David Lloyd George, Liberal leader and premier of England when the Balfour Declaration was issued, today completely associated himself with the protest of the Conservative leaders, Stanley Baldwin, Leopold Amery and Austen Chamberlain against the new British policy in Palestine. Lloyd George voiced the hope that the present British government would reconsider its attitude.
Speaking on the occasion of a luncheon given him here in bestowing the freedom of the city upon him, Lloyd George said, “In wartime we were anxious to secure the good will of the Jewish community throughout the world for the Allied cause. The Balfour Declaration was a gesture not merely on our part but on the part of the Allies to secure that valuable support. It was prepared after much consideration, not merely of its policy but of the actual wording, by the representatives of all the Allied and associated countries including America, and of our dominion premiers”.
REVOKES PART OF PLEDGE
The Liberal leader charged that the present British government has issued a statement which in substance is a revocation of a good part of “a solemn pledge given at a most solemn moment” and this without consulting the United States, France, Belgium or the British dominions. “We shall not reconcile the Arabs but we shall alienate an even more powerful race, and what is more, British honor will be tarnished”, he said, adding that “we shall be held up throughout the world as ‘perfidious Albion’ “.
Saying that he could understand those who wanted Britain “to scuttle out of of Palestine altogether”, Lloyd George stated that the “majority of the people of this country are not scuttlers whether in India or Palestine, and they mean to stand up for their responsibilities and pledges of the Empire in both. I earnestly hope that the government will reconsider its attitude. I can hardly think they have given full consideration to its implications.
“I am all in favor of treating both races upon a basis of equality but there is no injustice to the Arabs involved in the policy adopted by the Allies. It is not a question of expropriating the Arabs. No Arab has yet been forcibly expropriated. No Arabs have been bought out of land which they have been adequately cultivating but surely the Jews cannot be excluded from settling down in the land of their ancestors.
“We must never forget that the glory of Palestine is Jewish and that therefore that great race has a special interest in developing and restoring the prosperity of the land which once upon a time flowed with milk and honey”, Lloyd George concluded.
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