The Making of the First World War

by Ian F W Beckett

  Above all, the growing support for the Zionist cause was stimulated by the contact between Balfour and Weizmann. Born at Motol near Pinsk in Belorussia in 1874, Weizmann was predisposed by his progressive timber merchant father, who insisted Weizmann learn Russian as a means of advancement. Showing a flair for science, Weizmann studied chemistry at Charlottenberg in Germany and Fribourg in Switzerland, gaining a post at the University of Geneva. In 1904 he became a lecturer in biochemistry at the University of Manchester, advancing to a readership in 1913. Naturalised as a British subject in 1910, Weizmann combined his love for science with dedication to Zionism, with which he had first come into contact in 1890. By 1911 he was the vice president of the English Zionist Federation and a persuasive advocate of the Zionist cause. Solidly built, Weizmann had a commanding presence but his personality was at best mercurial. He found it difficult to conceal his impatience with those with whom he disagreed, or who fell short of his expectations.

  As a result of commercial work for a dye works, its owner, Charles Dreyfus, a leading Manchester Unionist, invited Weizmann to meet Balfour when he was visiting his Manchester East constituency in January 1905. They met again, this time at the Queen's Hotel when Balfour was electioneering in the city on 9 January 1906. The intended subject of discussion was the abortive Uganda scheme for Jewish settlement. What was meant to be a fifteen-minute appointment extended to an hour, Weizmann recalling that ‘I dwelt on the spiritual side of Zionism’, and on Palestine's ‘magic and romantic appeal for Jews’.7

  Balfour, prime minister since July 1902, was fighting a losing election not only nationally but also locally, being ousted from the Manchester seat he had held since 1885. Originally more interested in philosophy than politics, Balfour had become an MP in 1874. He rose effortlessly through the political ranks, not least through the influence of his uncle, the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, whom he succeeded as prime minister. It is sometimes suggested that the phrase, ‘Bob's Your Uncle’, originated with Salisbury's appointment of Balfour as Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1887, but it appears unknown prior to the 1930s. Balfour's premiership had not been a success, and he was to prove equally ineffective as Leader of the Opposition, yielding the post to Andrew Bonar Law in 1911. Sufficiently tall to be known as ‘Daddy Long Legs’, Balfour cultivated an air of languid indolence through his aloof, almost serene, detachment. The Duke of Devonshire once remarked that Balfour's sense of duty was sufficient to overcome both his indolence and also his ‘strong contempt for popularity’.8 The unemotional exterior, however, also concealed a quick mind.

  The meeting had a profound impact. According to Weizmann, when they met again in December 1914, Balfour recalled every aspect of the conversation. Later Balfour said that it was from the conversation that 'I saw that the Jewish form of patriotism was unique’.9 Weizmann had aroused Balfour's intellectual curiosity. Balfour was deeply religious and from his familiarity with the Old Testament – shared with Lloyd George – believed the Jews a gifted race. He remarked to Lady Rayleigh in July 1918, ‘The Jews were too great a race not to count and they ought to have a place where those who had strong racial idealism could develop on their lines as a nation and govern themselves.’ Similarly, in a speech in the House of Lords in 1922, he said that ‘we desire to the best of our ability to give them that opportunity of developing, in peace and quietness under British rule, those great gifts which hitherto they have been compelled to bring to fruition in countries that know not their language and belong not to their race’.10 Balfour certainly believed that Jewish energy would materially improve Palestine and later told his niece that his declaration was ‘the thing he looked upon as the most worth his doing’.11

  It simply did not occur to him that there would be any Arab reaction. In any case, as he was later to outline to the War Cabinet, the declaration ‘did not necessarily involve the early establishment of an independent Jewish state, which was a matter for gradual development in accordance with the ordinary laws of political evolution’.12 In 1914 there had been about 85,000 Jews in Palestine, mostly from Eastern Europe, living among about 700,000 Palestinians. Yet Balfour considered that Arab claims on Palestine were ‘infinitely weaker’ than those of Jews. He also observed later that ‘planting a minority of outsiders upon a majority population, without consulting it, was not calculated to horrify men who worked with Cecil Rhodes or promoted European settlement in Kenya’.13

  Furnished with a letter of introduction by C. P. Scott, the editor of the Manchester Guardian and a supporter of the Zionist cause, Weizmann was due to meet Lloyd George in November 1914. Lloyd George was also to become an important figure in the acceptance of the Zionist cause, not least through his penchant for pursuing an ‘eastern’ strategic policy in preference to the costly commitment to the Western Front. On this occasion, Lloyd George was unable to meet Weizmann but suggested that he saw Herbert Samuel. Samuel duly met Weizmann in December and arranged a meeting with Lloyd George in early January 1915. On 12 December 1914 Weizmann had also renewed his acquaintance with Balfour, who had joined Asquith's War Council the previous month. Balfour was apparently unaware of the depth of anti-Russian feeling among the Zionists until Weizmann recounted the history of the pogroms. According to Weizmann, Balfour was ‘most deeply moved to the point of tears’.14 They met on a number of subsequent occasions. Balfour replaced Churchill at the Admiralty in May 1915 in the Asquith coalition and then became Foreign Secretary under Lloyd George in December 1916. By this time, too, Weizmann had cachet because he was making a contribution to the British war effort through his work for the Admiralty and the Ministry of Munitions, having discovered a means of extracting acetone – a vital component of high-explosive cordite – from maize. There was dispute over patents and Weizmann had his critics within the Ministry, but Lloyd George supported him. Lloyd George later claimed quite erroneously that the Balfour Declaration was a direct reward for Weizmann's contribution to the war effort. At the same time as broadening his contacts in government, Weizmann was becoming better known to the more elitist Jewish circles in the country, principally the Rothschilds.

  Sensing an increasing opportunity, the Zionists approached Sir Edward Grey in October 1916 for a firm indication of British support. Grey had been considering some kind of gesture towards Zionism for the past few months. The change of government in December caused a hiatus, but the imminence of the British military campaign in Palestine opened new possibilities. Weizmann, newly elected President of the English Zionist Federation, met Sykes in February 1917, and went on to see both Balfour and Lloyd George. Sykes had displayed anti-Semitic attitudes in the past and saw Palestine as simply part of his wider Middle Eastern scheme. But he was impressed when he met Weizmann and felt that supporting Zionism would help keep Russia in the war because its Jews would then support the allies. Alarmed by rumours fed to him by C. P. Scott of the Sykes-Picot agreement, Weizmann was keen to secure a solely British protectorate. The French also indicated some willingness to recognise Zionist aspirations in April 1917, largely through the efforts of Sykes, and Nahum Sokolow, a Polish member of the Zionist Executive who had fled Berlin in 1914 and become one of Weizmann's closest collaborators. Sokolow even secured the blessing of Pope Benedict XV.

  Balfour was absent in the United States for a month but, while there, met a leading Jewish jurist from Boston, Louis Brandeis, who reinforced the Zionist arguments. Brandeis's secretary, Felix Frankfurter, later suggested that Balfour had remarked, ‘I am a Zionist.’15 On his return, therefore, Balfour met Weizmann and Walter, Lord Rothschild, on 13 June 1917, at which point he asked them for their suggestions as to a suitable declaration. A former Liberal Unionist MP who had succeeded his father in the peerage in 1915, Rothschild had no significant office but was acknowledged as one of the leading figures in Anglo-Jewry.

  Rothschild forwarded the draft on 18 July, after it had been amended several times. Since Weizmann was absent visiting Gibraltar, Sokolow had presided over a meeting of the newly formed London Zi
onist Political Committee to prepare the text earlier in July. Another member who had a significant input in the drafting was Harry Sacher, a journalist on the Manchester Guardian. Weizmann's mission was itself a further twist in affairs. With the blessing of the Foreign Office, he was to persuade the former American ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, to desist in his attempt to negotiate a peace treaty with the Turks. Tentative British efforts to reach an accommodation with the Turks had got nowhere, and there seemed little point in allowing Morgenthau to muddy the waters further. Lord Milner had taken a look at the wording together with Sykes and a young diplomat, Harold Nicholson. Milner, who had joined Lloyd George's War Cabinet, had long been well disposed towards Jews. He had become interested in at least some kind of autonomous Jewish presence in Palestine through contacts with Herbert Samuel. After hearing their suggestions, the final version, drafted by Sacher, was submitted. It read, ‘His Majesty's Government accepts the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people. His Majesty's Government will use its best endeavours to secure the achievement of this object and will discuss the necessary methods and means with the Zionist Organisation.’16

  Milner tinkered with the wording again, primarily substituting ‘a national home for’ for ‘the national home of’, and it was sent by the Foreign Office to the Cabinet Office, where it languished. These were anxious days for Weizmann, the strain contributing to a deteriorating atmosphere within the London Zionist Political Committee and to Weizmann offering, though then retracting, his resignation as President of the English Zionist Organisation in September. The War Cabinet considered the Sacher draft, together with alternatives suggested by Milner and Balfour himself, on 3 September 1917. Lloyd George and Balfour were absent, the former resting and the latter on a Scottish holiday. There was little discussion but, presiding in Lloyd George's absence, Andrew Bonar Law approved a request by Lord Robert Cecil, Balfour's cousin deputising for him on behalf of the Foreign Office, that they seek the views of US President Woodrow Wilson.

  The only real objection came from the newly appointed Secretary of State for India, Edwin Montagu. Since his cousin, Herbert Samuel, had left office in December 1916, Montagu was now the only Jew of ministerial rank. An Asquithian Liberal, he had broken with his former leader after six months in the political wilderness to join Lloyd George's administration. To Asquith's chagrin, Montagu had also married Venetia Stanley, the young woman with whom the former prime minister had been obsessed, and to whom he had penned indiscreet letters even during Cabinet meetings. Montagu was not a member of the War Cabinet but was in attendance by invitation. Unlike Samuel, he opposed the Zionists. Weizmann characterised Montagu as ‘a great Hindu nationalist who thought it his duty to combat Jewish nationalism’ and symbolic of those whose ‘only claim to Judaism is that they are working for its disappearance’.17 Montagu feared that the promotion of a Jewish national home in Palestine might lead to fresh questions about the loyalty of Jews in Britain and to anti-Semitism. According to Lloyd George, Montagu said later that ‘I have been striving all my life to escape from the Ghetto.’18 Montagu did not see the Jews as sufficiently homogeneous to claim any homeland. There were others within Anglo-Jewry who shared Montagu's fears, including the President of the Anglo-Jewish Association, Claude Montefiore, and the journalist Lucien Wolf, who was director of the so-called Conjoint Foreign Committee of British Jews, a joint endeavour of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and Montefiore's association. The committee was intended as a means of bringing Jewish views to the attention of the British government. Of the 300,000 or so Jews in Britain, only about 8,000 were members of Zionist organisations. Nonetheless, Anglo-Jewry was deeply split, and Wolf's committee collapsed in May 1917 over the whole issue of Zionism.

  Montagu's long-term opposition to Zionism had been reiterated in an August 1917 memorandum for the War Cabinet entitled, with intended irony, ‘The Anti-Semitism of the Present Government’. There was a veiled threat to resign, but no one appears to have attached much significance to his arguments. Sir Ronald Graham of the Foreign Office described Montagu as representing ‘rich Jews’ who feared ‘that he and his like will be expelled from England and asked to cultivate farms in Palestine’. Rather similarly, in May 1939, Harold Nicholson made the point that, while the declaration was often represented as an improvisation and expedient intended to placate ‘strong Jews’, it was intended for the millions of ‘weak’ Jews ‘who lived, not in Kensington Palace Gardens or on Riverside Drive, but at Cracow and Galatz’.19

  President Wilson wired on 11 September that he considered the time was not yet right for any declaration, the Americans still being interested in reaching a peace agreement with the Turks. Weizmann contacted Brandeis and, through contact with Wilson's adviser, Colonel Edward House, it seemed Wilson might change his mind. Weizmann met Lloyd George on 28 September to apprise him of this, and the item went back on to the War Cabinet agenda for 4 October. At that meeting, Balfour outlined the reasons for proceeding, arguing that there was nothing inconsistent ‘between the establishment of a Jewish national focus in Palestine and the complete assimilation and absorption of Jews into the nationality of other countries’.20 The whole issue was only eighteenth on an agenda of twenty items for consideration: in all, Palestine was only discussed at four of the 261 meetings of the War Cabinet between December 1916 and November 1917, nearly always towards the bottom of the agenda. There was virtually no discussion.

  Montagu repeated his fears and Lord Curzon, in the War Cabinet as Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Lords, raised the issue of Palestinian reaction, also indicating that Palestine was so economically backward as to hold out little prospect for Jewish settlement. Milner suggested adding some guarantee of equal rights for Palestinians to the declaration, having already asked Leo Amery to draft something suitable. It was agreed to consult Wilson again, as well as leading Zionists and Jewish anti-Zionists. Soundings were duly taken in the Anglo-Jewish community with six representatives, including Weizmann, Sokolow and Rothschild, for a declaration and four, including Montefiore, against. In the light of the fears that the Germans might pre-empt the declaration, President Wilson signalled his approval on 13 October. A cautious Bonar Law was now procrastinating and Curzon continued to raise the economic arguments. He recognised the diplomatic advantages though, after the war, as Foreign Secretary, he was to declare that the British had a better claim to France than the Jews to a Palestine they had left 1,200 years previously. On 31 October, with Montagu having departed for India thirteen days previously, the War Cabinet approved the final declaration. Weizmann was waiting close to the Cabinet Office when Sykes came out of the meeting to proclaim, ‘Dr Weizmann, it's a boy.’21 Balfour wrote to Rothschild on 2 November 1917 to convey a ‘declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations’. It was made public on 9 November. As finally agreed, Balfour wrote, ‘His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.’22

  The Germans felt the declaration an empty gesture, and it was clear that the War Cabinet saw it primarily in terms of its short-term political advantages. As Weizmann appreciated, using the government's ‘best endeavours’ did not actually imply that a Jewish entity would emerge. Nor did ‘home’ imply statehood. Weizmann was unaware that the prospect of a negotiated settlement with the Turks had again surfaced at the very moment the War Cabinet had agreed to the declaration. Despite the moral objections of Sykes and Curzon in the light of the promises to the Zionists, the War Cabinet was minded to abandon claims to Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine in order to secure peace with the Turks. In the event, the prospects of a deal had dwindled by January 19
18.

  There was a great deal of favourable reaction to the declaration among Jewish communities with, for example, a mass pro-British demonstration in Odessa in late November 1917. In the longer term, however, the Bolsheviks proved unreceptive to any appeal to Zionism. Moreover, British military success in Palestine owed nothing to the declaration, Jerusalem falling into British hands on 9 December 1917. Physical possession of Palestine negated any advantage deriving from the declaration as a diplomatic lever to offset French claims on a greater Syria. In any case, Georges Clemenceau, who became French prime minister in December 1917, had no interest in the Middle East, and was prepared to give Britain a free hand. As a sop to both the French and the Arabs, aware of the Sykes-Picot agreement through Bolshevik disclosure, a reaffirmation of Anglo-French intentions on 7 November 1918 carefully promised the Arabs emancipation from the Turks rather than independence. Clemenceau then verbally assured Lloyd George on 1 December 1918 that the French did not want Palestine. Nonetheless, nothing could be guaranteed and tortuous negotiations were to continue through the Paris peace conference, at which the views of both Arab and Zionist delegations were heard politely, and ignored.

  The Middle East peace process reached its climax at San Remo in April 1920 with Britain receiving the mandates to govern Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq, and France those of Syria and Lebanon, on behalf of the new League of Nations. All were Category A mandates, implying the territories were sufficiently advanced to require only temporary ‘guidance’ before proceeding to independence. Faisal was proclaimed King of Syria in March 1920, but was then ousted by French military action in July. The British made Faisal King of Iraq instead in August 1921. Abdullah was made King of Transjordan, carved from Palestine, in 1922. Hussein had been proclaimed King of the Hejaz in October 1916, but was defeated by his old rival, Ibn Sa'ud in 1924. Hussein abdicated in favour of his eldest son, Ali, but Ibn Sa'ud ousted Ali too in 1925. Ibn Sa'ud proclaimed himself King of the Hejaz in 1926, and King of Saudi Arabia in 1932.