867N.01/2068
Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Stettinius) to the Secretary of State
The Secretary: I enclose for your information Mr. Wallace Murray’s memorandum of October 15 and Mr. Merriam’s memorandum of the same date on the Palestine question.11 These memoranda relate especially to the suggestion which the President has made both to Colonel Harold B. Hoskins and to me that perhaps a solution to this problem would be a trusteeship by means of which Palestine would be made into a real holy land for all three religions by having trustees of the three faiths—Christian, Moslem and Jewish.
I am considerably impressed by the President’s philosophy on this problem as expressed in the enclosures. I should greatly appreciate your reaction to it. Do you feel the Department should favor this approach, and, if so, I am wondering if you think we should do anything to implement the idea now such as having preliminary discussions on it with the British or do you think such steps should await the termination of the war?12
- Ante, pp. 815 and 816, respectively.↩
- No record has been found in the Department’s files of Secretary Hull’s reaction to this memorandum. He does, however, in his Memoirs, vol. ii, p. 1534, make the observation that “… the impossibility of bringing the Jews and Arabs together on a common, friendly ground at that time, and the danger of stirring the sands of the Near East by a premature attempt to settle the question of Palestine made it wiser to postpone action until a more propitious time.”↩