6. 20th Century Birth-Pangs

EDB:
At the beginning of World War I, Britain found herself dangerously short of acetone a chemical substance needed for producing the cordite explosive in artillery shells. Winston Churchill had succeeded Arthur Balfour as First Lord of the Admiralty. Dr. Chaim Weizmann, a Russian-born Jew, was a teacher of chemistry at Manchester University. Churchill asked Weizmann if he could make "thirty thousand tons of acetone." Dr. Weizmann undertook the difficult task.

As Minister of Munitions, Lloyd George offered Weizmann a suitable honour in appreciation of his work. But he replied that he wanted nothing for himself, only British support for Jewish aspirations in Palestine.

At that time the British War Cabinet was made up of a number of pro-Zionist members:

• Lord Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930), British states-man. On November 2nd, 1917, he addressed a letter to "the most important Jew in England," Lord Walter Lionel Rothschild (1868-1937), a Jewish scientist and a member of the House of Lords. That letter in the name of the British Foreign Office was the famous "Balfour Declaration." In part, it reads:

  His Majesty's (George V) Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.

  Balfour became a dedicated Zionist. Abba Eban in his work of history entitled, My People. The Story of the Jews, remarks: "Without his help there would have been no Declaration" (page 355).
• General Edmund Henry Allenby, Viscount (1861-1936), captured Jerusalem from the Turks on December 9th, 1917.
• David Lloyd George (1863-1945), Earl, was the Prime Minister when the government issued the Balfour Declaration.
• Jan Christian Smuts (1870-1950), Defence Minister of South Africa, serving in the British War Cabinet, was an ardent Zionist sympathizer over many years.
  General Smuts, a South African, of Dutch descent, inherited that nation's traditional outlook upon the Jewish people and the Holy Land from the Old Testament. He felt an affinity with the ancient Hebrews. "It was not difficult for Weizmann to persuade Smuts that it would be an historic justice to restore the People of the Book to the Land of the Bible." (Who's Who in Jewish History After the Period of the Old Testament, page 386.)
• Sir Herbert Samuel (1870-1963) was invited by Prime Minister Lloyd George in 1920 to become the first Jew to govern the Holy Land since the Roman general, Pompey, captured the Temple in 63 B.C., ending Jewish independence.