The Future of Palestine have a European power as neighbour than the Turk The same evening, Prime Minister H. H. Asquith announced that the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire had become a war aim in a speech for the Lord Mayor's Banquet at the Mansion House, "It is the Ottoman Government, and not we who have rung the death knell of Ottoman dominion not only in Europe but in Asia." In December 1914 Samuel met Chaim Weizmann, who after the war was elected as the President of the World Zionist Organization, and later the first President of Israel. Samuel was then a member of
Chaim Weizmann non-interventionist position. Weizmann consulted several times with Samuel on the homeland policy during 1915, but H. H. Asquith, then Prime Minister, would be dead set against upsetting the balance of power on the Middle East. Attitudes were changing to "dithyrambic" opposition; but in the Cabinet, to the Samuel Memorandum, it remained implacably opposed with the exception of Lloyd George, an outspoken radical. Edwin Montagu, for example, Samuel's cousin was strenuously opposed. Weizmann did not attend the meeting of Jewry's ruling Conjoint Committee when it met the Zionist leadership on 14 April 1915. Yehiel Tschlenow had travelled from Berlin to speak