This next stage was the meeting of Supreme Allied Council at San Remo in 1920. It consisted of the representatives of Britain, France, Italy and Japan, and was attended by an American observer. Here too the Zionists were present to press their claims, and the party was joined by Sir Herbert Samuel who, as will be remembered, had been the first sponsor of the Zionist scheme from within the British Cabinet, and who now arrived at San Remo fresh from a tour of Palestine with a report on the project in hand.
It was at a meeting of this Conference between the four principal Allied Powers that the Mandate for Palestine was "awarded" to Britain. What in fact happened, of course, was that Britain and France with the acquiescence of their partners merely put into effect their previous agreement for sharing out the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, under the new name of Mandates required by the international conventions of the time. Something else also happened. The text of the Balfour Declaration was slipped into the British Mandate for Palestine. Yet these fateful decisions, which were to commit the British Government to so much, and which disposed of the destinies of a whole people as though they did not exist, or were mere sheep, were not even announced to the British public or to the world. The official communiques which refer to them on the 25th May, 1920 merely reported that "the Supreme Council met at 11 a.m. to-day at the Villa Devachan. There were present Signori Nitti and Scialoja, MM. Millerand and Berthelot, Mr. Lloyd George, Lord Curzon, Mr. Matsui and Mr. Underwood Johnson. The question of the Mandate for Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia was discussed".
Thus did Britain accept the solemn obligation to occupy and administer Palestine in such a way as to enable the Zionists to establish in it a National Home for the Jewish people. In such huggermugger fashion was the fate of Palestine decieded, again without the objection to the Zionist scheme being heard, and without a single thought being given to the wishes of the people of the country which was thus being disposed of, or to the principles on which the League of Nations was supposed to be based. The conspiracy in fact was proceeding according to plan and in the shady and furtive manner which befits conspiracies.