Typed Letter Signed on letterhead of the High Commissioner’s Office, Jerusalem, to Nachum Sokolow acknowledging Sokolow’s telegram of congratulation on the passing of the Palestine Mandate

Sir Herbert Samuel (1870-1963), of an aristocratic Anglo-Jewish family, was appointed in 1920 the first HIgh Commissioner of Palestine, in which capacity he would serve for the next five years. On the 22nd July, 1922, the League of Nations confirmed the Palestine Mandate. In doing so, the League cited the clause in the Balfour Declaration regarding the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine. It also recognized the leadership of the Zionist Organization as the “Jewish Agency,” which was to represent the interests of the Jewish People in Palestine. Nahum Sokolow (1859-1936) combined a literary bent with political activism, acting at different times in his long career as pioneer of a modern Hebrew journalism by way of the editorship of the Hebrew newsapaper Ha-Tzephirah and president of the World Zionist Organization. For the duration of World War I, Sokolow lived in England, where together with Chaim Weizmann, he agitated for what eventually came to be known as the Balfour Declaration. It is specifically to this political activity that Sir Herbert alludes in this letter when he writes (regarding the recently passed Mandate), “It is…to your work that this result is in no small measure due.” See EJ, Vol. IX, col. 338; Vol. XIV, cols. 797-800; Vol. XV, cols. 85-89