ADVICE TO REFUGEES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25442, 25 January 1944, Page 3

ADVICE TO REFUGEES

“MUST NOT FORM GROUPS” (0.C.) SYDNEY, Jan. 21. Refugees could survive in Australia only as individuals, and not as a group, Proiessor I. Clunies Ross, an authority on international affairs, told 300 refugees at the first meeting of the Refugees' Association, held at the Sydney Town Hall. The association was formed to promote the interests of refugees in Australia. Professor Ross said the refugees should think and behave as fundamentally as the people they came amongst. • He warned the meeting that Australians might appear to have a “ nairow and warped conception of a group of individuals, whether ‘ dagoes.’ Jews, or Japanese, particularly anv group as an entity separate from the British way of life. “Australians could be insular and unliberal, though not necessarily as cruel as other people,” he said. “But the Australian has a saving grace. Whatever may be his attitude to the individual as a member of a group, if he can meet the individual and see in him a ‘ decent chap,’ then he is as warm and friendly as anybody in the world. There is a lesson in that for your association,” Professor Ross said refugees should not imagine that Australia had illimitable resources and a capacity for taking half of Europe when war was over. In Australia there was 1,000,000 square mil-M of “ dead-end ” country.