Behind the Silken Curtain

A Personal Account of Anglo-American Diplomacy in Palestine and the Middle East

By Bartley C. Crum

Published by Simon and Schuster, New York, 1947

Preface

... I find it difficult to recall the detachment with which I once viewed the issues dealt with here. But I do not believe that anyone, having seen what I have seen, having been exposed to what I was exposed to, could have come to a conclusion far different from mine.

The four months I devoted to the Palestine question ... were, in a way, the most rewarding spiritually - as they were the most affecting emotionally - that I have ever known. ... I had the sense of comnig to grips with reality, which eludes most of us in the hustle and artificiality of modern living. ...

This book is, essentially, the record of one American's opportunity to look behind the scenes of current history and to learn for himself what forces shape the disturbed world in which we live. When I was appointed one of the six American members of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine, I was brought face to face with a problem which superficially might seem of a very special character, but which I was to learn, presents the greatest issues of our time in microcosm. I was to learn much about how gorvernments govern; about the prejudices that underlie the thinking and the decisions of the leaders of nations; about the way democracy must go if it is to survive; and particularly, about one of the great social and national experiments of our time, the tangled, tragic, yet deeply promising twentieth-century history of the Jews. I was to find, on what is commonly called the highest level, instances of duplicity and intrigue which would seem almost incredible to the ordinary masses of decent citizens everywhere, and I was to come to know far more intimately than I had ever dreamed, one or the chief battlefields in the struggle for world-wide freedom.

When I began, I had the usual Amercian ignorance of Palestine. ... I had a vague idea that Great Britain had done something rather reprehensible in issuing a White Paper in 1939, but I had no definite knowledge as to the terms of this document. ... I certainly did not appreciate fully the extent of its strategic importance: that today it is the key to power in the Middle East; that indeed, much in the Palestine problem has to be understood in terms of  the vast struggle for power ...

If Palestine were a detached trouble spot on an otherwise tranquil planet, there would be no excuse for this book.

... one of our great errors in thinking through our problems has been to relegate the tragedy of the Jewish people to the realm of special pleading. Even some Jewish groups have fallen into this pitfall ... It is not separate: it is a part of the struggle of democratic forces everywhere to make real the freedom to which our victory over the Fascist forces entitles us.

I think it clear that the history of our foreign policy proves that every time we fail to stand for freedom, we meet with disaster ...