LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
ZIONISM AND THE ARABS
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In the letter from Mr. Sol Goldberg published in your last issue there appears the following statement : We then had a more firm offer with regard to Palestine from Germany." It would be interesting to know upon what authority Mr. Goldberg makes this allegation. The only apparent basis for it is a remark in the chapter on " Palestine and Zionism," in the final volume of the History of the Peace Conference at Paris, to the effect that the German General Staff seemed to have urged the advantage of promising the Jewish restoration of Palestine and that in the autumn of 1917 the German Government were making the most serious efforts " to capture the Zionist movement." It is difficult to conceive how the German Government could capture a movement, the headquarters of which were entirely beyond its sphere of operations. The leaders of the Zionist movement were then, as now, in London, and no offer of any kind reached them from Germany.
As for the conferment of the Mandate for Palestine on Great Britain, that historic event took place, not at Versailles, but at San Remo, and there is not the least shred of evidence that France regarded that event as an unfriendly act, more especially as she received the Mandate for Syria at the same epoch-making Conference.—I am; Sir, &c.,
ISRAEL COnEN.
The Zionist Organization,
77 Great Russell Street, London, MC. 1.
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