Britain
Arthur Balfour
1848–1930 First Lord of the Admiralty, 1915–1916; Foreign Secretary, 1916–1919
Born at Whittingehame, East Lothian, Balfour trained as a philosopher and entered Parliament as a Conservative in 1874. He was Prime Minister from July 1902 to December 1905. When the Unionists joined Asquith's coalition in May 1915, he succeeded Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty. In December 1916 he became Foreign Secretary under Lloyd George, but he was not in the small War Cabinet, whose concentration of power reduced his importance. In April 1917 he headed the Balfour Mission to the United States. On 2 November 1917 he wrote to Lord Rothschild, conveying a declaration, approved by the Cabinet, that the government viewed with favor a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. He left the Foreign Office after the Versailles Conference in 1919 and died in 1930.