Ormsby-gore Seen Eager to Push Partition; Anti-zionist Officials Target of Attack

Zionists were given new assurances today of Colonial Secretary William Ormsby-Gore’s interest in promoting the Jewish homeland while a former official charged that anti-Zionists in the Government had never given the homeland a chance to succeed.

Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph reported that the Colonial Office had received three acceptances of four memberships in the new Palestine technical commission, the chairman to be a former colonial governor. The commission will leave at the end of March, it was stated.

Mr. Ormsby-Gore “is genuinely anxious to meet fears and criticism and is determined, if he possibly can, to go ahead with the scheme of the Jewish national home with all the energy of which he is capable,” a Zionist meeting here was informed last night.

Capt. Austin Hudson, Parliamentary Secretary of the Transport Ministry, who said he had been in close touch with Jewish leaders and in constant communication with Mr. Ormsby-Gore, declared that the Colonial Secretary was “most helpful and sympathetic.”

Capt. Hudson branded as untrue published reports that the Government had decided to scrap partition and keep the Jewish people as a permanent minority in Palestine, Capt. Hudson asserted. While expressing regret over the delay, he said that “every effort is being made to collect the personnel of the Palestine commission most quickly, as the desirability of an early pronouncement is appreciated by the Government.”

Referring to the paragraph of the White Paper regarding the desirability of including the fewest possible Arabs and Arab enterprises in the Jewish area, Capt. Hudson gave assurances that this paragraph did not signify an intention to instruct the commission to reduce the area of the proposed Jewish State.

He pointed out the necessity of care in regulating immigration. “In your anxiety to help unfortunate Jews of Rumania, Germany and elsewhere, you must not flood Palestine with great numbers, causing unemployment and economic dislocation,” he said.

Noting with interest the suggestion that a Palestine Jewish dominion be included in the British Commonwealth of Nations, Capt. Hudson declared that while it was flattering that a body of people should wish to live under the British flag, the suggestion might cause alarm and annoyance in other countries. It is impossible for the British Government to accept the suggestion without question, he said, concluding by expressing the hope that a Jewish State would come into existence in a short time.

HOLDS ANTI-ZIONIST OFFICIALS ENCOURAGED ARAB OPPOSITION

Anti-Zionist officials in Palestine and London never gave the Jewish homeland experiment a chance to succeed, it was declared yesterday by Reichard Meinertzhagen, Chief Political Officer in Palestine and Syria in 1919 and 1920 and military adviser of the Colonial Office’s Middle East Department.

“Arab opposition to Zionism is nursed and encouraged by anti-Zionist views, not only in Palestine, but in Whitehall and Westminster,” Meinertzhagen declared in a letter to the Times. “Zionism never had a fair chance. With an administration loyal to the spirit of the Balfour Declaration, backed by officials in Whitehall sympathetic to Zionism, the Arab opposition could never get so completely out of hand.”

Declaring the proposed partition of Palestine was unacceptable to either party, and that a Jewish State was in Britain’s best interests, he advocated immediate reversion to the Palestine mandate. The Arabs should be informed that the Balfour Declaration stands, the ultimate aim being a Jewish sovereign State in Palestine, including the area from Dan to Beersheba (The Biblical boundaries of Palestine), he asserted.