Weizmann Off to Israel; Won’t Stop in Britain, NY Herald Tribune, May 27, 1948.

Sailing on Mauritania, He Hopes for Peace; Voices His Gratitude to U. S.

“It is a sense of chagrin for us that the country we owe so much to and to which we have given the best we had has failed to recognize Israel” – Vera Weizmann.

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Dr. Chaim Weizmann, seventy-three-year-old President of the Republic of Israel, sailed for Europe yesterday with the hope that his country would soon live in friendship with the Arabs and Great Britain.

Dr. Weizmann, who was accompanied on the Canard liner Mauritania by his wife, will debark at Cherbourg, France, and pass three weeks in Paris before proceeding to Palestine. Mrs. Weizmann expressed sorrow that the British attitude toward the new Jewish state was such as to make the Weizmanns pass up a stop-over in London.

“It is a sense of chagrin for us that the country we owe so much to and to which we have given the best we had has failed to recognize Israel,” she said. “We don’t wish to come to England on sufferance.” Dr. and Mrs. Weizmann still are British citizens. They will become Israeli citizens upon reaching Palestine.

Dr. Weizmann received a police escort from the Waldorf-Astoria to Pier 90, at West Fiftieth Street, and two detectives from the Special Service Bureau were at the pier with him. Dr. Weizmann, who is ill, was too exhausted to answer questions about new developments in Palestine, but he made his way to the ship’s sun deck with the aid of friends to speak briefly about his hopes for Israel.

“We have reached the culmination of a great ideal” he said. “It has been a long, hard road, beset with many difficulties. We still have hard work, dangers and difficulties. We’ll have to watch our step.

“The hope of Israel is to live in friendship with the Arabs and the British people.

“We are grateful to the President of the United States, the government and people of the United States who have been in sympathy with our aims.

“We are an old nation; God has blessed us. With the blessings of God, we will succeed”

Other passengers on the Mauritania applauded Dr. Weizmann as he stood on the sun deck, wearing dark glasses to protect his eyes, his head bowed.

Among the 1,141 persons sailing on the ship, which will call at Cobh, Cherbourg and Southampton, were Rita Hayworth, the actress; Lincoln Ellsworth, the polar explorer, and sixty members of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company.