ONE GOOD DEED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22984, 11 March 1938, Page 8

ONE GOOD DEED

The further vote of £4OOO approved by the House of Commons for the resettlement of 9000 Assyrians in Khabur, Northern Syria, calls to notice at least one "good deed in a naughty world." But the scheme represents more than that; it is an example of international co-opera-tion and humanity in the midst of international anarchy and cruelty. The British, French and Irak Governments are joined with the League of Nations and the Church of England in financing the settlement in a new land of a people left helpless and homeless by the war settlements. Britain is because the Assyrians fought on her side against Turkey in the War and in defence of the Mesopotamia!! Mandate after it. France welcomes the recruitment of a fine type of settler to her Syrian Mandate and has made the land available to Assyrian immigration. Irak owes much to the military qualities of the Assyrians, but is' glad to assist the emigration of an embarrassing minority. The League is co-ordinat-ing the efforts of the interested nations, while the Church is moved to assist those who were among the first people in the world to adopt Christianity and who later maintained a Christian island in the rising flood of Islam. Their fate since the war has been so terrible, living on sufferance amidst intolerance and bereft of their ancestral lands, that efforts were earlier made to settle the Assyrians in Brazil or British Guiana. Since then the Syrian prospect has opened up, making available a tract of marshy land 38 miles long by seven wide on the upper Orontes River. Largo sums were required for drainage and irrigation to reclaim 100,000 acres for cultivation, and the money is being found as required by the three Governments, the League and the Church. So a place of refuge is being made for a worthy and ancient Christian people through a gratifying exercise of international cooperation and altruism. When such a scheme is possible in these dark days, men of peace and goodwill need not altogether despair of civilisation.