David
Lloyd George’s War Memoirs and the Creation of Israel
I thought I knew a lot about World
War I until I stumbled across the War Memoirs of David Lloyd George. Lloyd George was Chancellor of the Exchequer
when the war broke out and subsequently became the head of a specially created
Ministry of Munitions independent of the War Department, formed to overcome the
shell, rifle and artillery shortage that was responsible, along with a
defective strategy, for the carnage in France.
Britain
never had a big standing army. It
depended on its overwhelming strength in the Navy to protect the home islands
and the sea lanes to its colonies on which its survival depended. So, when World War I broke out, and lasted
longer than most anticipated, the need to put the
nation on a war footing to overcome Germany’s superiority in armaments and
trained manpower became paramount.
Lloyd
George’s Memoirs are a look at the war from the driver’s seat. His pivotal positions: first as Chancellor of
the Exchequer, then as Minister for Munitions, then as Prime Minister, put him
at the center of the events leading to, during and after World War I. Some of the facts in these volumes are truly
horrifying. In an unfortunate bit of
luck, the Memoirs were not published until 1933, when the world was beginning
to gear up for round two. So, Lloyd
George’s Memoirs never got proper play or publicity. Also, they are long.
Luckily for world history, British
politicians have a penchant for and an incredible gift as diarists. Lloyd George is a brilliant writer, as well
as observer. Two examples from Lloyd George: "Financiers in a fright do not make an
heroic picture." Vol. 1, p. 100; "Military imagination makes up in
retentiveness what it misses in agility." Vol. 1, p. 113.
Palestine and Cordite
The
shell shortage was caused by several production bottlenecks, one of which was
filling the shells. British factories
were producing mountains of shells, but filling them with explosives was
problematic. One
reason was a shortage of acetone, an essential ingredient in cordite. Acetone came from wood alcohol. Britain was not covered with vast forests. As the war progressed, acetone became harder
to obtain and much more expensive.
Dr. Chaim Weizmann, a chemist at the University of Manchester,
had volunteered his services to the war effort.
After hearing about the acetone problem, C. P. Scott, editor of the
Manchester Guardian, introduced him to Lloyd George. Weizmann worked night
and day, eventually inventing a process to make acetone from maize. Weizmann’s efforts helped to ease the shell
shortage at the front.
“When our
difficulties were solved through Dr. Weizmann’s genius I said to him: ‘You have
rendered great service to the State, and I should like to ask the Prime
Minister to recommend you to His Majesty for some honour.’
He said: ‘There is nothing I want for myself.’ ‘But is there nothing we can do
as a recognition of your valuable assistance to the country?’
I asked. He replied: ‘Yes, I would like
you to do something for my people.’ He
then explained his aspirations as to the repatriation of the Jews to the sacred
land they had made famous. That was the fount and origin of the famous declaration
about the National Home for Jews in Palestine.
“As soon as I
became Prime Minister I talked the whole matter over with Mr. Balfour, who was
then Foreign Secretary. As a scientist
he was immensely interested when I told him of Dr. Weizmann’s achievement. We were
anxious at that time to gather Jewish support in neutral countries.” (italics mine.) Vol. 2, page 50.
And which neutral country with
Jewish support do you suppose Lloyd George had in mind? USA! USA! USA! Until the end of
the twentieth century, Germans were the largest single immigrant group to the
United States. So, the Balfour
Declaration promising a homeland for the Jews in Palestine was designed to
garner the domestic political support of German Jews in the United States for a
British and French victory over the Central Powers in World War I.
Not
everyone in the United States supported Britain. Along with the Germans, another large
immigrant group, the Irish, were neutral at best on the basis of my enemy’s
enemy is my friend. On July 30, 1916,
two million pounds of explosives destined for Britain were detonated in New
York Harbor by sabotage. The Black Tom
explosion created the equivalent of an earthquake measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale, was heard as far away as Maryland, felt in
Philadelphia and caused widespread damage and injury. Thus, winning the support, or at least the
continued neutrality of the United States was a major foreign policy objective
of the British.
As Lloyd George wrote: “Human valour is no shield against high explosives or machine-gun
bullets. It soon became
evident to clear eyes and gradually to the most obtuse vision that the war
would be fought and ultimately decided in the workshop and the laboratory.”
Vol. 2, p. 75 Industrial production had come to
waging war.
So the
Balfour Declaration was a direct consequence of the need to placate domestic
Jewish opinion in the United States during World War I and the United States
support for creation of the State of Israel in 1948 was a direct result of
President Harry S. Truman’s need to get Jewish support for his re-election
effort in the same year. So, is it any
surprise the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu graduated from high
school in Pennsylvania and that Michael B. Oren, the Israeli Ambassador to the
United States grew up in West Orange, New Jersey and did not even go to Israel
until he was fifteen years old, in 1970.
From
the viewpoint of the indigenous Arabs, Israel could easily be considered an American
colony masquerading as an independent country.
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