Original typescript of an article, titled "Can partition bring peace to Palestine?", with some manuscript corrections by W.S.C.

Sir Winston Spencer CHURCHILL (1874-1965)

Original carbon copy article, titled "Can partition bring peace to Palestine? by The Right Hon. Winston Churchill P.C. M.P. ", with manuscript corrections. [No place: undated but 1937]. 7pp. article with ms. corrections. "When a royal commission of very able, experienced men, with no Party bias, and no axes to grind, takes more than a year to study a problem with every advantage of information, it would be at once foolish and childish not to treat the recommendations with respect. The Government, which has appointed the Commission, is under a special obligation to pay the greatest attention to all they say. Nevertheless, with the beat will in the world, no one can disguise from himself that the plan of cutting Palestine into three parts is a counsel of despair. It is the expression of a feeling of weariness, and of a desire to lay down responsibility too baffling to be further endured. One wonders whether in reality, the difficulties of carrying out the Zionist scheme are so great as they are portrayed, and whether in fact there not been a very considerable measure of success. In the sixteen years that have passed since the mandate, many troubles have been overcome, and great developments have taken place in Palestine...“

Churchill's thoughts on Partition in the wake of the British Parliamentary Peel Commission of 1936-1937: he still had hopes that Arab and Jew would be able to live together in peace.

This article was also used as a chapter titled “Palestine Partition, July 23 1937” for “Step by Step, 1939, Winston S. Churchill Essays and Other Works” published in 1939.

Provenance: William Hillman (1895-1962); with a Litchfield auction house (c.1997-2005); purchased by the present owner.

William Hillman was born in New York City in 1895. His career as a journalist started in 1915, and from 1926 onwards he worked as a foreign correspondent for Universal Service and Hearst Newspapers in Paris, Berlin and London. From 1934 to 1939 he was Chief of Staff, Foreign Correspondents, for Hearst Newspapers, also reporting directly to Mr. Hearst.

He subsequently did a lot of work for President Truman, and the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum in Independence, MO, have a large holding of his papers (but largely concerned with this latter part of his career from 1951 until his death in 1962 , with a few items going back as far as 1934). See https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/personal-papers/william-hillman-papers

Yale also have some of Hillman’s papers, part of the Than Vanneman Ranck papers (see https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/resources/3673 ). These are probably more relevant as they concern the workings of the Hearst organization.

Hillman stored his files and papers in a barn that was ‘local’ to his New Milford, Ct. property. In effect these ‘disappeared’ when he died and only ‘re-surfaced’ in the 1990s. The dispute over their ownership was not sorted out until 2005, and they were subsequently put up for auction in Litchfield, Ct. The present lot is from this ‘New Milford group’.