WAR OFFICE ATTACKED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20319, 7 August 1940, Page 9

WAR OFFICE ATTACKED

TREATMENT OF ALIENS “THE REFUGEE SCANDAL” LONDON, July 22. An attack against the “brass hats”— the first since Mr. L. Hore-Belisha’s “dismissal” as Secretary for War—is contained in a leading article in the New Statesman, headed "The Refugee Scandal.” “Having received some 60,000 victims of Hitler's cruelty,” it states, “we have suddenly, under the incitement of the authorities, turned upon them as enemies, caged them behind barbed wire with their Nazi enemies, and broken up countless families salvaged from the Nazi hell by shipping the menfolk to Canada without even notifying the wives. “This policy was not based on a sound reason of national security. There is no evidence of any refugee ‘fifth column.’ The policy was enforced on the country by the War Office against the expert advice of the Home Office officials. It is due to a panic unworthy of soldiers. It is the War Office which demanded the ..wholesale internment and the shipping of refugees in indiscriminate batches.

"Mr. Eden’s answer in the House of Commons to questions about the sinking of the Arandora Star, in which there were many German and Italian refugees being taken to Canada for internment, prove that the brass hats have no idea who is Fascist or antiFascist, who is Nazi thug or hero of the anti-Nazi illegal movement.”