His Majesty's Zionist Emissary

On 20 June 1917, having seen the British Foreign Secretary the previous day, Chaim Weizmann, the chief negotiator on behalf of the Zionists, triumphantly wrote to his loyal patron, C.P. Scott:' ... Mr Balfour has promised to give us a document in which the British Government would express its sympathy with the Zionist Movement and its intention to support the creation of a Jewish National Home in Palestine'.' But, in the meantime, there were other developments, in the United States, that seemed to force the pace of action in a different direction. Among them, a factor peculiar to the American scene, was the opening of a cleavage between the Zionist Wilsonians and the supporters of the President in the Protestant establishment. Their interests began to diverge on two planes in relation to Russia and Turkey, and the American concern with both and in the course of time, they clashed in sharp opposition. But the estrangement developed gradually, and at first there was an attempt to maintain a kind of alliance between them, especially on the part of the Zionists. Russian affairs had always been a particular concern of American Jews, who had won the acknowledged right to press for the defence of human rights and equal justice in that country as a principle of American foreign policy.2 Now that a democratic regime had overthrown the Czar, American Jews considered themselves especially qualified as American emissaries to the Russian ally. Louis Brandeis himself was among the names prominently discussed in forming the American mission sent to the new regime; and labour leaders and other spokesmen of the immigrant Russian Jewish community were thought to have privileged access to the socialist and liberal elements in Russia who might exert a vital, not easily predictable influence over Russia's future policies on war and peace. But there were other elements who were equally interested in serving as the American channel to Russia.3 In the State Department

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