“In commemoration and grateful recognition of the services rendered by the Right Honourable David Lloyd George to Jews throughout the world, this Tablet was set up in the forty-first year of his representation of the Carnarvon District Boroughs in the House of Commons”, says the inscription on a tablet which was quietly unveiled this week in the little mountain village of Glynceiriog, in the Vale of Ceiriog, in the county of Denbigh, in Wales. The Tablet has been placed in the Ceiriog Memorial Institute, a building erected to commemorate distinguished Welshmen and their services to humanity.
“As Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland”, the inscription proceeds, “he sanctioned the issue of the historic Balfour Declaration of November 2nd., 1917, whereby a great European Power recognised and approved for the first time the claim of the Jewish people to establish a National Home in Palestine, which Declaration was, during his further period of office as Prime Minister of Great Britain, affirmed by the Conference of the Allied Powers on the 24th. day of April, 1920, when the Mandate for Palestine was conferred upon Great Britain”.
Beneath, is the year 1931, and the words “Lest we Forget” with their equivalents in Welsh and Hebrew.
This tribute to Mr. Lloyd George, on the eve of the dinner which is to be given in his honour on April 11th. to inaugurate the “Ramat David”, or Lloyd George Colony in Palestine, is the gift, it is understood, of a few Jews of all shades of opinion in this country and of some in Egypt. It will take its place in the institution in which it now stands beside the memorials to other Welsh worthies, such as Saint David, Bishop William Morgan, Sir Hugh Myddleton, and the poet Ceiriog.
The Ceiriog Memorial Institute was founded in 1911 and was recently enlarged at a cost of over £2,000, the opening ceremony on the latter occasion being performed by Lord Lloyd, formerly High Commissioner for Egypt. The president is Sir Alfred T. Davies, formerly Permanent Secretary to the Welsh Department of the Board of Education, who is an ardent friend of the Zionist movement.
Interest attaches to the fact that the commemorative tribute was made almost on the eve of Mr. Lloyd George’s completion of his forty-one years of service as Member of Parliament for the Carnarvon District Boroughs (he is the “Father” of the House of Commons, having held his seat for a longer continuous period than any other member of Parliament), his first election for the constituency having taken place on April 10th., 1890.
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.
