Shorter Notices
Chaim Weizmann. Tribute in honour of his Seventieth Birthday
Edited by Paul Goodman. (Gollancz. 10s. 6d.)
CHAim WEIZMANN'S career has some of the elements of an Oriental legend, an episode from the book of Esther or Daniel. In the first world war his research considerably aided our producton of cordite, and for this he would accept no reward but the sympathy of the British Government for the return of the Jews to Palestine. Both before and after the Balfour Declaration, through the period of the Partition proposals, the White Paper of 1939 which made the entrance of Jews into Palestine a matter of Arab sufferance, down to the creation of a Jewish Brigade in the recent war, Weizmann has been the moving spirit of Zionism, remarkable always for his idealism and often for his restraint. Of this the reader is frequently reminded in the fourteen short appreciations which form the first part of the tribute to Weizmann on his seventieth birthday. Nearly all the contributors, including Viscount Samuel, Mr. Amery who writes the preface, Laski and Wickham Steed, have something to say, but the total effect of these short studies is one of scrappiness and over- lapping. The second part of the 'book is more technical and deals with Weizmann as scientist and educationalist ; the third and far the most interesting part contains his own speeches. These would make a good source-book for a student of the movement, and reading them one does not know whether to admire most his tenacity, his ironical understatements or the subtle restraint he exercises on his own extremists. "If you say there are Arabs but we must get rid of them, there is Britain but we must force it, then you may be playing the part of a contrabass in the orchestra, but it will never make a song."
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