REFUGEE PROBLEM

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 132, 1 December 1938, Page 27

REFUGEE PROBLEM

EMPIRE'S PART

A "GET-TOGETHER" PLAN

NOT INSOLUBLE

(By Air Mail, from "The Post's" London

Representative.)

LONDON, November 7

If Britain and the Dominions were to get together a scheme could be prepared whereby great numbers of the refugees from Central Europe could be turned into a mass of. colonists who could prove a source of wealth to the Dominions or Colonies which received them. This was put forward last night by Sir John Hope Simpson, vice-president of the Refugee Settlement Corrimission from 1926 to 1930, when addressing members of the Royal Empire Society. "It is quite clear," Sir John said, "that unlesa the nations of the world are prepared to be more liberal in their reception of immigrants from Central Europe than they .have been recently the refugee problem of today is insoluble."' , The problem, though large, was riot insoluble. There were scores of countries which might, if they would* afford asylum for the refugees. Meanwhile, the matter of importance was to get the people out of the hands of the German authorities who were maltreating them. This could be arranged if Governments were prepared to offer accommodation and support to refugees temporarily until they could be transferred to countries of final refuge and settlement. UNDEVELOPED AREAS. . In a recent broadcast he had suggested that Britain might.lead the way by accepting 50,000 on this basis. The broadcast resulted in voluminous correspondence, and as a result he believed that the man in the street would support a Government in a scheme of j this kind, provided he was convinced i that the influx would not mean further competition in the labour market. "This condition raises the whole economic .question—the heory of the lump of labour—the economic effect of immigration and the connected problems. Ido not suggest that the refugees should be let loose on the labour market. Rather, I would see schemes of training and readaptation applied to them,- to fit them for citizenship in a new country, whether that country were ultimately to be Madagascar or Patagonia, New Zealand or Great Britain, or any other. "This seems to me to be clearly a matter in which the British Empire might work together. England is a crowded country, but in the Dominions and Colonies there are vast areas as yet undeveloped which their Governments would doubtless be glad to see developed and populated. • "GET TOGETHER." "Unregulated mass immigratioii would be disastrous, arid the day of the pioneer immigrant is probably past. Nevertheless, if Great Britain and '■ the. Dominions were to get together on this question I do not conceive that it would be beyond their power to arrange for orderly immigration and settlement of a very large number of these refugees. It /is a mistake to think that they are all town dwellers, or that they are all by occupation black-coated. - , "Of the Chechoslovakian refugees a large proportion are peasant- cultivators who would, be an asset in any agricultural country. The same is the case with many of the refugees from the Burgenland in Austria. Of the Czechoslovak refugees, again, a large number are expert craftsmen whose | immigration might easily result in new I industries in the country of refuge. The experience of the Jewish organisations in re-adaptation and retraining i for Palestine has shown that expert training produces emigrants well qualified for their new environment. "In fact, with a weli-organised scheme. of re-adaptation in countries i of temporary refuge, it would be possible to recreate among those at present unsuitable for emigration to a new country a mass of colonists who would prove a source of wealth to the Dominions or Colonies which received them." It is true that any scheme of the kind would require finance. The expenditure, however, need not be wasted if it were to result in an increase of productive population. The recent change in Czech policy would unquestionably mean that those refugees who had found refuge in a democratic Czechoslovakia would no longer be afforded asylum, and must again escape if their lives and their liberty were to be safe. DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE'S WARNING. "If we don't populate our Empire within a reasonable time it will become weaker, more envied, and in a far, more dangerous position than it is today," said the Duke of Devonshire, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, ' when speaking at a' meeting of the Society for the Overseas Settlement of British Women. ' . ."The position is one of extreme seriousness," he said. "Although the Dominions could not take a population as large as. might appear on the map, they were capable of carrying a vastly larger population, but the tendency was for the birth-rate in the United Kingdom and a greater part of the Dominions to become lower. "Speaking generally," the Duke of Devonshire continued, "the white population through the Empire is today not reproducing itself, with the result that the decrease will become rapid before many years have passed." A decrease in population meant a decline in purchasing power and aggravation of unemployment problems. Mr. Tom Smith, M.P., said that the Dominions did not want Britain's unemployed, but energetic young people of both sexes. Major R. H. Wheeler, of Australia, said: "We receive thousands of applications weekly from overseas aliens anxious to get into Australia, but they are not getting in, though how long that will be the case I cannot say."1'