The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1943. THE SANDS ARE RUNNING OUT

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 294, 11 December 1943, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1943. THE SANDS ARE RUNNING OUT

CYMPTOMATTC of an attitude of mind which extends through many nations is the decision of the Australian Nationalist Association to protest against the establishment of a settlement of Jews in the Kimberleys. In many other countries, quite apart from those in which they have been imprisoned and slaughtered by the million, they have been told that they are unwelcome, and no country has made any definite offer to open its doors to the remnant of an oppressed, persecuted and massacred people. National pride and the experience of two thousand years of suffering as minority groups scattered round the world inhibit any plea from the leaders of Jewry for the opening of unwilling frontiers, but those leaders have evolved an alternative which calls for the courageous consideration of all who have any concern for the principles for which we are fighting, justice and the right of minority nations to live their own lives and to control their own destinies. The solution offered is a return to the Balfour Declaration of 1917, pledging the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, a pledge which was acclaimed by the whole world and was embodied in a series of international treaties. Those treaties have been abrogated, they were finally trampled down by the Mac Donald White Paper of 1939, under which, instead of free immigration, only 75,000 Jews were permitted to enter Palestine in a period of five years, after which no more were to be admitted.

That period expires in three, months' time. Within that period 29,000, mostly children, may cross the frontiers. After that the doors will be shut in the faces of hundreds of thousands of a homeless and friendless people who believe that in what is their national and historic homeland they can re-establish their nationhood, bring equality and prosperity to the despised and poverty-stricken, and create a State and an economy which will justify its existence in the eyes of civilisation. That opportunity was theirs under the Balfour Declaration. They were making good use of it when, as an act of appeasement, because of the intrigues of the Axis in the East and of the disorders they created through such leaders as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, now in Berlin, the White Paper was issued. Even before that date, as is pointed out by Dr. Michael Traub, a Zionist leader now in New Zealand, the experiment in Palestine had to be carried out under unfavourable conditions. The political atmosphere was becoming more and more hostile to the ideals of President Wilson, Lloyd George and Mr. Churchill, and the Balfour Declaration was gradually becoming more and more curtailed in its interpretation. Despite this increasing hostilit3' the Jewish settlements in Palestine are responsible for many remarkable achievements in the reclamation of the desert and the marshes, in the establishment of rural communities, in the creation of new towns and ports, and in bringing a high measure of prosperity to a country which before their arrival was sunk in the lowest depths of poverty.

The White Paper has not been withdrawn, and no substitute has been suggested in its place. Mr. Churchill has expressed his stern disapproval of it. Not long before the war began he condemned it in the strongest possible terms when, in voting against it, he said, among other things: "As one intimately and responsibly concerned in the earlier stages of our Palestine policy I could not stand by and see solemn engagements into which Britain has entered before the world set aside for reasons of administrative convenience or—and it will be a vain hope—for the sake of a quiet life." Mr. Churchill has many preoccupations, but the sands are running out, and it is probable that he would welcome the openly avowed disapproval of the White Paper by any of the nations of the Empire. The Arabs of the effendi class do not want any variation of the White Paper conditions. The Zionists desire a return to the earlier status. The fact that there is a conflict of opinion does not justify inaction, and it is time to give bcld and open consideration to all the implications of the ending of the period of migration. Even faraway New Zealanders can give some assistance by giving expression to public opinion upon a subject which is of as intimate importance to them'as it is to any lover of freedom.