BRITAIN’S DILEMMA

Greymouth Evening Star, 30 July 1946, Page 7

BRITAIN’S DILEMMA

FUTURE OF 375,000 WAR PRISONERS POLICY AND PRODUCTION [X.Z.T.A. Special Correspondent.] (Rec. 11.25 a.m.) LONDON, July 29. The British authorities are Jn a dilemma about the fate of the 375,000 German prisoners still in Britain. The majority of them are being used as agricultural labourers and it is claimed by the National Farmers’ Union and other farmers’ organisations that without their assistance British agriculture cannot meet the demands at present being made upon it.

On the other hand, there is growingcriticism of the failure of the Government to produce some scheme which will guarantee the eventual repatriation of these Germans, many of whom are stated to be sunk in apathy and despair, the result of the continual postponement of their return to their families.

Joint Appeal. In a joint letter to the NewsChronicle this morning, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, Professor Gilbert Murray, the Rev. R. Newton Flew, Victor Gollanz, Harold J. Laski, Marian E. Parmour, the Rev. Henry Carter and R. R. Stokes M.P. make a strong plea for the formulation of a plan which will promise the prisoners repatriation within a set term and prevent what is claimed to be serious deterioration of their morale.

“Men who might have gone back to Germany full of determination to build a more liberal society are becoming hard and cynical,” states the letter. “They say our liberalism and our Christianity are a pretence and their respect for the British people and for British institutions is rapidly being replaced by indifference and even hatred. There is a dangerous feeling that they can no longer look for anything from us, but must look elsewhere.”

Apathy and Despair. “The real trouble from which all other grievances derive and which colours the prisoners’ whole life with dreary apathy and despair is the absence of any scheme whatever for gradual repatriation,” says the Economist. “To German prisoners it must look as- though the full penalty for Allied disagreements are being visited on their heads.” The Economist adds that there is some truth in the assertion that the prisoners at present are indispensable to British economy, but adds that by all the canons of self-protection and morality this dependence should be eliminated as soon as possible. If any hopes for peaceful co-operation between Germany and the rest of Europe are to be salvaged, Britain must cease to wait upon international action and remedy those injustices within her own power.

Geneva Convention.

Under the terms of the Geneva Convention, prisoners need not be repatriated until the conclusion of a peace treaty, but critics of the present policy point out that already over a year has elapsed since the end of the war and the signing of the German peace treaty is not yet in sight. Although a prisoner costs the farmer who employs him. £4 a week in addition to a certain proportion of his keep, the prisoner himself is allowed to retain only 1/- weekly of this.

Other causes for grievance are the refusal of the authorities to permit Germans to send parcels to their relatives and rigorous control of their letters and communications.