Jews, Sovereignty, and International

Law: Ideology and Ambivalence in Early

Israeli Legal Diplomacy Rotem Giladi
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Jews, Sovereignty, and International Law
 T H E H I S T O RY A N D T H E O RY O F
I N T E R NAT IO NA L L AW

General Editors
NE HA L BHU TA
Chair in International Law, University of Edinburgh

A N THONY PAG DE N
Distinguished Professor, University of California Los Angeles

BE NJA MI N STR AUM A N N

ERC Professor of History, University of Zurich

In the past few decades the understanding of the relationship between nations has
undergone a radical transformation. The role of the traditional nation state is diminishing,
along with many of the traditional vocabularies that were once used to describe what
has been called, ever since Jeremy Bentham coined the phrase in 1780, ‘international
law’. The older boundaries between states are growing ever more fluid, new conceptions
and new languages have emerged that are slowly coming to replace the image of a world
of sovereign independent nation states that has dominated the study of international
relations since the early nineteenth century. This redefinition of the international arena
demands a new understanding of classical and contemporary questions in international
and legal theory. It is the editors’ conviction that the best way to achieve this is by bridging
the traditional divide between international legal theory, intellectual history, and legal
and political history. The aim of the series, therefore, is to provide a forum for historical
studies, from classical antiquity to the twenty-first century, that are theoretically informed
and for philosophical work that is historically conscious, in the hope that a new vision of
the rapidly evolving international world, its past and its possible future, may emerge.

previously published in this series

Remaking Central Europe
The League of Nations and the Former Habsburg Lands
Peter Becker and Natasha Wheatley
The Renaissance of Roman Colonization
Carlo Sigonio and the Making of Legal Colonial Discourse
Jeremia Pelgrom and Arthur Weststeijn
Britain and International Law in West Africa
The Practice of Empire
Inge Van Hulle
The Laws of War in International Thought
Pablo Kalmanovitz
A History of International Law in Italy
Edited by Giulio Bartolini
The New Histories of International Criminal Law Retrials
Edited by Immi Tallgren and Thomas Skouteris
Jews, Sovereignty, and
International Law
Ideology and Ambivalence in Early Israeli
Legal Diplomacy

ROTEM GILADI

1
 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Rotem Giladi 2021
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2021
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
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above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
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Crown copyright material is reproduced under Class Licence
Number C01P0000148 with the permission of OPSI
and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020952997
ISBN 978–0–19–885739–6
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198857396.001.0001
Printed and bound in the UK by
TJ Books Limited
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 Series Editors’ Preface

Recent years have seen a surge in interest in “Jewish International Lawyers,” and
their contribution to 20th century international law. A 2019 edited volume devoted
to Jewish Lawyers and International Law, profiles Kelsen, Lauterpacht, Henkin,
Schwelb, and Cassin, among others,1 while Philippe Sands’ popular book East
West Street, has drawn attention to the outsized significance of the Galician-Jewish
community in Lvov/Lviv/Lemberg for international law from 1920. Loeffler’s
2018 book, Rooted Cosmopolitans,2 argues for a close affinity between European
Jewry’s experience of persecution and discrimination, culminating in the failure
of the Minority Protection treaties and the Holocaust, and the project to institu-
tionalize international human rights in the post-1945 world order. But the rela-
tionship between Zionism and international law, in particular after the creation of
a sovereign Jewish State in Palestine, has received less attention. A quasi-official
Israeli account published in 1956,3 emphasized Israel’s universalist outlook and
cosmopolitan commitment to principles of the post-war international legal order,
such as the prohibition on genocide, international human rights, and the Refugees’
Convention.
In this deeply researched and original book, which draws extensively on Israeli
state archives and private papers, Dr Giladi paints a very different picture of Israel’s
approach to the institutionalization of international human rights jurisdiction,
to the Genocide Convention, and to the Refugees’ Convention. He asks the ques-
tion, did the “Zionist creed” of Israel’s first foreign ministry legal advisor, Shabtai
Rosenne (Sefton Rowson) and its first legal advisor to its UN Mission, Jacob
Robinson (Jokubas Robinzonas), shape Israel’s engagement with certain key devel-
opments in the post 1945 international legal order? Dr Giladi answers this question
through a narrative which interweaves prosopography with a detailed reconstruc-
tion of debates within the Israel government about these legal commitments.
Rosenne (d.2010) went on to a distinguished career as an international legal
academic, Ambassador and jurist, while Robinson retired from the Israeli Foreign
Ministry in 1957, but would work as a scholar of the Holocaust based in the
United States until his death in 1977. Giladi describes these two jurist diplomats as

1 James Loeffler and Moria Paz, eds, The Law of Strangers: Jewish Lawyers and International Law in
the Twentieth Century (Cambridge UP, 2019).
2 James Loeffler, Rooted Cosmpolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (Yale

UP, 2018).
3 Nathan Feinberg, Israel and the United Nations: Report of a Study Group Set Up by the Hebrew

University of Jerusalem (1956) discussed in this volume, 300-302.

vi Series Editors’ Preface

“torchbearers” and “the engines of Israel’s early international law diplomacy,” each
of which understood themselves by this stage of their lives as committed to polit-
ical Zionism and the idea of the Jewish state.
In Giladi’s argument, this Zionist creed leads to a different relationship with
international law, than that evident in the work of pre-war Jewish advocacy organ-
izations, or in the cosmopolitanism of a Lauterpacht or a Kelsen. He shows in great
detail how political Zionism’s posture towards international law was historically
ambivalent, understanding the European law of nations as excluding Jews from
statehood but also as a means through which Jews could become sovereign under
the right diplomatic, political, and military conditions. Once sovereignty had been
achieved, the critical political question was how international law could be a means
to enhance the contested political and moral legitimacy of Israel, and to preserve
its prerogatives to act as a homeland and safe haven for the Jewish people. Giladi
shows that these imperatives were debated and pursued by Rosenne, Robinson,
and their political superiors, leading to a combination of “disinterest, aversion
and hostility towards the right of petition and the human rights project at large,
the Genocide Convention and progenitor [Raphael Lemkin], and the Refugee
Convention and the international refugee regime.”4 The book’s bold claim is care-
fully substantiated, and vividly captures the at times turbulent internal Israeli gov-
ernment discussions, and the fascinating characters of the two main protagonists,
Rosenne and Robinson. There is no doubt that this book will be an important con-
tribution to Israeli and Jewish studies, to the history of Israel’s foreign policy, and to
the current debates about Jews, Zionism, and international law in the 20th century.
Nehal Bhuta, May 2021
Edinburgh

4 This volume, 293.

 Acknowledgements

I first encountered Jacob Robinson in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in James Hathaway’s

class on Refugee Law. His name, marked as a representative of Israel, appeared time
and again in the voluminous travaux préparatoires of the 1951 Refugee Convention
I had to read for nearly each class. I was intrigued: I had articled and practiced law,
for a time, at the Legal Adviser’s Office of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where
I met Shabtai Rosenne. Yet Robinson’s name commanded no familiarity. What
seemed like evidence of Israel’s early investment in the Refugee Convention, more-
over, did not cohere with media and civil society accounts of Israel’s present-day
treatment of asylum seekers. Nor did it seem congruent with what I thought I knew
of Israel’s outlook, in those early years, on the preferred destination of Jewish im-
migration. After completing my doctoral studies at the University of Michigan
Law School, I began tracing Robinson and Rosenne’s footsteps and, through their
stories, exploring Israel’s early attitude towards international law. This book is the
result.
In the course of the journey I have accumulated debts that cannot be repaid.
I can only acknowledge what I owe friends, colleagues, and mentors whose sup-
port made the book possible—and the journey as rewarding as it has been. I owe
a particular debt to Martti Koskenniemi for his insightful advice and enthusiastic
encouragement at a crucial point—preparing a book proposal and submitting
it to the right publisher. Martti’s work, besides, inspired my own turn to the his-
tory of international law and pointed at the vistas of political imagination it pre-
sented before the protagonists of this book, Jewish international lawyers invested
in the Jewish national project. I am equally indebted to Yfaat Weiss, the director
of the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture—Simon Dubnow in Leipzig,
and not only for the generous grant that made completing the book possible. The
Dubnow Institute, as it was known when I first was invited to join its ranks, became
my home away from home. Its vibrant intellectual community and traditional
interest in Jewish engagements with international law remain unique; no other
place could provide me the kind of alchemist laboratory required for synthesizing
modern Jewish history with the history of international law. For these, as for her
unwavering support and thoughtful advice, I am most grateful.
At Dubnow, my work also benefited immensely from the invaluable expertise
of Jörg Deventer, the Institute’s Deputy-Director, and Elizabeth Gallas, head of the
‘Law’ research unit, and other ressort members. Other fora where segments of the
book were presented are too numerous to recount here. I would however be remiss
if I failed to mention the research seminars of the Dubnow Institute and the annual
viii Acknowledgements

conferences of the Israeli Law and History Association. Each autumn, in Jerusalem
and Saxony, I got to test my ideas—and so contend with rigorous critique that so
often, if unacknowledged, informed the final shape things were to take.
Early research that found its way into this book was generously supported by the
Cherrick Center for the Study of Zionism, Yishuv and the State of Israel; the Minerva
Center for Human Rights; the Aharon Barak Center for Interdisciplinary Legal
Research; and the Nathan and Judith Feinberg Fund, all at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem.
Many selflessly placed their time and knowledge at my disposal in countless
conversations about international law and Jewish history; others read parts of the
manuscript or commented on earlier versions of the research; more than a few
willingly shared their archival findings, drafts of their work, or personal and family
memories. I am immensely grateful to all, and to the too many I no doubt neg-
lected to mention here. They are, in no particular order: Paul Mendes-Flohr, Ruth
Lapidoth, Steve Ratner, Yuval Shany, Samuel Moyn, Tomer Broude, Philippe Sands,
Louise Bethlehem, Gil Rubin, Iddo Nevo, Eliav Lieblich, Zohar Segev, Nathan
Kurz, Orit Rozin, Nicholas Berg, Dmitry Shumsky, Donald Bloxham, Philipp
Graf, Anat Stern (you were right: it was a book project), Piki Ish-Shalom, Gideon
Shimoni, Gadi Heimann, Motti Golani, Leora Bilski, Dirk Moses, Moshe Hirsch,
Marcos Silber, Michael Marrus, Hanna Yablonka, Laura Jockusch, Jochen von
Bernstorff, Alon Confino, the late Nissim Bar-Yaacov, Manuela Consonni, Neri
Horwitz, Scott Ury, Amos Goldberg, Nehal Bhuta, James Loeffler, Assaf Likovski,
Arie Dubnov, Momme Schwarz, Yoram Shachar, Marcel Müller, Roni Mikel, Derek
Penslar, Natasha Wheatley, Martin Jost, Mira Siegelberg, William Schabas, Eitan
Bar-Yosef, Markus Kirchhoff, and James Hathaway.
I was fortunate to receive the help, along the way, of dedicated research
assistants—Ayana Yacobovitch, Eitan Smith, Sara Cohen, Shani Dann, Irit Chen,
Sophie Rabenow, and Maya Kreiner, and benefit from the useful advice and stead-
fast support of the staff of numerous archives and libraries in The Hague, Leipzig,
Edinburgh, Jerusalem, New York, Washington, DC, Cincinnati, and elsewhere.
I am particularly indebted to Shabtai Rosenne’s family for sharing his papers, life,
and person with me.
At Oxford University Press, I was treated with never-ending patience, good
counsel, and boundless encouragement by the editorial team—Merel Alstein and
John Smallman—and series editors Nehal Bhuta, Anthony Pagden, and Benjamin
Straumann. I thank them for making the publishing experience so pain-free.
Another debt to acknowledge goes to the tolerant staff and owners of countless
laptop-friendly cafes in Edinburgh, Helsinki, Leipzig, Amsterdam and The Hague,
and several other cities—but first and foremost Jerusalem—where large portions
of this book were written. We all have our quirks and writing habits; mine seem to
require an idiosyncratic type of background noise that you orchestrated. Whatever
tips I left tried to but could never express enough my thanks.
 Acknowledgements ix

As our girls—young women now—used say at a time when they were much
younger and this book itself an infant: ‘best for last’. Only you know the full measure
of sacrifice this journey required from you and the vast tolerance you have shown
me. My parents, Dahlia and Nissim, my beloved partner Lauren, and our darling
daughters Daria, Rama, and Leila: this book is dedicated to you with infinite love
and endless gratitude.
Jerusalem, Winter 2020

Chapter 4 draws on and develops some materials and analysis published in

Rotem Giladi, ‘Not Our Salvation: Israel, the Genocide Convention, and the
World Court 1950–1951’ (2015) 26 Diplomacy & Statecraft 473; Chapters 6–7
draw on and develop some materials and analysis published in Rotem Giladi, ‘A
“Historical Commitment”? Identity and Ideology in Israel’s Attitude to the Refugee
Convention 1951–4’ (2014) 37 The International History Review 745.
 A Note on Translation and Archives

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from Hebrew are by the author.
I preferred to cite English titles of Hebrew works, where existing, over cumber-
some transliterations. The few Hebrew words used in this work, unaccompanied
by translation, have acquired general recognition: these include Gola or Galut
(Diaspora or exile); Knesset (Israel’s parliament); and Yishuv (the organized Jewish
community in mandatory Palestine).
Other than private archives—this is the case especially with Shabtai Rosenne’s
papers, which the Rosenne family kindly made available to me—this book draws
on materials in the Israel State Archive; the Central Zionist Archive; the Hebrew
University Archive; the Abba Eban Archive at the Harry S Truman Research Institute
for the Advancement of Peace, Hebrew University; and the National Library of
Israel—all in Jerusalem—as well as other archives and collections, including the
American Jewish Archives (Cincinnati); the American Jewish Historical Society
archive (New York); the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives
(Washington DC); and the New York Public Library.
 Abbreviations

AIU Alliance Israélite Universelle

AJA American Jewish Archives (Cincinnati)
AJC American Jewish Committee
AJHS American Jewish Historical Society (New York)
AJIL American Journal of International Law
ASIL Proc Proceedings of the American Society of International Law
Brit YB Intl L British Yearbook of International Law
CCJO Consultative Council of Jewish Organizations
CDJ Comité des Délégations Juives auprès de la Conference de la Paix
CP International Law, Being the Collected Papers of Hersch Lauterpacht
CUP Cambridge University Press
CV Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens
CZA Central Zionist Archive (Jerusalem)
ECOSOC United Nations Economic and Social Council
EJIL European Journal of International Law
GA United Nations General Assembly
GAOR General Assembly Official Records
HUA Hebrew University Archive (Jerusalem)
ICJ International Court of Justice
ICJ Rep International Court of Justice Reports
ICLQ International and Comparative Law Quarterly
ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross
IJA Institute of Jewish Affairs (New York)
ILQ International Law Quarterly
IOD International Organizations Division, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
IRO International Refugee Organization
ISA Israel State Archive (Jerusalem)
JA Jewish Agency for Palestine
MFA Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Israel)
NGO Non-Governmental Organization
NYPL New York Public Library
OUP Oxford University Press
PMC Permanent Mandates Commission
RdC Recueil de cours de l’académie de droit international
RGDIP Revue Générale de Droit International Public
SCOR Security Council Official Records
SG United Nations Secretary-General
UK United Kingdom
UN United Nations
xvi Abbreviations

UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

UNSCOP United Nations Special Committee on Palestine
UNTS United Nations Treaty Series
UP University Press
US United States
USHMM United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives (Washington DC)
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
WJC World Jewish Congress
YB Yearbook
 Prologue
‘With an Eye to the Past’, But No Longer ‘An
Object of International Law’
The Late Birth and Early Demise of the Jewish Yearbook of
International Law

In the spring of 1949, the 1948 volume of the Jewish Yearbook of International Law ap-
peared. It was printed in the newly declared state of Israel, by a Jerusalem publishing
house: civil strife, siege, and war had delayed the publication.1 In February 1948, a car-
bomb exploded in front of the offices of the Jerusalem Press. The resulting fire con-
sumed ‘some of the manuscripts which the editors had left there a few hours earlier’.2
Written in English, not Hebrew, it aimed for readership exceeding the local.3 This was
the first volume of the Jewish Yearbook. Its purpose, the editors explained, was to fi-
nally redress

The need for a periodical publication which would be devoted mainly to the study of
questions of international law affecting or of particular interest to the Jewish people
[which] has long been felt by all those who realized the sui generis character of those
questions.4

To anyone acquainted with the international legal aspects of the Jewish

Question—or with the engagement of Jewish jurists with international law—the
names of many contributors rang familiar. Some stood out in wider international
law circles. Two full-length articles were written by a former teacher and his former
student at the Law Faculty of the University of Vienna. Long before 1948, both had
found new, distant homes. Each would be described as the greatest international
lawyer of the twentieth century.5 The teacher, Hans Kelsen, now at the University

1 ‘Most of the contributions to this volume’, the editors reported, ‘were ready for print at the begin-

ning of 1948’; it was ‘originally intended’ that ‘the Yearbook would have appeared towards the middle
of ’ 1948: emphasis in the original; ‘Introduction’ (1948) 1 Jewish YB Intl L v, vi; Nathan Feinberg,
Reminiscences (Keter 1985) 150–1 (Hebrew).
2 ‘Introduction’ (n 1) vi.
3 Feinberg and Stoyanovsky to Jewish Agency Executive, 18 October 1946, A/306/6, Central Zionist

Archive (‘CZA’).
4 Emphasis in original; ‘Introduction’ (n 1) v.
5 Luís Duarte d’Almeida, John Gardner, and Leslie Green (eds), Kelsen Revisited: New Essays on

the Pure Theory of Law (Hart 2013) 1 (‘the twentieth century’s foremost jurist and legal philosopher’);
Philippe Sands, ‘My Legal Hero: Hersch Lauterpacht’ The Guardian (10 November 2010) http://www.

Jews, Sovereignty, and International Law. Rotem Giladi, Oxford University Press. © Rotem Giladi 2021.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198857396.003.0001
4 ‘With an Eye to the Past’

of California, wrote on ‘Collective and Individual Responsibility for Acts of State

in International Law’. The student, Hersch Lauterpacht—the Cambridge Whewell
Professor of International Law—authored ‘The Nationality of Denationalized
Persons’.6
Other essays dealt with issues whose Jewish aspect was more manifest—or more
openly stated. They were written by persons who had earned PhDs from Vienna,
Rome, and Paris; LLDs from London; and SJDs from Harvard. They were scholars,
barristers, and leaders of Jewish legal advocacy—including two professors at the
Hague Academy of International Law, as the table of contents presented those in-
vited to deliver courses at the prestigious institution. Of the others, several would
be so invited in later years.7
Nathan Feinberg, ‘Associate Professor of International Law and Relations at
the Hebrew University at Jerusalem’—one of the Yearbook’s editors—discussed
‘The Recognition of the Jewish People in International Law’.8 Jacob Stoyanovsky,
the other editor, had made a name as an expert on the mandate system. His
contribution addressed ‘Law and Policy Under the Palestine Mandate’.9 Ernst
Frankenstein, one of the Hague Academy Professors, explored ‘The Meaning of
the Term “National Home for the Jewish People” ’.10 Benjamin Akzin, who boasted
three doctoral degrees and had served, in the late 1930s, as personal secretary to
Vladimir Jabotinsky—leader of revisionist Zionism—commented on ‘The United
Nations and Palestine’.11
Others approached Jewish questions in broader normative contexts. Dr Jacob
Robinson, ‘Director, Institute of Jewish Affairs’ (‘IJA’) in New York, marked the
transition ‘From Protection of Minorities to Promotion of Human Rights’.12 His
brother Nehemiah, the head of the Indemnification Office at the World Jewish
Congress (‘WJC’), discussed ‘Reparation and Restitution in International Law as
Affecting Jews’.13 Norman Bentwich—a second-generation Zionist lawyer, former
Attorney-General of mandatory Palestine, and, since 1932, the Weizmann Chair of

theguardian.com/law/2010/nov/10/my-legal-hero-hersch-lauterpacht (‘stands out as the great inter-

national jurist of the 20th century’) accessed 20 January 2020; Philippe Sands, East West Street: On the
Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (Knopf 2016); Hans Kelsen, ‘Tribute to Sir Hersch
Lauterpacht’ (1961) 10 ICLQ 1, 2–3.

6 Hans Kelsen, ‘Collective and Individual Responsibility for Acts of State in International Law’

(1948) 1 Jewish YB Intl L 226; Hersch Lauterpacht, ‘The Nationality of Denationalized Persons’ (1948) 1
Jewish YB Intl L 164.
7 ‘Contents’ (1948) 1 Jewish YB Intl L vii–viii.
8 (1948) 1 Jewish YB Intl L 1.
9 ibid, 42.
10 ibid, 27.
11 ibid, 87.
12 ibid, 115.
13 ibid, 186.
 ‘With an Eye to the Past’ 5

International Peace at the Hebrew University14—commented on the ‘International

Refugee Office of the United Nations’.15 Anatole Goldstein, an IJA researcher,
wrote on ‘Crimes Against Humanity—Some Jewish Aspects’.16
Other contributors, mostly of lesser renown, added shorter ‘Notes’ on matters
that tended towards the parochial. One dealt with ‘Habeas Corpus in Palestine’;17
another with ‘Immigrant Ships before the Palestine Courts’.18 A third discussed
‘The Boycott of “Zionist Goods” by the Arab League’.19 The penultimate note,
penned by Sefton WD Rowson, dealt with ‘The Abolition of Nazi and Fascist Anti-
Jewish Legislation by British Military Administrations of the Second World War’.20
Marc M Vishniak, the other Hague Academy Professor, wrote the last note on
‘Post-War Legislation against Racial Hatred’.21
The contributors were all men. All were born Jewish.22 Many were Zionist or at
least harboured sympathy to the Jewish national revival project in Palestine.23 All
had law degrees. Many were versed in Jewish affairs, old hands of Jewish politics,
advocacy, and diplomacy. None was now living in the country of his birth.
The Jewish Yearbook was a polyglot affair. Correspondence was conducted in
Hebrew, Yiddish, English, German, French, Russian, and Polish. It was, equally,
a cosmopolitan affair, even if that correspondence passed over sites now erased
from the map of Jewish demography: Berlin, Vienna, Warsaw, Lvov. The collective
work of the contributors was a testimony to Jewish intellectual achievement, their
biographies a monument to Jewish persecution, displacement, and annihilation.
Together, their essays and itineraries sketched an inventory of international law’s
engagement with the Jewish Question—and of the Jewish engagement with inter-
national law—since the nineteenth century.

14 Norman Bentwich, My 77 Years: An Account of my Life and Times 1883–1960 (Jewish Publication

Society of America 1962) 97–8. Chaim Weizmann, the elderly Zionist leader, was appointed Israel’s first
President in February 1949.
15 (1948) 1 Jewish YB Intl L 152.
16 ibid, 206.
17 Edward David Goitein, ‘Habeas Corpus in Palestine’ (1948) 1 Jewish YB Intl L 240.
18 Arnold M Apelbom, ‘Immigrant Ships before the Palestine Courts’ (1948) 1 Jewish YB Intl L 247.
19 Edoardo Vitta, ‘The Boycott of “Zionist Goods” by the Arab League’ (1948) 1 Jewish YB Intl L 253.
20 (1948) 1 Jewish YB Intl L 261.
21 ibid, 268.
22 Kelsen converted to Catholicism in 1905, and became a Lutheran in 1912, but reportedly retained

or regained a Jewish identity: Reut Yael Paz, A Gateway between a Distant God and a Cruel World: The
Contribution of Jewish German-Speaking Scholars to International Law (Brill 2012) 116; Feinberg,
Reminiscences (n 1) 91 (Kelsen regretting assimilation in 1932); Nathan Feinberg, ‘The Judaism of
Hans Kelsen’ in Nathan Feinberg, Essays on Jewish Issues of Our Times (Dvir 1980) (Hebrew) 235, 236
(‘very sympathetic to Jewish people’s revival movement and supported renewal of its political life in its
homeland’); cf Eliav Lieblich, ‘Assimilation Through Law: Hans Kelsen and the Jewish Experience’ in
James Loeffler and Moria Paz (eds), The Law of Strangers: Jewish Lawyers and International Law in the
Twentieth Century (CUP 2019) 51.
23 Chs 2–3 discuss Lauterpacht’s Zionism; Eliav Leiblich and Yoram Shachar, ‘Cosmopolitanism at a

Crossroads: Hersch Lauterpacht and the Israeli Declaration of Independence’ (2014) 84 Brit YB Intl L 1;
James Loeffler, ‘The “Natural Right of the Jewish People”: Zionism, International Law, and the Paradox
of Hersch Zvi Lauterpacht’ in Loeffler and Paz (n 22) 23.
6 ‘With an Eye to the Past’

Taking stock was a deliberate choice. The editors elected to characterize the
volume as:

[A]n attempt . . . to sum up the unique position of the Jewish people in a series of
articles, notes and documents, some of which deal with various questions arising
out of the Palestine Mandate, while others relate to more general questions which
present certain specifically Jewish aspects or in which the Jewish people as a
whole has a particular interest.24

The ‘plan of this volume has been conceived’, they confided, ‘with an eye to the past
rather than to the future’. The issues addressed by the various contributors sought
to capture, or ‘sum up’, the past.25 One reviewer was blunt: the establishment of the
State of Israel, wrote Francis A Mann, another Jewish jurist-refugee, ‘resulted in
depriving many of the articles included in this volume of their topical character so
that they have now an historical interest only’.26 Change had come.
Publishing a Jewish yearbook of international law, however, was a sign of time
present.27 The past portrayed by the editors’ Introduction was one that clearly
culminated in the present. Documents of import, reproduced at the end of the
volume, included, first, the 1947 Partition Resolution of the United Nations
(‘UN’) General Assembly;28 it was followed by the texts (and annexes) of the
Assembly Resolutions adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
the Genocide Convention of 10 and 9 December 1948, respectively.29 Another
document the editors deemed too significant for an annex. They placed Israel’s
Declaration of Independence immediately after their introduction of the volume,
at the end of a four-page essay they authored.30
The volume sought to set past and present apart. The Introduction explicitly
marked the transition of the Jewish people. In the past, the editors observed,
‘they were merely the object, never the subject, of international law’. They were,
the editors emphasized, the ‘object of discriminatory legislative and administrative
measures which went beyond the bounds of domestic jurisdiction’. They were, the

24Emphasis added; ‘Introduction’ (n 1) v.

25
ibid.
26 Francis A Mann, ‘Book Review’ (1950) 3 ICLQ 608, 609. Lawrence Collins, ‘F. A. Mann (1907–

1991)’ in Jack Beatson and Reinhard Zimmermann (eds), Jurists Uprooted: German-Speaking Emigré
Lawyers in Twentieth Century Britain (OUP 2004).
27 ‘[S]uch a book, the first of its kind in the State of Israel, with the participation of the greatest of sci-

entists of the world . . . has also a great propaganda [value] to the Hebrew University—at a time when the
country was absorbed by life-or-death war the men of science . . . including the . . . editor, did not stop
dealing with matters of the highest import to the scientific world’: Rubin Mass Publishing to Hebrew
University Management, 14 June 1949, Feinberg–Personal File 1945–55 vol 2, Hebrew University
Archive (‘HUA’).
28 1 Jewish YB Intl L 273.
29 ibid, 293, 300.
30 ‘Israel’s Declaration of Independence’ (1948) 1 Jewish YB Intl L xi.
 ‘With an Eye to the Past’ 7

editors recalled, no more than ‘the object of international conferences, of diplo-

matic notes, of humanitarian interventions, and more recently, of judicial cogni-
zance by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg’. They were an ‘object of
the international system of the protection of minorities and of the internationally
secured national home in Palestine’. The essence of the Jewish past could thus be
captured by a simple international law distinction that was, nonetheless, pregnant
with significance: ‘At all the times they were merely the object, never the subject, of
international law.’31
The present, however, brought a radical transformation.32 All that was in the
past: the Jewish people could not ‘have been anything else before’, the editors reported,
‘the establishment of the State of Israel’.33 The volume may have dealt with the past,
but it was conceived and prepared out of an acute, pervasive sense of the present that
sought to note, mark, and seal off the past. In a sense, the first volume of the Jewish
Yearbook aimed to render obsolete Jewish objecthood, the very object of its inquiry.
The present was paramount. The editors’ essay on Israel’s Declaration of
Independence spoke of ‘the centuries of world wide dispersion’, of past ‘moral and
physical oppression . . . repeated persecutions and pogroms’ culminating ‘in the
Nazi atrocities which resulted in the massacre of six millions’ Jews.34 But much of
what they wrote pertained to the circumstances of Israel’s birth, stressed its legal
foundation in ‘positive international law’, and decried the UN’s failure ‘to prevent
that war or even to name the aggressor’.35 Discussing, last, Israel’s impending UN
admission, the editors recorded the formalities of transition. Quoting the opening
paragraph of the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence, deliberately ref-
erenced by Israel’s own constituent document,36 the editors proceeded to proclaim:

On joining the family of nations the Jewish State will have assumed ‘among the
powers of the earth the separate and equal station’ of which the Jewish people was
deprived for centuries.
In law and in fact Israel has come to stay.37

31 Emphases added; ‘Introduction’ (n 1) v. Feinberg’s contribution (n 8) systematically delved into

these themes.
32 Uri Yadin, ‘The Jewish Question in the Eyes of International Law’ (1949) 7 BeTerem: A Quarterly

for Policy, Social Affairs and Critique 63 (Hebrew) (‘no rung in a ladder, no “another step forward”, but
a total, fundamental revolution . . . From people-no people, an entirely exceptional creature, we have
turned into a nation like all others’).
33 Emphasis added; ‘Introduction’ (n 1) v.
34 ‘Israel’s Declaration’ (n 30) xi.
35 ibid, x.
36 ‘[T]he necessity of solving the problem of the homelessness and lack of independence of the Jewish

people by re-establishing the Jewish State which . . . would endow the Jewish people with equality of
status within the family of nations’: ‘Israel’s Declaration’ (n 30) xiii. See Yoram Shachar, ‘Jefferson goes
East: the American Origins of the Israeli Declaration of Independence’ (2009) 10 Theoretical Inquiries
in Law 589.
37 ‘Israel’s Declaration’ (n 30) x.
8 ‘With an Eye to the Past’

Still subscribing, evidently, to a view of international law that withheld sovereign

capacity from those who had no knowledge of its rules,38 the very publication of
the Jewish Yearbook signified a sovereign claim.39 With its appearance, the non-
sovereign Jewish past was put to rest.
Yet the 1948 volume of the Yearbook also contained signs of things to come. In
the Introduction, the editors refused to prophesize any future ‘different approach’ to
international law, ‘the exact implications of which the editors cannot now foresee
and in respect of which they cannot now commit themselves’.40 ‘Time alone’, yet
unknown to them, would ‘determine the nature and scope of the future volumes of
the Yearbook or of any other international law periodical which may be published
in Israel’.41 They would not predict the nature of future Jewish engagement with
international law. Yet for all their circumspection, they had no doubt that the pre-
sent and future, not the past, were to be the real focus of attention henceforth. ‘In
the meantime’, they wrote, we ‘trust that some useful purpose will have been served
by the publication of the present volume’42 dedicated, after all, to the past. For all its
potential usefulness, this volume was to be a record of a past now dead.
There were other signs of the future, many yet unknown to the editors.
Stoyanovsky would dedicate himself to private practice. Feinberg would soon
be appointed the first Dean of the Law Faculty of the Hebrew University.43
Akzin would follow him in that position, for three different terms.44 The author
of one note, Edward David Goitein, would soon become Israel’s first envoy to
South Africa. Appointed to Israel’s Supreme Court in 1953, he would later serve
as an ad hoc judge in Israel’s claim against Bulgaria at the International Court
of Justice.45 Arnold Apelbom, the author of another note, would be the first ex-
ecutive editor of the Israel Law Review, founded by the Hebrew University Law
Faculty in 1966.46 While his academic pursuits were secondary, he also left strong
impressions on students of international law and English law as ‘Visiting teacher
at the Hebrew University, Tel Aviv branch’ (later, the Tel Aviv University).47

38
Martti Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–
1960 (CUP 2001).
39 Captured by Yadin (n 32) 63 (‘from the object of problems we have turned into a contributing

member to that noble creation called international law’).

40 ‘Introduction’ (n 1) v.
41 ibid.
42 ibid.
43 Assaf Likhovski, ‘Law Studies at the Hebrew University during the British Mandate Period’ in

Hagit Lavsky (ed), The History of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: A Period of Consolidation and
Growth (Magnes 2005) 543 (Hebrew); Rotem Giladi, ‘At the Sovereign Turn: International Law at the
Hebrew University Law Faculty Early Years’ in Yfaat Weiss and Uzi Rebhun (eds), The History of the
Hebrew University in Jerusalem, vol 5 (forthcoming Magnes 2021) (Hebrew).
44 Later, he founded the Hebrew University’s Political Science Department and became Haifa

University’s first rector.

45 Case Concerning the Aerial Incident of 27 July 1955 (Israel v Bulgaria) (Preliminary Objections,

Judgment) [1959] ICJ Rep 127; Dissenting Opinion of Judge Goitein 195.
46 (1966) 1 Isr L Rev; Kelsen, Bentwich, and Apelbom wrote for the first volume.
47 Aviezer Chelouche, Who Was That Apfelbaum (Rahel Publishing 1999) 326–39 (Hebrew);

Editorial Board, ‘Arnold M. Apelbom—In Memoriam’ (1969) 4 Isr L Rev 173; email from Prof Yoram
 ‘With an Eye to the Past’ 9

Some of the contributors fast became members of Israel’s academic, judicial, and
diplomatic elite.
For two of the contributors, the path for the future was already largely deter-
mined by the time the Yearbook was published. Lithuania-born Jacob Robinson
(1889–1977) was a veteran of Jewish politics and international law advocacy.48
Years later, Hannah Arendt would mock his credentials as an ‘eminent authority
on international law’ in the polemic that followed the trial of Adolf Eichmann. She
was likely correct in questioning Robinson’s eminence; but this largely forgotten
jurist was, without a doubt, an international law authority.49 In 1947, his expertise
and experience proved indispensable for the cause of the Jewish state. Though pre-
sented in the Yearbook as the Director of the New York-based IJA, that year he
was loaned to the Jewish Agency’s UN mission, joining a small band of would-
be diplomats—otherwise bereft of any experience in multilateral diplomacy or
international institutions—campaigning for the establishment of a Jewish state.50
Following Israel’s independence, at age 59, he was appointed legal adviser to Israel’s
UN mission. He would remain in that post until his retirement, in 1957. In the
years it took to birth the Yearbook he had served, effectively, as a one-man edi-
torial board.
Another contributor who, by 1949, was set in his future career path was the
author of the penultimate note. Probably the youngest of the authors, in 1949 he
could boast rather modest credentials. ‘S.W.D. Rowson LL.B.’, as he was introduced
in the Yearbook, was born in London three weeks before the Balfour Declaration
proclaiming His Majesty’s sympathy to the Jewish ‘National Home’ policy in
Palestine. At the end of 1947 he immigrated to Palestine to work for the Jewish
Agency. Following independence, he was appointed the first legal adviser to Israel’s
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (‘MFA’), a post he held until 1967. Under a new name,
he would gain renown, in years to come, as an international law scholar and an
expert on, among other matters, the International Court of Justice: Sefton Wilfred
David Rowson became Shabtai Rosenne (1917–2010).51 Together, Robinson and
Rosenne would play a central role in conceiving, debating, shaping, and putting
into effect the new state’s outlook on and practice of international law in the decade
that would follow and beyond. They were the main protagonists of the future that
the editors would not foresee.

Sachar to author (29 June 2014); Uri Kesari, ‘The Kfar Shmaryahu Gentleman’ Ha’aretz (11 April 1969)
(Hebrew).

48 Ch 5 delves into Robinson’s background.

49 cf Hanna Arendt, ‘The Formidable Dr. Robinson: A Reply’ New York Review of Books (20
January 1966).
50 Shabtai Rosenne, ‘Jacob Robinson—In Memoriam’ (1978) 8 Isr L Rev 287; Moshe Sharett, At the

Threshold of Statehood: 1946–1949 (Am Oved 1958) (Hebrew).

51 Ch 1 provides more background on Rosenne; Rotem Giladi, ‘Shabtai Rosenne: The Transformation

of Sefton Rowson’ in Loeffler and Paz (n 22) 221.

10 ‘With an Eye to the Past’

One portent of things to come could be read in the fate of the Jewish Yearbook
itself. The editors’ optimism with regard to ‘future volumes’ proved unwarranted.
There were, even prior to publication, words of encouragement. Reception was, on
the whole, favourable:52 ‘the appearance of The Jewish Yearbook of International
Law’, reported a member of the Yale Law Journal editorial board, was ‘an important
service’ to the ‘advancement of legal scholarship’, and a ‘significant event’.53 If re-
viewers noted that some of the materials were not original, or that legislative and
institutional developments at the UN rendered some of the contributions a tad
outdated, they did not hold it against the editors.54 One regretted that Lauterpacht’s
contribution was included in ‘a publication to which the general reader will not
have ready access’.55 Another, however, considered the Yearbook ‘evidence that
Israel can now cast its lot with formalized law’; that its ‘outlook is international’;
and that its ‘[e]mphasis on international law’ demonstrated ‘the solicitude for
international law typical of the infant State’.56 In Israel, the volume’s value for law-
yers and diplomats, as well as ‘wider audiences, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, in and
outside the country’ was noted.57 A year after the Yearbook was published, Rosenne
wrote to Moshe Sharett, Israel’s first Minister of Foreign Affairs, that the Yearbook
‘acquired reputation in the greater legal world and undoubtedly raised the prestige
of Jewish Science in this area’.58
‘A few days’ after Yearbook was published, Rosenne sought to secure MFA sup-
port for the project, on the assumption that it would continue.59 Feinberg and
Stoyanovsky, however, refused to commit themselves.60 Neither was enthused, ap-
parently, by their collaboration; there were hints of disagreements over the role of an
editor.61 They were exhausted with deferrals, rejections, and other aggravations of
editorial life. Feinberg’s attention, besides, was turning to more pressing projects.62

52 ‘Enthusiastic’, in Feinberg, Reminiscences (n 1) 151; encouragements or congratulatory letters re-

ceived from international law luminaries including eg Manley O Hudson, Hersch Lauterpacht, Georges
Scelle, Georg Schwarzenberger, Maurice Bourquin, Arthur Goodhart, Arnold McNair, JHW Verzijl,
William Rappard; Feinberg and Stoyanovsky, Jewish Yearbook of International Law, December 1946,
A/306/6, CZA. Stoyanovsky, however, was dismayed that the Yearbook ‘was received with seeming
aloofness and did not evoke the response hoped for’: Stoyanovsky to Rosenne, 29 October 1951, FM–
1816/1, Israel State Archive (‘ISA’).
53 Arthur M Michaelson, ‘Book Review’ (1950) 59 Yale LJ 389.
54 Mann (n 26) 609–10; Lawrence Preuss, ‘Book Review’ (1951) 45 AJIL 619 (‘Forthcoming is-

sues . . . will undoubtedly have a more general content; the present volume has exceptional value in col-
lecting a wide range of material upon some of the most interesting legal problems of our time’).
55 Mann (n 26) 609.
56 Michaelson (n 53) 389, 391. Arthur Goodhart, ‘International Law’ Jewish Chronicle (25 November

1949) 12–13.
57 Yadin (n 32) 63, who ‘later served as chief codifier of the law of Israel’: Leiblich and Shachar (n

23) 10.
58 Rosenne to Sharett, 14 June 1950, FM–1816/1, ISA.
59 Rosenne to Sharett, 27 April 1949, FM–1816/1, ISA.
60 Feinberg, Reminiscences (n 1) 151–2; Stoyanovsky to Rosenne, 29 October 1951 (n 52).
61 Feinberg, Reminiscences (n 1) 150, who nonetheless admired Stoyanovsky’s skills: see also Nathan

Feinberg, ‘In Memoriam—Dr. Jacob Stoyanovsky’ in Essays on Jewish Issues of Our Times (Dvir 1980)
239, 240 (Hebrew).
62 Rosenne to Robinson, 10 December 1950, FM–1816/1, ISA.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Cousin Alice kissed Anne and Anne kissed Cousin Alice; and then
other people pressed forward and Anne walked away. And when she
looked at the piece of money in her hand it was a sovereign.
All’s well that ends well, says Shakespeare, but of course it was very
unwise and very unnecessary of Anne to have leaned out of the
window of that nice clean family compartment and invited into it a
dirty old pedlar woman, even if she was very infirm and unhappy and
there was no room anywhere else. We must, as Mr. Bayes remarked
on the way home—his words not very clear by reason of his eating
all the time one of the chocolate creams which Anne had bought with
part of her sovereign for the family at the Hippodrome. “We must,”
said Mr. Bayes—and the others all agreed with him—“we must, dear
Anne, be a little careful how we exercise even so amiable a quality
as kindness of heart. I am very glad to see you always so ready to
be nice and helpful to others, but your brain has been given you to a
large extent to control your impulses. Never forget that.”
Here Mr. Bayes took another chocolate, and very soon afterwards
their station was reached.
But did Anne profit by her father’s excellent advice? We shall soon
see, for now I come to the worst adventure into which her terrible
good nature has ever led her.
You must know that the Bayeses were not rich, although they had
rich relations and really never wanted for anything. But they lived on
as little as possible, and on two or three mornings every week Mr.
Bayes, after reading his letters, would remark that all his investments
were going wrong and they would soon be in the workhouse. That
was, of course, only his way; but they could not have many treats, or
many visitors, and it caused them to look with very longing eyes on
the young Calderons, the children of the gentleman that had taken
the Hall, the great house near by, for August and September, who
used to gallop by on their ponies, and play golf and cricket in their
park, and who never seemed to want for anything.
To know the Calderon family was the Bayeses’ great desire, but their
mother explained that it would not be right to call on strangers
staying for so short a time, and nothing therefore could be done:
which was particularly trying because, owing to the absence of
something called dividends, the visit to Sea View, said Mr. Bayes,
was this year an impossibility.
Such was the state of affairs on the morning of August 21, when
Anne was working in her garden just under the wall which separated
Mr. Bayes’s property from the high road. She was steadily pulling up
weeds after the rain, and thinking how nice the sun made the earth
smell, when she heard the beating of hoofs, and the scrunching of
wheels on the road, and a murmur of happy voices young and old.
And then she heard a man’s voice call out “Stop!” and the horses
were pulled up.
“What is it, father?” she heard a girl’s voice say.
And then the man’s voice replied, “We shall have to go back. I’ve just
remembered that no cups and saucers were put in.”
“Oh no, don’t let’s go back,” said one child’s voice after another. “It’s
so hot, and it doesn’t really matter. We can drink out of the glasses.”
“No,” said the father’s voice again, “we must go back. You forget that
the Richardsons are going to meet us there, and they will want tea
and want it properly served. We must have at least six cups and
saucers. Turn round, John!”
 “PLEASE DON’T TROUBLE TO GO BACK. I’LL LEND YOU
THE CUPS AND SAUCERS.”
By this time, Anne, who had been struggling to set a ladder against
the wall, had got it to stand still and climbed to the top, and just as
John began to turn the horses of the carriage she called out:
“Please don’t trouble to go back. I’ll lend you the cups and saucers. I
won’t be gone a minute”; and before anyone could reply she was
down the ladder and running to the house.
Perhaps if she had not been in such a hurry, and had not been so
genuinely troubled to think of the picnic party spoiling their pleasure
by going back to the Hall (a horrid thing to do, as Anne remembered,
after leaving it so gaily), she would have asked herself several
questions—such as, “What right have I to offer to lend strangers
cups and saucers belonging to my parents?” and “Is my head
properly controlling my impulse?” and so forth. But Anne had no time
for inquiries like that: all she could think of was getting the cups and
saucers as soon as possible, and returning with them so as to save
those nice picnic people from having to go back again.
Just before she reached the house, however, she remembered that
old Martha, the cook, was in a very bad temper that morning, and
would certainly refuse to give them up; but Anne also remembered at
the same instant that there was in the drawing-room a cabinet full of
cups and saucers, which no one ever used, but which now and then
a visitor took out and examined underneath, and she decided to take
six of these instead—so hastily seizing a basket from a hook in the
hall she took what she wanted from the cabinet and ran back panting
to the gate leading to the road.
To her immense delight the carriage was still standing there, and she
hastened to hand the basket to the gentleman who was waiting in
the road to receive it.
“Well, you are a little brick,” he said, “and how hot it has made you.”
Anne gasped out something in reply, but not at all comfortably,
because for one thing she was out of breath, and for another the
children in the carriage were all looking at her very hard. But at this
moment the gentleman, who had been examining the basket, gave a
low whistle and then called to one of the ladies to come and speak to
him. She got out of the carriage and walked a little way apart with the
gentleman, who showed her something in the basket and talked very
earnestly. Then all of a sudden he called to the children to get out
and play for a little while until he and their mother came back, and
taking Anne’s hand he asked her if she would lead him and his wife
to her mother, as he had something to say to her, and they all three
went off through the gate to the house.
The gentleman talked gaily as they went, and the lady held Anne’s
other hand very softly, and so they came to Mr. Bayes’s study, where
he was writing, Mrs. Bayes and the other children being in
Leatherhead shopping. The gentleman and Mr. Bayes then talked
together, while Anne led the lady about the garden until she was
suddenly sent for to change her clothes—why, you shall hear.
What happened at the interview between Mr. Bayes and the
gentleman can best be told by repeating the conversation between
Mr. and Mrs. Bayes and the children at lunch.
“But where’s Anne?” said Mrs. Bayes, as the servant removed the
cover from the joint.
“Anne,” said Mr. Bayes, “Anne? Oh, yes, Anne has gone for a
picnic.”
“For a picnic!” cried the whole family.
“Yes,” said Mr. Bayes, “for a picnic with the people staying at the
Hall.”
Mrs. Bayes sat back with a gasp, and the children’s mouths opened
so wide you could have posted letters in them.
“Yes,” said Mr. Bayes. “She was working in her garden when she
heard Mr. Calderon order the driver to go back because cups and
saucers had been forgotten. He is a very nice fellow, by the way. I
find we were at Oxford together, although I did not know him there,
but he has been intimate with Charley for years. It is the same
Calderon, the architect, that built your uncle’s house at Chichester.”
“Do go on, father,” said the children.
“Well,” said Mr. Bayes, “what does that little duffing Anne do but sing
out that they were not to go back, but wait a minute, and she would
lend them the cups and saucers.”
“Yes, yes, go on!”
“Well, and fearing that Martha—very properly—wouldn’t let her have
any for the party, what does she do but take six of the very best of
my Crown Derby from the cabinet in the drawing-room and scamper
back with them!”
“My love,” said Mrs. Bayes, “the Crown Derby that Uncle Mortimer
left us?”
“Yes, the Crown Derby, valued only a month ago at two guineas
apiece. Off she runs with it in a basket and hands it over to Mr. or
Mrs. Calderon. Mrs. Calderon, by the way, I like. She wants you to
call. I said you’d go to-morrow.”
“Do go on, father!”
“Well, where was I? Oh yes. The Calderons no sooner saw the china
than they realized what had happened, and brought it back to me. By
a miracle there wasn’t a chip on it. Of course, I said I was very much
obliged to them, and I offered some ordinary crockery, but Calderon
said they would take it only on condition that Anne accompanied it in
the capacity of caretaker and brought it back. So she went.”
“I hope she changed her frock,” said Mrs. Bayes.
“I believe she did,” said Mr. Bayes. “They’ve gone to Chidley Woods,
where the Richardsons will meet them, and they won’t be back till
six. Now perhaps I may get on with my lunch.”

By the following Saturday evening, I may add, the Bayes children

and the Calderon children were very friendly, and Arthur Lloyd Bayes
had fallen off Harold Armiger Calderon’s pony twice.
THE THOUSAND THREEPENNY
BITS
 THE
THOUSAND THREEPENNY BITS
I
Once upon a time there was a little girl named Alison Muirhead, and
she had a doll named Rosamund and a dog named Thomson. The
dog was an Aberdeen terrier, and he came from Aberdeen by train in
the care of the guard, and he rarely did what he was told, which is
the way of Aberdeens, as you have perhaps discovered.
Alison used to take her doll and Thomson every day into Kensington
Gardens, and when they were well inside the Gardens, opposite the
tulips and the new statue of William III., she used to unclasp the
catch of Thomson’s lead and let him run, doing her best to keep an
eye on him. This was not easy, for Thomson was a sociable dog, and
he rushed after every other dog he saw, and either told them the
latest dog joke or heard it, and Alison was often in despair to get him
back.
If, however, Thomson had been an angel of a dog this story would
never have been written, because it was wholly owing to his
naughtiness that Alison and the Old Gentleman met.
The Old Gentleman used also to go into the Gardens on every fine
day and sit on one of the seats by the may-trees between the long
bulb walk and the Round Pond, with his back to the Albert Memorial.
Not that he was one of those persons who always click their tongues
when the Albert Memorial is mentioned, for, as a matter of fact, he
did not mind the gold on it at all, and he really liked the groups of
Asia and Europe and India at the corners, with the nice friendly
elephant and camel in them; but he turned his back on the Memorial
because the seat was set that way, and he liked also, when he
raised his eyes from his book, to see so much green grass, and in
the distance the yachtsmen running round the Round Pond to
prevent their vessels wrecking themselves on the cement.
Alison had noticed the Old Gentleman for a long time before they
had become acquainted, and he had noticed her, and was much
attracted by her quiet little ways with Rosamund, and her calm, if
despairing, pursuit of Thomson; and he liked her, too, for never
playing diabolo.
But it was not until one day that Thomson broke loose at the very
gate of the Gardens with his lead still on him, and in course of time
ran right under the Old Gentleman’s legs and caught the chain in
one of the eyelet flaps of his laced boots, that Alison and he came to
speak.
“Ha, ha!” said the Old Gentleman to Thomson, “I’ve got you now.
And I shall hold you tight till your mistress comes.”
Alison was still a long way off. Thomson said nothing, but tugged at
the chain.
“I’ve been watching you for a long time, Mr. Thomson,” said the Old
Gentleman, “and I have come to the conclusion that you are a bad
dog. You don’t care for anyone. You do what you want to do and
nothing else.” Thomson lay down and put out a yard and a half of
pink tongue. Alison came nearer.
“If you were my dog,” the Old Gentleman continued, “do you know
what I should do? I should thrash you.” Thomson began to snore.
Alison at this point came up, and Thomson sprang to his feet and
affected to be pleased to see her.
“Thank you ever so much,” Alison said to the Old Gentleman. “But
however did you catch him?”
“I didn’t catch him,” said the Old Gentleman, “he caught me. Come
and sit down and rest yourself.”
So Alison sat down, and Thomson laid his wicked cheek against her
boot, and that was the beginning of the acquaintance.
The next day when she went into the Gardens Alison looked for the
Old Gentleman, and sure enough there he was, and seeing there
was no one beside him, she sat down there again. And for a little
while on every fine day she sat with him and they talked of various
things. He was very interesting: he knew a great deal about birds
and flowers and foreign countries. He had not only lived in China, but
had explored the Amazon. On his watch chain was a blue stone
which an Indian snake-charmer had given him. But he lived now in
the big hotel at the corner of the Gardens and all his wanderings
were over.
The funniest thing about him was his name. Alison did not learn what
it was for a long time, but one day as she was calling “Thomson!
Thomson!” very loudly as they sat there, the Old Gentleman said,
“When you do that it makes me nervous.”
“Why?” Alison asked.
“Because,” the Old Gentleman said, “my name’s Thomson too.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Alison said, “I must call Thomson—I mean my dog
—something else. I can’t ever call him Thomson again.”
“Why not?” said the Old Gentleman. “It doesn’t matter at all. I can’t
expect to be the only Thomson in the world.”
“Oh yes,” said Alison, “I shall.”
The next day the first thing she did when she saw the Old
Gentleman was to tell him she had changed Thom—the dog’s name.
“In future,” she said, “he is to be called Jimmie.”
The Old Gentleman laughed. “That’s my name too,” he said.

II
One day the Old Gentleman was not in his accustomed place; and it
was a very fine day too. Alison was disappointed, and even
Thomson, I mean Jimmie, I mean the Aberdeen terrier, seemed to
miss something.
And the next day he was not there.
And the next.
And then came Sunday, when Alison went to church, and afterwards
for a rather dull walk with her father, strictly on the paths, past
“Physical Energy” to the Serpentine, to look at the peacocks, and
then back again by the Albert Memorial, and so home. Monday and
Tuesday were both wet, and on Wednesday it was a whole week
since Alison had seen the Old Gentleman; but to her grief he was
again absent.
And so, having her mother’s permission, the next day she called at
the hotel. She had the greatest difficulty in getting in because it was
the first time that either she or her dog had ever been through a
revolving door; but at last they came safely into the hall into the
presence of a tall porter in a uniform of splendour.
“Can you tell me if Mr. James Thomson is still staying here?” Alison
asked.
“I am sorry to say, Missie,” replied the porter, “that Mr. Thomson died
last week.”
Poor Alison....

III
One morning, some few weeks afterwards, Alison found on her plate
a letter addressed to herself in a strange handwriting. After
wondering about it for some moments, she opened it. The letter ran
thus:
“Re Mr. James Thomson, deceased.

“To Miss Alison Muirhead.

“Dear Madam,
“We beg to inform you that, in accordance with the
last will and testament of our client, the late Mr. James
Thomson, there lies at our office a packet containing a
 thousand threepenny bits, being a legacy which he
devised to yourself, free of duty, in a codicil added a few
days before his death. We should state that, by the terms
of the bequest, it was our client’s wish that five hundred of
the threepenny bits should be spent by you for others
within a year of its receipt, and not put away against a
maturer age; the remaining five hundred he wished to be
spent by yourself, for yourself, and for yourself alone, also
within the year. The parcel is at your service whenever it is
convenient to you to call for it.
“We are, dear madam,
“Yours faithfully,
“Lee, Lee and Lee.”
Alison was too bewildered to take it all in on the first reading, and her
father therefore read it again and explained some of the words,
which perhaps your father will do for you.
But if Alison was bewildered, it was nothing to her mother’s state,
which was one of amazement and pride too.
“To think of it!” she cried.
“Well, I never heard of such a thing in my life!” she said.
“It’s like something in a book or a play!” she exclaimed.
“A thousand threepenny bits! Why, that’s—let me see—yes, it’s—
why, it’s twelve pounds ten,” she remarked.
As for Mr. Muirhead, he was pleased too; but him it seemed to
amuse more than surprise.
“After your lessons this morning,” he said, “instead of going for a
walk you can come into the city to me, and we’ll go to the lawyers’
together, and then have lunch at Birch’s.”
When they reached the lawyers’ office Alison and her father were
shown into a large room with three grave gentlemen in it, whom
Alison supposed were Lee, Lee and Lee; and all the time that her
father was talking to them she wondered which was the Lee, and
which was the second Lee, and which was “and Lee.” Then she had
to sign a paper, and then one of the Lees gave her a canvas bag
containing a thousand threepenny bits.
“Of course you would like to count them,” he said; and Alison replied,
“Yes,” at which every one laughed, because Mr. Lee had meant it for
a joke and Alison had taken it seriously. But how could she expect
that Mr. Thomson’s lawyer, or, indeed, any lawyer of a dead friend,
would make a joke?
“I’m afraid,” said Mr. Lee, when they had done laughing “that you
would be very tired of the job before you were half-way through it.
Count them when you get home, and if there is any mistake we will
put it right; but one of our most careful clerks has already gone
through them very thoroughly.”
Then they all shook hands, and each of the three Lees said
something playful.
The one that Alison guessed was Lee said, “Don’t be extravagant
and buy the moon.”
The one that Alison guessed was the second Lee said, “If at any
time you get tired of so much money, we shall be pleased to have it
again.”
While “and Lee” looked very solemn and said, “Now you can go to
church a thousand times.”
Then they all laughed again, and Alison and her father were shown
out into the street by a little sharp boy, whose eyes were fixed so
keenly on the canvas bag that Alison was quite certain that he was
the most careful clerk who had done the counting.
After they had been to lunch at Birch’s, where they had mock turtle
soup and oyster patties, they went home, and Alison poured all the
threepenny bits into a depression in a cushion from the sofa, and
counted them into a hundred piles of ten each. Then she got a
wooden writing-desk, which had been given her by her grandmother,
and emptied out all the treasures it contained, and put fifty of the little
heaps into the large part of the writing-case, and the remaining fifty
little heaps into the compartment for pens and sealing-wax, and
locked it up again.
 IV
For the next few days Alison collected advice about the spending of
her money from every one she knew. All her friends were asked to
give their opinions, and thus gradually she decided upon the best
way to spend the five hundred threepenny bits which were for others.
Her first thought was naturally for her mother, who was an invalid.
Mrs. Muirhead was very fond of flowers, and so Alison went at once
to see the old flower-woman who sits outside Kensington High Street
Station, and who was so cross with the Suffragettes in self-denial
week for interfering with her “pitch,” as she called it; and Alison
arranged with her for a threepenny bunch of whatever was in season
to be taken to her mother twice every week, on Saturdays and
Wednesdays, for a year, and, to the old woman’s intense
astonishment, she gave her one hundred and four of her threepenny
bits.
Her uncle Mordaunt advised her to take in a weekly illustrated paper
—say the Sphere—and, after she had looked at it herself, to send it
to one of the lighthouses, where the men are very lonely and
unentertained. Alison thought this was a very good idea. The Sphere
cost two threepences a week, and postage a halfpenny, or one
hundred and twelve threepences—altogether one pound eight
shillings.
Alison had now spent two hundred and sixteen threepenny bits, and,
having arranged these two things, she decided to wait till Christmas
came nearer (it was now July) before she spent any more large
sums, always, however, keeping a few threepenny bits handy in her
purse in case of meeting any particularly hard case, such as a very
blind man, or a begging mother with a dreadfully cold little baby, or a
Punch and Judy man with a really nice face, or a little boy who had
fallen down and hurt himself badly, or an old woman who ought to be
riding in a ’bus. In this way she got rid of fifty of her little coins before
Christmas came near enough for her once more to think of little else
but threepenny plans.
It was then that she found Tommy Cathcart so useful. Tommy
Cathcart was one of her father’s articled pupils, and it was he who
reminded Alison of the claims of sandwichmen. Sandwichmen have
an awfully bad time, Tommy explained to her. It is almost the last
thing men do. No one carries sandwich-boards until he has failed in
every other way.
 THESE TOMMY CATHCART AND SHE SLIPPED INTO THE
HANDS OF THE SANDWICH-MEN.
After talking it over very seriously, they went together to a
tobacconist near the Strand, who undertook to make up thirty little
packets for threepence each, containing a clay pipe and tobacco,
and these Tommy Cathcart and she slipped into the hands of the
sandwichmen as they drifted by in Regent Street, in the Strand, and
in Oxford Street, while the rest were given to a little group of the men
who were resting, with their sandwich-boards leaned against the
wall, in a court near Shaftesbury Avenue.
“Don’t you think,” Alison said, “that those who carry a notice over the
head as well ought to have more?”
But Tommy Cathcart thought not.
That exhausted seven-and-sixpence.
Another thing that Alison and Tommy Cathcart did was to knock at
the door of the cabmen’s shelter opposite De Vere Gardens, and ask
if she might present a few puddings for Christmas Day. The man
said she might, and that used up seven-and-sixpence—three
puddings at half a crown, thirty threepences.
The other people to whom Alison sent Christmas presents with Mr.
Thomson’s money were the children of the boatmen who had taken
out her and her father and her cousins, Harry and Francis Frend, in
the Isle of Wight last year. These boatmen were two brothers named
Fagg—Jack and Willy Fagg—and their boat was the Seamew. Jack
had four children and Willy six, and Alison used to go and see them
now and then. After much consideration she sent four threepenny
bits to each of these children, a shilling pipe, with real silver on it, to
Jack and Willy, and a pound of two-shilling tea to Mrs. Jack and Mrs.
Willy. That made sixteen shillings, or sixty-four threepenny bits.
Just then Alison had an unexpected piece of luck, for as she was
passing a shop in Westbourne Grove she saw a window full of
mittens at threepence a pair, sale price. Now, mittens are just the
thing for cabmen in winter—cabmen and crossing-sweepers and
errand-boys. So Alison bought thirty pairs, or seven-and-sixpence
worth, and she gave a pair to each of the boys that called regularly—
the butcher’s boy, and the baker’s boy, and the grocer’s boy, and a
pair to the milkman, and a pair to the crossing-sweeper, and the rest
were put in the hall for cabmen who brought her father home or took
him out.
And then, just as they were getting rather in despair, one afternoon
Tommy Cathcart came home with a brilliant idea.
“Smith,” he said, “is the commonest name in England. In every
workhouse in England,” he said, “there must be one Smith at least.
Why not,” he said, “get, say, sixty picture postcards and send them
addressed to Mrs. Smith or Mr. Smith, or plain Smith, to sixty
workhouses? We can get,” he said, “the names from ‘Bradshaw.’ A
person in a workhouse will be awfully excited to get a Christmas
card, and if,” he said, “there happens to be no Smith, some one else
will have it.”
Alison liked the idea very much, and so they went off to a shop in the
Strand absolutely full of picture postcards and bought sixty at a
penny each. They had some little difficulty in choosing, because
Tommy Cathcart wanted a certain number to be photographs of
Pauline Chase and other pretty people, but Alison said that views of
London would be better, since most persons knew London, and the
card would remind them of old times. As it was, so to speak, her
money, Alison got her own way. Then they bought sixty halfpenny
stamps, and returned home to find the towns in “Bradshaw” and
send them off. That all came to seven-and-six, or thirty threepenny
bits.
Then Alison had a very brilliant inspiration—to give Jimmie a
beautiful silver collar all for himself, with the words “In memory of
James Thomson” on it, as a Christmas present. Dogs have so few
presents, and Jimmie really was very good, except when he lost his
head in the Gardens, which indeed, to be truthful, he always did. So
he had his collar on Christmas morning, and it cost exactly twelve-
and-six altogether, or fifty threepenny bits.
So much for the first five hundred.
 V
Alison had then to lay out the second five hundred, or £6 5s., on
herself and herself alone. This was easier. She and her father spent
three afternoons among the old furniture shops of Kensington and
the Brompton Road, and at last came upon the very thing they were
looking for in the back room of a shop close to the Oratory, kept by
an elderly Jewish lady with a perfectly gigantic nose and rings on
every finger.
This was an old bureau writing-desk, with drawers, and a flap to pull
down to write on, and lots of pigeon-holes, and a very strong lock.
Also a secret drawer. After some bargaining Mr. Muirhead got it for
six pounds, which left five shillings for writing paper and sealing-wax
and blotting-paper and nibs.
And that was an end of the thousand threepenny bits, as the
balance-sheet on the opposite page shows.
At least, not quite the end, as I will tell you. The face of the old
Jewess, when the time came to pay for the bureau and Alison took
forty-eight little packets of ten threepenny bits each out of her bag
and laid them on the table, was a picture of perplexity and
amusement.
“Well, ma tear, what’s that?” she asked.
“Four hundred and eighty threepenny bits—six pounds,” said Alison.
“But, ma tear, what will I do with all the little money?”
“It’s all I’ve got,” said Alison.
“You see,” said Mr. Muirhead—and then he told the old lady with the
big nose the story.
STATEMENT OF ACCOUNTS
First Account—For other People.
Threepences. £ s. d.
A year’s flowers for mother, twice 104 1 6 0
a week,
at 3d. a bunch
The Sphere for a year 104 1 6 0
Postage of same to a lighthouse 8 0 2 0
Odd threepenny bits given to
unhappy
people in the streets, etc. 50 0 12 6
Tobacco and pipes to thirty
sandwichmen,
at 3d. each 30 0 7 6
Three Christmas puddings for the
cabmen’s
shelter near De Vere Gardens,
at 2s. 6d. 30 0 7 6
Ten Fagg children, at 1s. each 40 0 10 0
Two pipes for Jack and Willy
Fagg, at 1s. 8 0 2 0
Two pounds tea for Mrs. Jack and
Mrs.
Willy, at 2s. 16 0 4 0
Mittens for cabmen, etc. 30 0 7 6
Sixty picture postcards for the
Smith family
at 1d., and postage at ½d. 30 0 7 6
Silver collar for Jimmie, with
engraving 50 0 12 6
—— ——————
500 £6 5 0

Second Account—For Alison Muirhead herself.

Threepences. £ s. d.
Old Bureau 480 6 0 0
Writing paper, etc. 20 0 5 0
—— ——————