'Edwin Samuel Montagu' (
February 6 1879 –
November 15 1924) was a
British Liberal politician, the second son and seventh child of
Samuel Montagu, 1st Baron Swaythling.
First elected as an
MP in
1906, Edwin Montagu was
Secretary of State for India between
1917 and
1922.
He was the second
Jew to enter the British
Cabinet but was strongly opposed to
Zionism, which he called "a mischievous political creed." He opposed the
Balfour Declaration, which he considered "
anti-semitic" and whose terms he managed to modify. In a memo to the cabinet, he outlined his views on Zionism thus: "...I assume that it means that Mahommedans and Christians are to make way for the Jews and that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England is with the English or France with the French, that Turks and other Mahommedans in Palestine will be regarded as foreigners, just in the same way as Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine. Perhaps also citizenship must be granted only as a result of a religious test."
[1] He was opposed by his cousin
Herbert Samuel, a moderate Zionist who became the first
High Commissioner of
Palestine.
References
1. Memorandum of Edwin Montagu on the Anti-Semitism of the Present (British) Government