show up anywhere, for instance at Turkish military positions, without provoking suspicion. Meanwhile Sarah Aaronson, who was ravishing, became a fixture at parties attended by high-ranking Turkish officers. The British at first were suspicious-the Aaronsons did not ask for money-but eventually, in 1917, NILI product was accepted by British officers stationed on ships anchored off Palestine. There were-it’s a typical problem, I understand- communications difficulties, and Avshalom Feinberg set out across the Sinai desert to make contact with the British. He was ambushed by Arab raiders and murdered near Rafah, in the Gaza strip. Local legend has it that he was buried in the sand at the edge of the town and a palm tree grew up from his bones, seeded by dates he carried in his pockets. Then the spy ring was uncovered-too many people knew about it-and Sarah Aaronson was arrested by the Turks and tortured for four days. At that point she tricked her captors into letting her use the washroom, un- supervised, where she had secreted a revolver, and took her own life. All the other members of the network were captured by the Turks, tortured and executed, except for Aaron Aaronson, who survived the war only to die in a plane crash in the English Channel in 1919.
“Of course the Arabs fought on the side of the British as well- they too wished an end to Turkish occupation- and their revolt was led by skilled British military intelligence officers, such as T E. Lawrence and Richard Meinertzhagen. The Arabs believed they were fighting for independence, but it did not quite turn out that way. When the smoke cleared, when Allenby took Jerusalem, the British ruled Mandate Palestine and the French held Syria and the Lebanon.
“But the NILI network was not the only effort made on Britain’s behalf by the Jews. Far more important, in its ultimate effect, was the contribution of Dr. Chaim Weizmann. Weizmann is well known as a Zionist, he is an articulate and persuasive man, but he is also known, by people who have an interest in the area, as a biochemist. While teaching and doing research at the University of Manchester, he discovered a method of producing synthetic acetone by a process of natural fermentation. As Great Britain’s war against Germany intensified, they discovered themselves running out of acetone, which is the solvent that must be used in the manufacture of cordite, a crucial explosive in artillery shells and bullets. In 1916 Weizmann was summoned before Winston Churchill, at that time first lord of the Admiralty. Churchill said, ‘Well, Dr. Weizmann, we need thirty thousand tons of acetone. Can you make it?’ Weizmann did not rest until he’d done it, ultimately taking over many of Britain’s large whiskey distilleries until production plants could be built.
“Did Weizmann’s action produce the Balfour Declaration? It did not hurt, certainly. In 1917 Balfour, as foreign secretary, promised that the British government would ‘use their best endeavors to facilitate the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.’ The League of Nations and other countries supported that position. It would be pleasant to think Weizmann had a hand in that, but the British are a wonderfully practical people, and what they wanted at that moment was America’s entry into the war against the Germans, and it was felt that Lord Balfour’s declaration would mobilize American Jewish opinion in that direction. But Weizmann played his part.”
De Montfried paused, refilled Szara’s glass, then his own. “By now, Monsieur Szara, you likely see where this is headed.”
“Yes and no,” Szara said. “And the story isn’t over.”
“That’s true, it continues. But this much can be said: the survival of Jewish Palestine depends on the attitude of the British, and from that perspective, the Chamberlain government has been a disaster.”
“The Czechs would certainly agree.”
“No doubt. When Chamberlain, after giving in to Hitler in September, asked why Great Britain should risk war for the sake of what he called ‘a far-away country of which we know very little and whose language we don’t understand,’ people who share my views were horrified. If he perceived the Czechs in that way, what does he think about the Jews?”
“You see Munich as a moral failure, then.”
De Montfried teetered on the edge of indignation, then asked quietly, “Don’t you?”
He wasn’t precisely angry, Szara thought. Simply, momentarily, balked. And he wasn’t used to that. His life was ordered to keep him clear of uncertainties of any kind, and Szara had, rather experimentally, said something unexpected. To de Montfried it was like being served cold coffee for breakfast-it wasn’t wrong, it was unthinkable.
“Yes, I do,” Szara said at last. “But one ought to wonder out loud what Chamberlain was hearing from the other end of the conference table-the generals, and the discreet gentlemen in dark suits. But then, after they made their case, he had the choice to believe them or not. And then to act. I can theorize that what he heard concerned what might happen to England’s cities, particularly London, if they started a war with Germany-bombers and bomb tonnage and what happened in Guernica when it was bombed. People get hurt in war.”
“People get hurt in peace,” de Montfried said. “In Palestine, since 1920, Arab mobs have murdered hundreds of Jewish settlers, and the British Mandate police haven’t always shown much interest in stopping them.”
“Great Britain runs on oil, which the Arabs have and it doesn’t.”
“That’s true, Monsieur Szara, but it’s not the whole story. Like Lawrence, many officials in the British Foreign Service idealize the Arabs-the fierce and terrible purity of the desert and all that sort of thing. Whereas with the Jews, well, all you get is a bunch of Jews.”
Szara laughed appreciatively and de Montfried softened. “For a moment,” he said, “I was afraid we were very far apart in the way we see these things.”
“No. I don’t think so. But your Chateau de Montfried gives one an elevated view of existence, so I’m afraid you’re going to have to be very direct with me.”
Szara waited to see what that might produce. De Montfried thought for a time, then said, “The Arabs have made it clear they don’t want Jewish settlement in the Middle East. Some are more hostile than others-several of the diplomats, in person, are more than decent in their understanding of our difficulties and not insensible to what we have to offer them. The German migration brought to Palestine a storehouse of technical information: medicine, engineering, horticulture; and they are people for whom the sharing of knowledge is instinctive, second nature. But Rashid Ali in Iraq is a creature of the Nazis and so is the mufti of Jerusalem. They’ve chosen the German side; other Arabs may join them if they don’t get what they want. England is in a difficult position: how to retain the good will of the Arab nations without alienating America and other liberal countries. So they’ve adopted, on the subject of the Jewish question, a regime of conferences and more conferences. Instead of actually doing something, they have taken refuge in deciding what to do. I’ll grant it’s a legitimate diplomatic maneuver, one way to simply avoid trouble: thus the Peel Report and the Woodhead Commission and the Evian Conference, and next we’re to have, in February, the St. James’s Conference, after which a White Paper will be issued. Meanwhile, Kristallnacht …”
“That was not a conference,” Szara said.
“Hitler spoke to the world: Jews may not live in Germany any longer, this is what we intend to do to them. A hundred dead, thousands beaten, tens of thousands locked up in the Dachau and Buchenwald camps. The German and Austrian Jews certainly understood; they’re fighting to get out any way they can. But the problem is, they can’t just get out, they have to go somewhere, and there is nowhere for them to go. I happen to have a rather accurate forecast of the White Paper that’s going to be written after the St. James’s Conference. You, ah, journalists will understand how one comes upon such things.”
“One is never entirely without friends. One had better not be, at any rate.”
“Just so. We hear that emigration to Mandate Palestine is going to be limited to fifteen thousand Jews a year for five years, then it stops dead. At the moment, there are still three hundred thousand Jews in Germany, another sixty-five thousand remain in Austria, and only fifteen thousand of them can get into Palestine. And, if this thing were somehow to spread to Poland-and the way Hitler talks about Poland is the way he used to talk about the Sudetenland- then what? That’s three million three hundred thousand more.”
“What is being done?”
De Montfried leaned back in his chair and stared. His eyes were dark, difficult to read, but Szara sensed a conflict between mistrust- the natural, healthy sort-and the need to confide.
“Beginnings,” he said finally. “From all points on the political compass, the established groups have been fighting this battle for years-the labor people in the Histadrut, Vladimir Jabotinsky’s New Zionists and the organization they call Betar. David Ben-Gurion and the Jewish Agency. And others, many others, are doing what they can. It is a political effort-letters written, favors called in, donations given, resolutions passed. It all creates a kind of presence. Also, in Palestine there is the Haganah, a fighting force, and its information bureau, known as Sherut Yediot, generally called Shai, its first initial. But it is all they can do to keep the Jews of
