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

ZIONISM AND PALESTINE 93
fate of Bentwich. He refused more than one promotion
(including the Chief Justiceship of Cyprus, where he
would for good reasons have been welcomed by others
besides myself) and finally bowing to the general opinion,
abandoned the Palestine Government (but never the
Land of Israel) for the Hebrew University. There his
first lecture as Professor in the Chair of International
Peace was rendered impossible by the behaviour of
young Jewish students, to quell which it was found
necessary to call in British Police.
Albert Hyamson was a learned and agreeable North-
London Orthodox Jew, author of one or two wellwritten
books on Jewish subjects, a figure esteemed and
respected not only by his colleagues, but by the Orthodox
Jewry of Jerusalem. He had been a British Civil Servant
in the General Post Office, and now found himself
(via Jewish interests at the Paris Peace Conference) employed
as head of the Immigration Department, applying
the necessary but complicated regulations for the admission
of Jews under the Mandate. These regulations
(like those of the Customs for most people) it was for
many a point of honour as well as a pleasure to defeat;
and the families of temporary brothers and sisters, the
relays of spinster wives and married fiancées all destined
for the same husband, the arrivals on a three-months'
permit who never become departures, severely test the
vigilance of the Controller. Hyamson accepted or rejected
applications with the conscientiousness traditional in the
British Civil Service, and in consequence soon became
one of the most unpopular figures in pan-Zionism ; which
has created of him the brazen image of a Jack-in-office,
sadistically thrusting back the persecuted immigrant for
the sake of a misprint in his passport—an image that
the scores of thousands of Jews admitted through his
Department have not yet availed to demolish.
My observations on some of the difficulties of the
Administrator, especially with East European Zionists,