AUSTRIAN REFUGEES

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 82, 7 April 1938, Page 9

AUSTRIAN REFUGEES

THE U.S. PROPOSAL

FAVOURABLE REPLIES BY

15 COUNTRIES

(British Official Wireless.) (Received April 7, 1.10 p.m.)

RUGBY, April 6. The Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Mr. K. L. Butler, answered several questions in the House of Commons about refugees from Austria.

He said that fifteen countries, namely Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, the 'Dominican Republic, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru. Salvador, Sweden, and Uruguay had replied favourably to the United States invitation to concert methods of providing assistance to political and Jewish refugees from Austria. It was part of the United States proposal that the financing of emergency emigration should be undertaken by private organisations in the respective countries.

Mr. Butler also said that the British Government would make the best possible use of this opportunity of cooperation with the -United States. The British Government .would naturally be sympathetic to any proposal for Jewish immigration into Madagascar, which had the approval of the French Government,* but did not contemplate approaching the French Government on the matter.

He said he hoped to make an early statement on the question of Austrian refugees receiving the protection of the League of Nations. The British Government was ready to do its part in such international action as was possible for dealing with the problem of refugees from Germany, but did not consider it was feasible for steps to be taken to secure for racial minorities in Germany full civil liberties, either , through direct negotiations or through the machinery of the League of Nations, as suggested in a question. ' .

The Colonial Secretary, answering a question on a similar subject, said he had' no information as to how many Jews from Vienna and other parts of Austria had landed in Palestine or in any mandated territory since March 12, but the conditions of immigration into Palestine were well known and applied .to Austrian Jews in the same way as to Jews in other parts of the world.