867N.01/2–2547
Memorandum by Mr. William J. McWilliams of the Executive Secretariat to the Secretary of State 1
The following report of a statement by Mr. Bevin2 has just come over the news ticker:
Bevin said that Britain might have been able to increase the present Jewish immigration quota of 1,500 monthly and “do more otherwise for the Jews if the bitterness of feeling which surrounds this problem of immigration had not been increased by American pressure for the immediate entry of 100,000 immigrants.”3
“I do not desire to create any ill feeling in the United States of America,” he added, “in fact I have done all I can to promote the best possible relations with them as with other countries but I should have been happier if they had regarded to the fact that we were the mandatory power and that we were carrying the responsibility.”
Bevin charged that American intervention in the Palestine problem had “set the whole thing back.”
He said that “if they had only waited to ask us what we were doing then we could have informed them but instead of that a person named Earl Harrison4 was sent out to their zone (of Germany) and collected certain information.
“This document was issued and I must say it really destroyed the good feeling which the Colonial Secretary and I were endeavoring to produce in the Arab states.”
He said that Britain realized America’s interest in the problem and that “we had to take American interest into account.”
“We accordingly,” he said, “invited them to join us in forming an Anglo-American committee of inquiry. I must point out that I have been severely criticized by people in the United States for not accepting the committee’s report. I was reminded of this when over there recently almost every day. But none of the report was accepted by the United States except one point, namely, admission of 100,000 immigrants.”
Bevin revealed that he had pleaded with Secretary Byrnes in Paris Vat the time of the Foreign Ministers conference in an effort to get him [Page 1057] to dissuade President Truman from issuing the demand for entry of the Jews into Palestine.
His pleas, he said, were futile and the Truman declaration was issued5 just as Bevin believed his negotiations were on the threshold of success.
The Truman statement, he charged, “spoiled” the talks then in progress with Jewish leaders in Paris.
“I think every country in the world ought to know this,” Bevin said. “I went the next morning to Secretary of State Byrnes. I told him how far I had gone the day before and that I believed we were on the road if only they would leave us alone.
“I begged that the statement should not be issued but I was told that if it was not issued by Mr. Truman a competitive statement would be issued by Mr. Dewey, (Gov. Thomas E. Dewey of New York).6
“I really must point out that in international affairs I cannot settle things if my problem is made the subject of local elections.”
The House of Commons cheered Bevin’s attack on Mr. Truman’s, tactics.
- Addressed also to the Under Secretary of State.↩
- Before the House of Commons on February 25; for full text, see Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 433, col. 1901.↩
- On February 24, President Truman pledged his continuing efforts toward this goal; see The New York Times, February 25, 1947, p. 1, col. 2.↩
- Earl G. Harrison, whose report on the condition and needs of displaced persons in the liberated areas of Western Europe and parts of Germany was released by the White House on September 29, 1945; for text, see Department of State Bulletin, September 30, 1945, p. 456.↩
- For President Truman’s statement of October 4, 1946, see his telegram of October 3, to British Prime Minister Attlee and footnote 71, Foreign Relations, 1946, vol. vii, pp. 701.↩
- For President Truman’s reaction to Mr. Bevin’s statement, see Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: Years of Trial and Hope, vol. ii, (Garden City, N.Y., Double day & Company, 1956), pp. 153–154.↩