Evening star., 1939-07-20
The Refugee Problem

WV sOOISII
So many international problems of
emergency character have pressed
themselves upon a distracted worlds
attention that little heed has recently
been paid to the existence of the ma
chlnery set up at Evian a year ago
for ameliorating the refugee situa-
tion created by Nazi persecution of
racial and religious minorities.
chiefly Jewish.
On the initiative of President
Roosevelt, representatives of thirty
one nations met under the chairman
ship OF the former United States
Steel Corporation executive, Myron
c. Taylor, and formed the Intergoy-
ernmental Committee on Political
Refugees. The committee set up
headquarters at London, elected the
Earl OF Winterton chairman, and a
prominent member of the District of
Columbia bar, George Rublee, di-
rector. Mr.. Rublees task was to in
terest the German authorities in IA
cllltatlng SyStematiZed measures for
evacuating hundreds of thousands of
men, women and children suddenly
converted into helpless and homeless
wanderers, with no place to lay their
heads" as Mr.. Roosevelt described
their condition.
The ntergovernmental Committee
ran into innumerable and insur-
mountable snags in attempting to
place refugees on any mass resettle-
ment basis. Dislocated economic
conditions, aggravated by chronic
unemployment, combined with rigid
immigration restrictions-our own
quota limitations are typical-to
strew the committees path with diff
culties and discouragements Some
European neighbors of Germany,
such as France, the Netherlands and
Belgium, British colonies in Africa
and South America arranged to take
certain numbers of refugees and have
done so. Several Latin American
countries extended a welcome. and
the United States has gone the limit,
and somewhat more than the limit,
permissible under the immigration
statutes. But the opposition en-
countered by the project to admit
10000 German children, under the
Wagner-Rogers bill, illustrates the
reluctance of Congress to do any,
thing that might SAVIOR of letting
down the immigration bars on any
considerable scale even in so worthy
a cause as that of the refugees flee
ing from tyrannous oppression in the
Reich.
President Roosevelt, mindful of the
necessity of reviving international
interest in the enduring plight of the
refugees, has invited officers of the
1ntergovernmental Committee to
meet at the White House the first
week of September. The evident pur-
pose is to resume discussion of ways
and means for finding homes for the
victims of Nazi neopaganism. Un-
doubtedly the committee will have
before it concrete proposals for grap-
pling with that issue. Placement is,
OF course. the paramount question.
The poignancy and practical
aspects of the situation were epito-
mized by Mr.. Taylor in an address at
New York last fall. These people,"
he said, "are beating at the gates of
any country, near or far, in which
they can find refuge. The peoples
and governments of the world are
faced with an urgent problem not of
their own making or choosing, but
which, whether they like it or not,
they cannot ignore. Our task is
neither to condone nor to condemn
it is to find a way out of the emer-
gency forced upon us, to seek to re-
place the present chaotic exodus by
orderly emigration; to seek the set
tlement of these peoples in new
homes, with minimum of suffer-
ing and their integration into new
societies to the best advantage of
both the refugees and of the receiv-
ing countries"