Evening Post. WEDNESDAY,AUGUST 27, 1930 INCONSISTENT CENSURE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 50, 27 August 1930, Page 8

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY,AUGUST 27, 1930 INCONSISTENT CENSURE

When Lord Balfour, as Foreign Secretary in Mr. Lloyd George's Cabinet just after the War, met some Bolshevik bluster with a touch of that happy sarcasm in which he was an adept, he was gravely reminded by "The Times" that indulgence in this vein was not in accordance with diplomatic usage. Diplomacy prefers circumlocution, indirection, and understatement to the plain and pointed speech of ordinary controversy, and 7 to swathe its tongue or its pen in cotton wool even when there is venom in its heart. Those who are disappointed because the indignation which they feel, and which they know

that the British Government must feel, is so mildly expressed in its reply to the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, will have no cause for disappointment if they keep this fact in mind. To play the game is to observe the rules of the game, and if allowance be made for what the rules of this diplomatic game require it will be seen that, mild as it may be in form, the Memorandum in wMch Mr. Henderson or Lord Passfielt? defends British policy in Palestine from the attacks of the Mandates Commission is a powerful, crushing, and. even pulverising document No nation that the world has ever seen has been more successful than the British in rendering great services to mankind and in getting very little in return but ingratitude and censure, nor has any nation more persistently neglected the opportunities of protecting itself from misrepresentation. But when censure takes an official form—-the form in this case being indeed that, of censure from an official superior—-this unfortunate rule of silence must be broken, and the result is such a piece of British official propaganda as it does one's heart good to read. Like ancient Gaul, the report in which the Permanent Mandates Commission to the Council of the League of Nations has reviewed the administration of Palestine by the Mandatory Power is divided into three parts. The first deals with the nature of the outbreak in August last and with the attitude and conduct of the Administration before. the outbreak. The second is concerned with the steps taken by the Mandatory Power to restore and maintain order, and the third with future policy. Taking the last two parts first, the Memorandum devotes a single sentence to a point on which the Government and the Mandates Commission are apparently at one:— The British Government notes with satisfaction that the measures taken by them to restore and maintain order in Palestine last August appear to have mot mth the tacit approval of. the Mandates Commission., This is very gently put, hut there is a sting in it which the Commission cannot fail to feeL The Memorandum refrains from claiming the Commission's approval of the measures taken by the Administration to cope with the troubles in August; it can only say that they "appear" to have met with its "tacit" approval. With a force which the Mandates Commission declares to be inadequate the Administration faced a difficult and dangerous crisis with a combination of courage and discretion which achieved a great success. But for this highly creditable performance the Commission has not a word of praise. Being apparently a faultfinding and not a judicial body, it prefers to say nothing where it can find no fault, and by its silenpe leaves the' British Government to infer its "tacit" approval. There is a palpable hit in that very mild-looking sentence.

Regarding future policy, the Memorandum speaks in a less guarded fashion of the Mandates Commission's acceptance of the official explanation regarding the temporary suspension of immigration permits. Seeing that on the question of establishing a Jewish National Home in Palestine Britain herself may. be said to have dictated the terms of a Mandate which incorporates the Balfour Declaration, and that that Declaration has been approved by all British parties, it would be strange, indeed, if any British Government had desired to dishonour this obligation. While not making such a charge, the Mandates Commission has shown a wonderful capacity for ignoring the .essentials of the case. The serious difficulties which the Zionist hotheads have created both for their own cause and for the Palestine Government by extravagant and provocative claims, for which the Mandate supplies no warrant whatever, are ignored on the one side. The equally impracticable altitude of the Arabs, who have persistently demanded a form of representative Government incompatible with the Mandate and rejected the repealed

official offers of a form that would not be open to this objection, is ignored on the other side. Shutting its eyes to such plain facts as these, the Mandates Commission prefers to throw the whole responsibility for failing to reconcile these irreconcilables and apparently for all the other troubles of Palestine upon the Mandatory Power. Still more astonishing is the overruling by the Mandates Commission, without any evidence that the British Government can discover, of.the finding of the Shaw Commission that the outbreak in August "neither was nor was intended to be an outbreak against British authority in Palestine."

Whatever may have been the attitude of Arab leaders, says the Memorandum, the significant fact remains that during the disturbances no attack was made or attempted on local representatives of British authority. This fact, which speaks for itself, and which was directly brought to its notice by an accredited representative, finds no place in the report of the Permanent Mandates Commission,

This fact and the finding of the Shaw Commission carry no weight with the Mandates Commission.

while criticisms taken from a Jewish memorandum and other sources, which reached the Mandatory Power too late for comment, have been adopted.-

•■ We have no space to review the reply of the British Government to the Mandates Commission's criticism on the past "attitude and conduct of the Power," but may conclude with a reference to some further details of this criticism which come to hand as we write.

The report criticises the inadequacy of the intelligent service, also of the armed forces, and concludes that the execution of the Mandate has not given satisfaction either to the impatient advocates'of a Jewish national home, or to the Arab extremists, who were alarmed at the influx of non-Arab immigrants.

It is odd that the inadequacy of the armed forces, which is perhaps the weakest point in the British case, provides as against the Mandates Commission one" of the strongest points of all. It is still, more remarkable that the conclusion of the sentence, if correctly reported, gives the Commission's whole case away. How can the Mandatory Power be blamed for failing to satisfy the demands made by extremists on either side in conflict with the Mandate? The blame must fall not, on the Mandatory Power, but on the Mandate itself. It is even possible that a small share must be assigned to the Mandates Commission.