Perfidious Albion

The Mohammedan world (209,020,000 souls) abruptly changed places last week with the Jewish world (15,630,000) in being hornet-mad at the British Government's "perfidious Palestine policy."

To Jews it was clearly perfidious that Secretary of State for the Colonies Baron Passfield should have restricted Jewish emigration to Palestine (TIME, Nov. 3 & 10) by an interpretation of the Balfour Declaration which Jews likened to tearing up a "scrap of paper."

To Arabs last week it was quite as clear that Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald is a perfidious Scotchman because, in his recent note to the Zionists (TIME, Feb. 23), he interprets the Passfield Declaration in such a way as to start Jews again toward Palestine.

In Jerusalem the Palestine Arab Executive protested to Lieut.-Colonel Sir John Chancellor, British High Commissioner, in the words of its president thus:

"I observe that His Majesty's Government is subject continually to unjustified vacillation. ... I assure your Excellency that Premier MacDonald . . . has ruined hope of a policy of co-operation between Arabs and Jews, if there existed such a hope, and has rendered the possibility of understanding between the two parties absolutely impossible. ... He has not attached more value to [the Passfield Declaration] than to 'a scrap of paper!'"

In rushing to defend Scot MacDonald against the charge of deliberate perfidy his friends stubbed their toes upon these points: 1) the Passfield Declaration was issued just before the Indian Round Table Conference with its immense Mohammedan contingent convened in London (TIME, Nov. 24, et seq.); 2) so long as the Conference sat, not all the Jews in Christendom could move Mr. MacDonald by their incessant pleas, threats, demands; 3) so soon as the Indian Conference adjourned and its Mohammedan members returned to India and reported favorably, just so soon did Scot MacDonald yield to the Jews.

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