Churchill, Palestine and Zionism, 1904-1922 - Douglas J. Feith

230 DOUGLAS J. FEITH
PM very vehement about our keeping Palestine. The Biblical associations.
Immense prestige attaching to Jerusalem. We have conquered it. The
French did practically nothing.,,53
In January 1920, having recently been transferred to Cairo to replace
Clayton as chief political officer, Meinertzhagen cabled to London that he
was still "advocat[ing] the publication of the Declaration on Zionism." He
said he was "all the more anxious" to press for publication, as it will "once
and for all dispel the anti-Zionist attitude" of those "who still doubt the
permanency of Zionism. ,,54
BOLSHEVIKS, TURKS, JEWS, AND ARABS
With the prime minister continually complaining that demobilization was
proceeding too slowly, Churchill's resentment of Lloyd George's foreign
policies brimmed. To the war secretary they appeared a hash of inconsistent
sympathies and notions, all of which tended to increase demands on
his office for more men and money. Lloyd George was soft on the Bolsheviks
and hard on the Turkish nationalists, the opposite of Churchill's
preferences. Churchill pressed for more aid to the Whites in Russia. Lloyd
George, condemning his colleague's "obsession" with Russia,s5 responded
that the Whites were carrying out murderous pogroms and that Churchill
should inquire "about this treatment of the Jews by your friends. ,,56
Churchill pressed for a peace settlement with Turkey. Lloyd George, whose
philhellenism was worthy of Lord Byron, chose instead to support Greek
designs on Anatolia that, in Churchill's view, precluded the peace settlement
with Turkey required to secure Britain's position in the Middle East.
Without such a settlement, Churchill feared, Turkey might move to retake
its Middle Eastern provinces.
Venting frustration in a 25 October 1919 memorandum on the Turkish
situation, Churchill wrote that the "French are about to over-run Syria"
and will soon be fighting the Arabs, who will increasingly command
British sympathies. Serious injury to Anglo-French relations will result.
53 Diary of H. A. L. Fisher, quoted in Gilbert, Exile and Return, 123.
54 Meinertzhagen, Middle East Diary, 69 (dispatch dated January 13, 1920).
55 WSC IV 331.
56 WSC IV 342. Churchill replied to Lloyd George by noting that there is "a very bitter
feeling throughout Russia against the Jews, who are regarded as being the main instigators
of the ruin of the Empire, and who, certainly have played a leading part in
Bolshevik atrocities." Churchill then wrote to General Denikin of "the vital importance
... of preventing by every possible means the ill-treatment of the innocent Jewish population."
WSC IV 342-3.