CHILD MIGRANTS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 290, 7 December 1944, Page 5

CHILD MIGRANTS

AUSTRALIAN PLAN Seventeen Thousand Yearly From Britain And Eurppe N.Z. Press Association —Copyright Rec. noon. CANBERRA, this day. The Commonwealth Government has decided to bring an average of 17,000 child migrants per year to Australia from Great Britain and European countries after the war. In announcing this, the actingPrime Minister, Mr. Forde, said the ages within which the scheme would operate would be six to 12 years for alien children, and six to 14 years for British children. A mission headed by "a person of notable public standing and experience" would be sent abroad to work on the scheme in Britain and Europe. Medical and welfare and migration experts would be included in the mission, which would be set up after consultations between the Commonwealth and the State Governments.

Machinery would be established to arrange with international bodies, such as Unrra, and the various European Governments, to select suitable orphans and other children for migration, Mr. Forde said. Within Australia defence establishments likely to be available and suitable for adaptation to the scheme would be surveyed. Welcoming the scheme, the president of the British Orphans' Adoption Society, Mr. E. D. Darby, said that 500 members of his society had been waiting four years to adopt English war orphans. A former Victorian Agent-General in London, Sir Louis Bussau, said hundreds of thousands of British people were anxious to come to Australia. Most inquiries came from young men and women of all trades and professions, including tenant farmers and land workers. There were also large numbers of Norwegians, Swedes. Danes, Dutch and Poles who would come to Australia. Poles would make particularly good migrants.

EAST PRUSSIAN FRONT SOVIET ACTIVITY REPORTED Rec. 10.30 a.m. LONDON, Dec. 6. Soviet troops on the northern end of the Russian front have entered East Prussia, where the Germans are again showing signs of uneasiness, concerning the imminent Soviet offensive.