Typed Letter Signed on letterhead to Nachum Sokolow

BALFOUR, LORD ARTHUR JAMES

London

16th June, 1922

Lord Balfour (1848-1930) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was the author of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, promising a homeland in Palestine for the Jewish People. In this letter, Lord Balfour advises the Zionist activist Nachum Sokolow not make himself visible (“en evidence”) at the meeting of the Council to discuss the forthcoming Palestine Mandate. In what in hindsight appears a terrible misjudgment, he writes that “the Jews are but little interested” in “the question of the Holy Places.” As Balfour had correctly predicted, the Palestine Mandate did eventually become a reality, confirmed by the League of Nations a month later on the 22nd July, 1922