Load Harlech, Ex-colonial Minister, Dead; Influenced Policy on Palestine

Lord Harlech, the former William G. A. Ormsby Gore, who played a very prominent role in the development of the British Government’s policies toward Palestine for many years, and, as Colonial Secretary, named the famous Peel Commission which tried to find a solution to the Palestine problem, died here this weekend. He was 78.

Mr. Ormsby Gore, the father of Sir David Ormsby Gore, present British Ambassador to Washington, became an expert on the Middle East during and after World War I, and was one of the Government’s political officers during the negotiations that led to the issuance of the Balfour Declaration in 1917. The late Dr. Chaim Weizmann regarded him as a supporter of Zionist aims regarding Palestine. In 1919, he was a member of the British delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, out of which grew Britain’s assumption of the Mandatory Power for Palestine.

In 1933, Mr. Ormsby Gore was one of the first world statesmen to denounce Hitler’s racist policies and, particularly, Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” in an address before the League of Nations. After the Peel Commission had proposed division of Palestine into a Jewish State, an Arab State and a British mandate area, he advanced that plan in the House of Commons in 1937. Parliament declined to act on the proposal, forwarding it the League of Nations. The League criticized the plan, as did organized Jewry and the Arabs. In 1938, he drafted the British White Paper on Palestine, again urging Palestine partition and proposing limitation of Jewish immigration into Palestine.

A member of Parliament for many years, he left the House in 1938 when, upon the death of his father, he became the fourth baron, Lord Harlech. The present Ambassador to Washington now inherits that title.