In that trust there is no injustice to any other race. The Arabs have neither the means, the energy, nor the ambition to discharge this duty. The British Empire has too many burdens on its shoulders to carry this experiment through successfully. The Jewish race with its genius, its resourcefulness, its tenacity, and not least its wealth, can alone perform this essential task. The Balfour Declaration is not an expropriating but an enabling clause. It is only a charter of equality for the Jews. Here are its terms:
"His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
The declaration was subsequently endorsed and adopted by President Wilson and the French and Italian foreign ministers.
The Zionists ask for no more. It has been suggested by their enemies that they are seeking to establish a Jewish oligarchy in Palestine that will reduce the Arab inhabitant to a condition of servitude to a favoured Hebrew minority. The best answer to that charge is to be found in the memorandum submitted by the Zionist Association to the League of Nations.
"The Jews demand no privilege, unless it be the privilege of rebuilding by their own efforts and sacrifices a land which, once the seat of a thriving and productive civilisation, has long been suffered to remain derelict. They expect no favoured treatment in the matter of political or religious rights. They assume, as a matter of course, that all the inhabitants of Palestine, be they Jews or non-Jews, will be in every respect on a footing of perfect equality. They seek no share in the government beyond that to which they may be entitled under the Constitution as citizens of the country. They solicit no favours. They ask, in short, no more than an assured opportunity of peacefully building up their national home by their own exertions and of succeeding on their merits."
It is a modest request which these exiles from Zion propound to the nations. And surely it is just that it should be conceded, and if conceded then carried out in the way men of honour fulfil their bond. There are fourteen millions of Jews in the world. They belong to a race which for at least 1900 years has been subjected to proscription, pillage, massacre, and the torments of endless derision—a race that has endured persecution, which for the variety of torture, physical, material and mental, inflicted on its victims, for the virulence and malignity with which it has been sustained, for the length of time it has lasted, and more than all for the fortitude and patience with which it has been suffered, is without parallel in the history of any other people. Is it too much to ask that those amongst them whose sufferings are the worst shall be able to find refuge in the land their fathers made holy by the splendour of their genius, by the loftiness of their thoughts, by the consecration of their lives, and by the inspiration of their message to mankind?