Office of the Historian

867N.010/1602½

Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State (Berle) to President Roosevelt

[Washington,] May 25, 1939.

Attached is the statement85 the Department would like to get out regarding the Palestine mandate.

We are in a cleft stick. The active Zionists are high-pressuring the Congressmen, asking us to make representations to Great Britain.

Meanwhile, there is considerable and growing anti-Americanism in Arabia, based on our assumed championship of Jewish political domination of Palestine, and anything we say will be used against us.

The present statement is purely factual and follows closely along the lines of the statement of October 14th, 1938.

We have no legal rights in the situation as against Great Britain.

A. A. Berle, Jr.
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