Lawrence of Arabia, Zionism and Palestine - The World War I ...

50 ZIONISM AND PALESTINE
strong Russian with the face and the determination of
Lenin himself, and with Zionism coursing in his blood. 1
I remember Chaim Weizmann asking me as in a parable
whether a band of Englishmen, banished for many
years all over the world, would accept as a substitute
for home permission to "return" to Calais: so felt he
and his for the prospect of Zion in Uganda. Uganda
was rejected, and Weizmann became a Lecturer in
Chemistry at the University of Manchester, then in the
constituency of Arthur James Balfour. The statesman
whose heart was in science would take refuge from party
routine with a scientist whose soul was in politics ; and
the first seeds of sympathy were sown. With the War
came a demand for high explosives only less imperative
than that for human lives, and Acetone, an essential
ingredient of Trinitrotoluol—T.N.T.—was found to be
unprocurable outside Germany. Its absence appalled
the British Admiralty, but not the brain of the Jewish
chemist. At his word the school-children of the United
Kingdom were seen picking up horse-chestnuts by
millions, and the Acetone famine ceased. Weizmann
subsequently registered but did not press his claim for
the invention, which was, on the skilful pleading of Sir
Arthur Colefax, honoured, though none too generously,
by the British Government.
But Acetone had registered another claim far more
precious to the inventor; and the name and proposals
of Weizmann and his colleagues, strongly supported
by Arthur Balfour, Herbert Samuel and Mark Sykes,
penetrated to the Supreme Council of the Nation and
of the Allies. 2 On 2 November 1917, one week before
1 "Herzl gratefully accepted the Uganda scheme and submitted
it for ratification by Congress in 1903. . . . The Seventh Congress
1904 . . . decided not to embark upon the Uganda adventure.
. . . Herzl died of a broken heart in 1904." Lord Melchett, Thy
Neighbour, 1936.
2 I am speaking figuratively, and agree that "Mr. Lloyd George
is not quite accurate in describing British policy in Palestine as
a kind of quid pro quo for the patriotic action of the Zionist