While agreeing that it would be useful to have the terms of the Palestine Mandate elucidated clearly and unmistakably and to indicate the proper relations to be maintained in the establishment of the Jewish National Home and the preservation of the rights and privileges of the Arabs, Dr. Drummond Shiels, under-secretary for the Colonies, in receiving a Zionist delegation here today headed by Rabbi Salis Daiches, vice-president of the English Zionist Federation, declared that the British government does not intend to depart from the Mandate or from the policy as laid down in the Balfour Declaration and embodied in the Mandate.
Dr. Shiels pointed out that Great Britain would, however, in any case, carry out the Mandate and the main lines of policy unaltered. The Palestine government, he said, is now considering the whole land question but he felt that “it would be a mistake to encourage mass immigration as immigration must be regulated within the capacity of the country to support it and with regard to the proper claims of the different communities.”
Concerning the attitude of the British officials in Palestine, he declared that “it must be remembered that the officials had very troublesome and delicate duties to perform. The very fact that both Jews and Arabs are charging the administration with partiality suggests that the charges on the whole are unjustified.”
Dr. Shiels followed Rabbi Daiches who demanded a clear and more definite pronouncement from the government, greater security of life and property, larger Jewish immigration, more sympathetic officials, reinforced and reorganized police force and the allotment of state waste lands to the Jews.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
