ACETONE AND PALESTINE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 109, 4 November 1939, Page 14

ACETONE AND PALESTINE

The Arabs are not hanging out black flags on the anniversary of the Balf our Declaration this year,v burying their troubles "for the duration." Curiously enough, this news comes at a time when the Germans are encouraging Jewish, experts in conquered Poland to go to the Reich proper, where it is hoped to make use of their specialist knowledge. On the face of it these two things are not related, yet there was a very close link between Jewish scientific knowledge, or. at ' least a Jewish scientist, and the making of the Balfour Declaration.

j His name was Professor Weizmann. jHe held the chair in chemistry at the University of Manchester, and he aided Britain in the discovery of acetone. That chemical substance, an. essential element in the manufacturing of cordite, was usually produced by the destructive distillation of wood. Britain is not a great timbei'-growing land and it takes much wood to produce a tor, of acetone, so the bulk of the supplies came from the United States. Competition among British cordite firms and the agents of other Allies forced up the price of acetone, and some American firms were selling their products twice over and defaulting on their contracts. They were even insisting on an increase in prices paid under existing contracts. After the competition between British firms was ended a new crisis, arose, for it became clear that the supplies of wood alcohol y/ere not great enough to meet the increasing demands. It was at this stage1 that, Mr. C. P. S. Scott, editor of the "Manchester Guardian," told Mr. Lloyd George of Professor Weizmann, then quite unknown to . the general public, but later a man of world renown. In a few weeks' time Weizmann had solved the problem. He studied the micro-flora of maize and other cereals, and succeeded in isolating an organism capable of transforming the starch of cereals, particularly that of maize, into a mixture of acetone butyl alcohol. In quite a short time he had a culture which enabled Britain to obtain the acetone without which there would soon have been no cordite for rifle-cartridges and shells of big guns, from maize. Later the Weizmann process was applied to horse chestnuts in a nationalised factory at King's Lynn. Weizmann was asked what he wanted for his services, and replied that he wanted nothing, for himself, but would like something 10 be done for his people. He theh explained his aspirations for the repatriation of the Jews. "That," says Mr. Lloyd George, "was the fount and origin of the famous declaration about the National Home for the Jew.s.in Palestine."