REFUGEE PROBLEM

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 94, 18 October 1939, Page 10

REFUGEE PROBLEM

RESETTLEMENT TASK

MR. ROOSEVELT URGES EXPANSIVE EFFORT

SERIOUS SURVEY

(By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright.)

(Received October 18, 9 a.m.)

WASHINGTON, October 17.

President Roosevelt today urged the inter-Governmental Committee on Political Refugees, which represents six countries, to speed up its present task of helping 300,000 homeless people because "when this ghastly war ends maybe not one but ten or twenty million will enter into the problem." He asked the committee to start "a serious and expansive effort of survey to study the geographic and economic problem of resettling several million people." Mr. Roosevelt announced that active settlement was being started in the Dominica and the Philippines and the hoped these projects would be the forerunner of many similar schemes by other nations. He observed that a possible field for new settlements covered millions of square miles in Africa, America and Australasia. "The problem now transcends any problem of racial or religious division," he said. "It is not enough to indulge in horrified humanitarianism, empty resolutions, golden rhetoric, and pious words. We must face it actively if democratic principle-based oh respect for human dignity is to survive and if a world order resting on the security; of the individual is to be restored. We hope and trust the existing war will terminate quickly. . . . The quicker we begin the undertaking the quicker will we contribute something to the establishment of world peace. Out of the1 dregs of the present disaster we can distill some real achievements for human progress."

Mr. Roosevelt said that he realised that Britain and France were "engaged iv a major war and can be asked to do little more than give a continuance of their sympathy "and interest." "That means," he said, "that upon neutral nations lies the obligation,to humanity to carry on. the work." He urged the adoption of the most modern methods. So far they have been working on too small a scale and had failed to apply modern engineering to the task.

The committee is beginning a twoday conference at which draft recommendations will be made for submission to the next plenary session of the thirty-two member nations.