Balfour was an incredible lightweight. His peers all liked him, but did not respect him. He had been Prime Minister, as what would today be called a "nepo baby", between 1902 and 1905, and was widely regarded as a failure. During the war, Lloyd George sent him to the Foreign Office, where less was at stake. The signature on the Balfour Declaration was his, but the policy -- determined purely by munitions-production technology licensing, with no thought of any postwar developments -- was Lloyd George's.
Balfour was an incredible lightweight. His peers all liked him, but did not respect him. He had been Prime Minister, as what would today be called a "nepo baby", between 1902 and 1905, and was widely regarded as a failure. During the war, Lloyd George sent him to the Foreign Office, where less was at stake. The signature on the Balfour Declaration was his, but the policy -- determined purely by munitions-production technology licensing, with no thought of any postwar developments -- was Lloyd George's.
original title: The Cartographers Of Catastrophe: How Sykes-Picot And Balfour Still Haunt The Modern Middle East