The Palestine Commission's Report will for many years to come
be a locus classicus. I do not propose in writing of its findings to dip my pen in the ample supplies of gall which it provides for critics at home and abroad. An ideal which is not practical is a delusion. Our statesmen and the idealists who over-persuaded them are shown to have made, in good faith not one but many mistakes, and now, in the words of Richard Burton eighty years ago in West Africa, " what England has done England must undo." We aimed high, and failed partly from war-weariness, partly because of the inherent difficulties of a task which Lord Shaftesbury espoused in an anonymous article in the Quarterly Review in 1839 and earnestly pressed upon Lord Palmerston. Mr. Lloyd George and his colleagues have much to answer for but may say, in the words ascribed by Plutarch to Cato the Censor, " It is hard that I, who have lived with one generation, should be obliged to make my defence to those of another." I shall not blame him if he refuses to do so. I shall deal in greater detail with the subject next week.
ARNOLD WILSON.
Previous page
