforts on Behalf of Jewish People Should Be Perpetuated in Such Inspiring Mann

I am indeed honoured by the decision arrived at by the British Section of the Jewish Agency for Palestine to name a colony in Palestine after me, and I am very pleased that my efforts on behalf of the Jewish people should be perpetuated in such an inspiring manner, Mr. Lloyd Goorge writes in a letter to Mr. O. E. d’Avigdor Goldsmid, the Chairman of the British Section of the Jewish Agency, who had written to thank him for consenting to be the guest of honour at the dinner to thank him for consenting to be the guest of honour at the dinner to be held on April 11th. under the joint auspices of the British Section of the Jewish Agency and the English Zionist Federation, and to inform him of the decision to name the Lloyd George Colony in Palestine (which he explained will be completely erected by 1934), to enable “the Jewish people to express to you in some measure the deep appreciation of your great services on behalf of an ancient race, and particularly in the furtherance of the establishment of the Jewish National Home in Palestine”.

I am particularly happy, Mr. Lloyd George adds in his letter, that this kind thought of my Jewish friends will further advance the development of the Jewish National Home.

This dinner is to mark the deep appreciation felt by world Jewry for the great services rendered by Mr. Lloyd George to the Jewish people, and particularly for his unflinching support of the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, says a statement issued by Mr. Dennis M. Cohen, Chairman of the Banquet Committee.

The full history of the negotiations which led up to the issuing of the Balfour Declaration, has not yet been written, the statement goes on, but it is an open secret that Mr. Lloyd Geoge, who was then Prime Minister, gave his whole-hearted blessing to the efforts of the Zionist leaders. Recently, after the publication of the White Paper, when the Jewish world was staggered by what amounted to a betrayal of pledges, it was the speech which Mr. Lloyd George delivered in Parliament during the debate on Palestine, which greatly encouraged the Jewish masses all over the world to believe that Britain would keep her word.

We have invited to the dinner leading representatives of other parties in the State, and indeed most of our friends in Parliament, it is further stated. In honouring Mr. Lloyd George, we are honouring a leading representative of all those English men and women who are anxious to do justice to the Jewish people. The Jewish people have no medals to distribute to those who deserve well of them – the only mark of recognition which we can offer anybody is a creative effort on the hills of New Judea, and an everlasting page in the history of our people.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE VALE OF ESDRAELON.

Fifteen years ago there was one settlement in the whole of the Vale of Esdraelon, it was pointed out at the reception given to Lord Balfour in Balfouria. The plain was without roads, without water, and desolate. It was nothing but marshes and rocks. To-day there are 1,500 people living in the Vale of Esdraelon in healthy conditions. Roads have been built, the marshes have been drained, farms are being cultivated. Let anyone with open eyes, the speakers concluded, come and see what we have achieved. We are content to be judged by our achievements. Let our brethren living outside this country enter without restrictions and have the opportunity of acquiring the public lands which are now uncultivated.

Sir Herbert Samuel in his report to the Government on relinquishing his post as High Commissioner of Palestine stated that the most striking result that had been achieved during the last few years had been in the Valley of Esdraelon. When I first saw it in 1920 it was a desolation. Four or five small and squalid Arab villages, long distances apart from one another, could be seen on the summits of low hills here and there. For the rest, the country was uninhabited. There was not a house, not a tree. Along a branch of the Hedjaz railway an occasional train stopped at deserted stations. A great part of the soil was in the ownership of absentee Syrian landlords. The River Kishon, which flows through the Valley and the many springs which feed it from the hillsides had been allowed to form a series of swamps and marshes and as a consequence the country was infested with malaria. Besides, public security had been so bad under the former regime that any settled agriculture was in any case almost impossible. By an expenditure of nearly £900,000, about 51 square miles of Valley had now been purchased by the Jewish National Fund and other organisations; 20 villages have been founded with a population numbering at present about 2,600; nearly 3,000 dunams have been afforested; 20 schools have been opened. All the swamps and marshes within the area that has been colonised have been drained and places of malaria are proportionately rare. The whole aspect of the Valley has been changed. The wooden huts of the villages, gradually giving place to red-roofed cottages, are dotted along the slopes; the plantations of rapidly growing eucalyptus trees already begin to give a new character to the landscape; in the spring the fields of vegetables or of cereals cover many miles of the land and what five years ago was little better than a wilderness is being transformed before our eyes into a smiling countryside.

Sir John Hope Simpson in his report of 1930 writes that the results of Jewish colonisation of the Vale of Esdraelon are varied. In some villages there are clear signs of success; in others, the opposite is the case. It is a mistake to assume that the Vale of Esdraelon was a wilderness before the arrival of the Jewish settlers and that it is now a paradise. A very large amount of money has been spent by the various Jewish agencies, and great improvements have been made. The work that has been done, especially in the direction of drainage and the introduction of new and improved methods of agriculture is highly valuable. There can be little doubt that in time the application of capital, science, and labour will result in general success. It is, however, unjust to the poverty-stricken fellah who has been removed from these lands that the suggestion should continually be made that he was a useless cumberer of the ground and produced nothing from it. It should be quite obvious that this is not the fact. In ancient times Esbraelon was the granary, and by the Arabs is still regarded as the most fertile tract of Palestine.

MR. LLOYD GEORGE ON JEWS AND PALESTINE: DR. WEIZMANN’S SERVICES TO BRITAIN DURING THE WAR.

You belong to a great race which has made the deepest impression upon the destinies of humanity, Mr. Lloyd George told the delegates of the Inter-Jewish University Federation meeting at Bangor in 1926. The tale of its influence has indeed been great throughout the years and as the centuries unfold the impressions created by Jewish ideas and teaching will deepen. It was from you that the great conception of peace on earth and goodwill among men came with remarkable force. We, the Welsh people, like you, belong to a small race, to a smaller race than yours. You are 15 million; we are only 4 million, but we make up in quality what we lack in size. Your prophets, kings and warriors are better known to the children and adults of Wales than are the names of our own heroes, That gives you an idea of the impression which the Jewish people have made on the opinions, the views, the sentiments, and the character of other races.

I have never met anyone who displayed greater patriotism in the country in which they happened to live, than the Jewish people, Mr. Lloyd George went on. I had the responsibility during the Great War of the chief direction of the forces of this Empire for quite two years; I think I was the only Minister who went right through the war in any capacity. It was a time when one had to summon all the patriotic impulses of all the nation and call for great sacrifices from every class of the community. There was no class of the community that responded more readily to the call of the flag than the Jewish people. That was equally true of the Jewish people in every country; they were true to the country where they dwelt and to the flag which gave them protection where they lived. That is right. It is a great mistake to imagine that because a race is an international one it cannot also be deeply national. I remember in America meeting Welshmen whose pulses were still quickened and whose hearts were stirred by the old Welsh songs.

I feel great gratitude to your people for what they did in the war and when it came afterwards to a re-arrangement of boundaries and I was one of those responsible, I was glad to take part in the issue of the Zionist Declaration. It was a very remarkable member of the race who directed and guided me in that, Dr. Weizmann, whom I regard it as a great privilege to have met, one of the noblest and most unselflish of men I have ever met. I was at the Ministry of Munitions at the time, and he brought to the Ministry the discovery of an ingredient which was essential in the production of high explosives. That ingredient was absolutely vital to the production of explosives. We did not know where to turn. It was through the scientific knowledge of Dr. Weizmann that we were able to overcome that difficulty, and he saved us. When I turned to him and asked what honour to recommend him for, he replied: I want no honour, but I should like you to do something for my people.

Mr. Lloyd George referred to Dr. Weizmann’s help also at a meeting of the Jewish Historical Society. He owed a deep debt of gratitude to Dr. Weizmann and he was his proselyte in Zionism, he said. While he was at the Ministry of Munitions he encountered a most serious crisis – one of the most unexpected things, as if when marching ahead with cavalry you suddenly found a chasm opening before you. They were adding gun to gun and shell to shell when they ran short of one of the great motive powers needed for cordite. He turned to Dr. Weizmann, and Dr. Weizmann saved them. They owed him a deep gratitude and they said to Dr. Weizmann: What can we do for you? He replied: All I ask is that you should do something for my people. It was worth anything to them in honours or coin, but all he asked for was to allow him to present the case for restoring his people to the country made famous for ever by their literature. Acetine converted me to Zionism, Mr. Lloyd George said.

Dr. Weizmann, speaking on the same occasion, said that the history of what Lloyd George had done for them was not yet finished. It was being written by spade and outpourings of energy by all that was best among the Jewish people in the valleys and hills of Palestine. There were thanks expressed in every cottage, in every little colony in every effort made to rehabilitate the land which was the Palestine of the Bible. They were the last people to build up their home on the back of someone else. They had suffered so much injustice perpetrated on themselves. If the Arabs and they met face to face they would soon recognise one another as old cousins who had done much in the past for civilisation. He wished Lloyd George would help them to find a way to become friendly with the Arabs, not only for the upbuilding of Palestine, but for the benefit of all the devastated lands of the East. Dr. Weizmann concluded by expressing the wish that Mr. Lloyd George should visit Palestine that they might there express to him their thanks.

Mr. Lloyd George replied that he would accept the invitation.