A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 68, 13 December 1938, Page 9

A BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS

The Balfour Declaration

The pivotal "point in the present trouble in Palestine between Arabs and Jews is the Balfour Declaration promising a national home to the Jews in Palestine. For a full understanding of the implications to that declaration it is necessary to know something of its origins.

On November 2, 1917, the pledge of British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine was given in the form of a letter to the president of the English Zionist Federation, Lord Rothschild, which Lord Balfour signed as Foreign Secretary. The text of this “Balfour Declaration” was incorporated in 1922 in the mandate of the League of Nations. • The pronouncement was essentially a Cabinet decision, arrived at after the most thorough consideration. An opponent in the Cabinet was Mr. Edwin Montagu, Secretary of State for India, himself a Jew. Besides Balfour, Mr. Lloyd George, General Smuts and Lord Milner were in full sympathy. The leading exponent of the Zionists in England was Dr. Chaim Weizmann, a Russian subject by birth, British by naturalization before the war. His discovery of a process for the manufacture of acetone upon which the supply of cordite depended, and his placing it at the disposal of the British Government, rendered the Government under a deep debt of gratitude to him. He wanted nothing for himself but only the British promise of support for the Jews. • Near the end of his days Balfpur told his niece that on the whole he felt that what he had been able to do for the Jews had been the thing he looked back upon as the most, worth his doing. Law Of The Mandates

The position of mandated territories, the, former German colonies, is very much to the fore again, arising out of the German claims for their return.

Sir John Fischer Williams, a noted English legal authority says: “It is at any rate clear that a mandated territory is not held by a mandatory Power with the same authority as that with which it holds its territories not subject to mandate. Besides the mandatory Power, the League and the peoples of the territory have rights and duties —and hovering in an uncertain offing, possibly more active in certain events, there are the principle Allied and Associated Powers.

“It seems clear that a Power cannot be compelled to continue to act as a mandatory if it declines to do so. . . It follows that a mandate cannot be considered to be something which by its nature is non-transferable. . . . A mandate then is transferable. ..._ “No mandate makes any provision for revocation, but it is hard to suppose that the League of Nations would be bound to suffer the exercise on its behalf, or in its name, of authority which is being grossly misused. . . . Even if it were felt in 1919 to be too delicate a matter to go on and say what was to happen if the advice (to the Council of the League) took the shape of telling the Council that, the mandate was not being observed, it is difficult not to agree that the power of revocation is implicit. And that power of revocation must be exercisable by a resolution of the Council of ‘qualified’ unanimity—that is, the opposition of the Power whose mandate is revoked may be overridden. But readers must be warned that learned, persons of authority do not accept this view. In any case, how to enforce the revocation is another matter.

“What is the effect on a mandate if the mandatory leaves the League? . . No authoritative answer has yet l>een given. But in the absence of any clear rule it is not easy to see why we should conclude that if the mandatory continues to be willing to act ‘on behalf of the League’. . .nevertheless its mandate is gone.”

Tunisia The Italians are making- demonstrations designed to force France to give Tunisia to Italy. After the conquest of Algeria, France turned her attentions to Tunisia on the east and Morocco on the west. French occupation was finally extended to Tunisia on the ground that nomadic tribes raided Algeria, but in reality to gain a .commercial hold on a country whose .products and whose, proximity to Algeria and accessibility to France made it a prize of real consequence. The French occupation was not without interest to British and Italian rivals. At the Congress of Berlin (1878), British recognition, of French priority in Tunisia was given in exchange* for French support of the British lease of the important island of Cyprus. The irrevocable step was taken ny France in 1881, when a military expedition ended with the ruling- Bey recognizing the French protectorate. Great Britain accorded recognition of the new status in 1883, Italy reluctantly followed in 1890, and Turkey withheld recognition altogether, claiming Tunisians as Ottoman subjects. But by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) Turkey renounced all rights and titles to territory outside her new frontiers, thus implicitly confirming’ the French status in Tunisia, <

Like Algeria, Tunisia is a prosperous country, -paying its own way with products of high importance to the industries of France. Situated on the northern coast of Africa, Tunisia, which is bounded by the Mediterranean Sea, Italian Libya, the Sahara Desert, and Algeria, has an area of 48,300 square miles, and a population of 3,410.000. Of the white population of just under 200,000. French and Kalians are about, equal, 91,000 each. Ju the capital, Tunis, the Italians outnumber the French, 40.000 to 33.000. Quite, recently the French conceded the Italians special privileges, particularly with regard to educational facilities. War Not Inevitable

In an interview in New York. Mr. Anthony Eden said: “1 would like to emphasize that I have never accepted and I do not accept now the doctrine that war is inevitable. Such an attitude would lie criminal." Mr. Eden lakes the same view as that of Lord Baldwin, who said in the House of Lords: “There is one observation on the lips of many people at this moment: ’You have got to tight some day, light now.’ No greater fallacy was ever uttered. War is never inevitable, and if there were a 95 per cent, chance of war at some future date, 1 would hold on to the other 5 per cent, till I died."