V. Sokolow Goes Forth
And so Sokolow went forth—first to engage with Picot in London, then back and forth to Paris, with an unexpected detour to Rome, all in close coordination with Sykes. It was a daunting mission. Sokolow’s task was to persuade the French not just of the feasibility of the Zionist project but also of the virtues of a British protectorate over Palestine. On the face of it, both propositions should have seemed preposterous to the French. Zionism enjoyed little support among French Jews, and the French had already been promised a share of Palestine equal to Britain’s in the Sykes-Picot accord (the details of which Sykes had kept secret from Sokolow and Weizmann).
Yet Sokolow managed not only to disarm suspicion of the Zionist program; he even succeeded in extracting statements of support. Most books on the Balfour Declaration do devote a chapter to the story. (Prime instances: Leonard Stein: “Sokolow in Paris and Rome.” Isaiah Friedman: “Achievements in Paris and Rome.” Ronald Sanders: “Sykes and Sokolow in Paris and Rome.” Jonathan Schneer: “Sokolow in France and Italy.”) With a nod of acknowledgment to them all (and apologies for some simplification), here is a quick summation of Sokolow’s achievements.
After two preparatory meetings with Picot in London, Sokolow headed for Paris. In two separate rounds of talks (punctuated by a trip to Rome), he thrice met Jules Cambon, secretary-general of the foreign ministry and one of the great French diplomats of the day, and the second time around had an audience with Prime Minister Alexandre Ribot. To Picot in London, Sokolow had expressed an open preference for British protection, and Picot pushed back. So in Paris he instead emphasized the feasibility of the Zionist project and how it animated Jewish opinion in Russia and America.
Two leading historians of French policy, Christopher Andrew and A.S. Kanya-Forstner, described this revised approach as “more diplomatic, more conciliatory, and more misleading.” The French expressed a general sympathy for Zionism, but Sokolow then had the bold temerity to ask for it in writing. And he received it. On June 4, 1917, Cambon issued him a letter (on the prime minister’s authority), which not only anticipated the Balfour Declaration but cleared the way for it.
The French expressed a general sympathy for Zionism, but Sokolow had the temerity to ask for it in writing. And he received it. On June 4, 1917, they issued him a letter that not only anticipated the Balfour Declaration but cleared the way for it.
The Cambon letter, almost as forgotten as Sokolow, was addressed to him and is worth quoting in full:
You were good enough to present the project to which you are devoting your efforts, which has for its object the development of Jewish colonization in Palestine. You consider that, circumstances permitting, and the independence of the Holy Places being safeguarded on the other hand, it would be a deed of justice and of reparation to assist, by the protection of the Allied Powers, in the renaissance of the Jewish
nationality [nationalité juive] in that land from which the people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago.
The French government, which entered this present war to defend a people wrongly attacked, and which continues the struggle to assure the victory of right over might, can but feel sympathy for your cause, the triumph of which is bound up with that of the Allies.
I am happy to give you herewith such assurance.
As Weizmann’s biographer Jehuda Reinharz has noted, the Cambon letter “in content and form was much more favorable to the Zionists than the watered-down formula of the Balfour Declaration” that followed it. The French accepted a rationale in terms of “justice” and “reparation,” and acknowledged the historical Jewish tie to the land. The letter bound Zionism to the cause of all the Allies, and made no reference at all to the rights of non-Jews.
“The Quai d’Orsay had been skillfully and decisively outmaneuvered” by Sokolow, according to Andrew and Kanya-Forstner. “The Zionists now had a written assurance of French support. France, however, had neither any assurance of Zionist support nor any prospect of obtaining one.” The French obstacle to a possible British declaration had been neutralized.
“Our purpose,” explained Sokolow, looking ahead, “is to receive from the [British] government a general short approval of the same kind as that which I have been successful in getting from the French government.” On arriving back in London, he deposited the Cambon letter at the Foreign Office, where it stimulated a spirit of competition. British officials who sympathized with Zionism now urged that Britain “go as far as the French.”
It was not only the Cambon letter that Sokolow secured during his continental sojourn. “Yes, yes, I believe we shall be good neighbors!” These words, spoken to Sokolow by Pope Benedict XV on May 4, 1917, thoroughly departed from the previous Catholic approach to Zionism. The visit to Rome had been urged upon Sokolow by the French and facilitated by Sykes. They had hoped that he might win over the government of yet another ally, Italy. But the Catholic Church was no smaller prize: it claimed rights to holy places all over Palestine and maintained, as a matter of theology, that the Jews had been dispersed as punishment for their refusal to accept Jesus as messiah. In 1904, Herzl had met with Pope Pius X, who told him in no uncertain terms that “the Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people.” “Non possumus”—we cannot.
Yet Sokolow had an amiable meeting with Benedict, in which the pontiff described the return of the Jews to Palestine as “providential; God has willed it.” (Sokolow wrote up the exchange verbatim.) Sokolow assured the pope that the Zionists would respect the Vatican’s immemorial rights over the holy places, and the pope offered reciprocal assurances. The Italian government also gave Sokolow an assurance of its goodwill and sympathy. The Zionists in London hadn’t expected Sokolow to go to Rome or, when he did, to gain an audience with the pope. Only weeks earlier, Weizmann had written to Lord Rothschild that “I am afraid the Catholic influence is
asserting itself very strongly and is obscuring the political issues.” When Weizmann heard of the outcome at the Vatican, he congratulated Sokolow on his “brilliant result.”
At that point, Britain had pledged nothing, so Sokolow could be forgiven for informing Weizmann, from Paris, that “we have achieved here no less—and maybe more—than in your country [England] where we have been working for nearly three years.” In the months that followed, Weizmann and Sokolow worked in tandem with Sykes to close the gap and elicit a British declaration of support building on Sokolow’s achievements on the continent. The history of these efforts has been researched and analyzed in great depth. Here, too, Sokolow played a major role, drafting numerous documents, including the proposed formula for the declaration submitted by the Zionists to Balfour. It was Sokolow who coined the phrase “national home.”
But a crucial portion of the story unfolded not in London but in Washington. For just as Britain would never have moved on Palestine without the prior consent of its European allies, so it would not have acted without the agreement of President Woodrow Wilson. In April 1917, the United States declared war on Germany (although not on the Ottomans), making itself a major player in the anticipated post-war settlement. One more ally had to be persuaded before Britain could move.
Here, too, Sokolow had an effect, if only because he had recruited Louis D. Brandeis to the cause. This occurred during a whistle-stop visit by Sokolow to America right before the war, in March 1913. Sokolow, Weizmann later reminisced, was “on the alert for new men—and he found them. He was the Columbus, so to speak, who discovered Louis D. Brandeis.” And it was Brandeis, whom Wilson named a Supreme Court justice in 1916, who led the campaign to gain an American buy-in to a British declaration. Brandeis was kept fully in the picture about developments in Britain and on the continent; as Sokolow later wrote, “the negotiations in political circles in England and France were known in America, every success was welcomed there with enthusiasm, and often, also, received further support.”
The American policy establishment was entirely hostile to Zionism: the Zionist idea seemed impractical, and missionary interests opposed it. On the first ask, in September 1917, Wilson had withheld his approval. Only the second time around in mid-October, when Wilson received the proposed text from London, did he change his mind. “I find in my pocket the memorandum you gave me about the Zionist Movement,” he wrote to his trusted foreign-affairs adviser, Col. Edward House. “I am afraid I did not say to you that I concurred in the formula suggested by the other side [Britain]. I do, and would be obliged if you would let them know it.” House did so, discreetly—even Wilson’s secretary of state wasn’t informed.
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