BASQUE CHILDREN

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 61, 9 September 1937, Page 18

BASQUE CHILDREN

POSITION IN ENGLAND

The Foreign Office has informed the National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief—the body responsible for bringing 4000 Basque children to England—that, in the opinion of Sir Henry Chilton, British Ambassador at Hendaye, * conditions in Bilbao will soon be sufficiently normal for the return of the young refugees (states the "Daily Telegraph"). Mr. Wilfred Roberts, M.P., one of the joint honorary secretaries of the relief committee, stated that despite the Foreign Office statement there was no likelihood that many of the children would be returned to Spain in the near future. "The committee," he explained, "accepted a trust—to care for the children until it was possible to restore them to their parents—and it intends to fulfil it. In many cases we do not know where the -parents are". "Some are in Santander,. some arein France, and others are scattered throughout Spain. We should be failing in our trust if we shipped the children back without the parents' consent." So far, Mr. Roberts said, twenty-four parents, some in France and some in Bilbao or other towns in Nationalist territory, had applied for the return of their children. Referring to the complaints of disorderly conduct made against some of the children, Mr. Roberts said that the cost of the damage caused by ••"- of. Harwood Dale, near Scarborough, and at Brechfa, Carmarthenshire totalled about £10. "As punishment for those episodes," he added, "twenty-four boys were to have been sent out of the country. After strong pleas by those in charge and by the boys themselves, I agreed to reprieve eight. The othar sixteen have been sent to homes in France. "The incident reported from Manchester amounted to face-slap-ping and hair-pulling by a number of Basque girls who had quarrelled with some English girls. It is easy to exaggerate the importance of such incidents. • • "The authorities at nearly all the centres to which the children have been sent speak of their good behaviour and charming manners. Amongst 4000 children brought from a war area it would be surprising if there were not some unruly ones."

By'scientific investigation into the food of natives, it is found that a tribe which is not allowed meat in any form is mentally and physically inferior to meat-eating tribes, and suffers from more diseases.