THE TABLET May 30tli, 1959. VOL. 213, No. «210

TH E TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

MAY 30th, 1959

N INEPENCE

Mr. Standfast: The Work of John Foster Dalles World Refugee Year: Problems th at Remain in Europe. By Anton Silvester

Material Progress in Fifty Years: Since M asterm an’s Survey: II. By E. L. Way

The Mists of History : M. Daniel-Rops on th e Dark Ages. By Eric John Critics’ Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters : Chess

ONE GREAT EFFORT

I T was from an inspiration of Young Conservatives of the Bow Group that the idea first came for the great concerted effort which is to be launched on Monday at the Mansion House, under the name of the World Refugee Year. In essence it is simple : that a concerted exertion can and therefore should be made to raise funds, above those which Governments can be persuaded to furnish, in order to end for many and to alleviate for all the sufferings and the hardship which are the lot of the refugee. These people are happily but a handful when compared with two thousand million members of the human family. But individually they are tragic figures and tragic families, uprooted and sent into poverty and exile because the intolerance of other men has driven them from their homes. The smallness of their numbers indicates that their problems are not insoluble, given a little charity from the vast settled majority of mankind. So stated, the matter immediately becomes one for the richer countries, and something which can very appropriately be tackled afresh from London. Here our target is £2 million.

More than nine-tenths of the refugees in the world today are Palestinian Arabs, who for over ten years now have been waiting and hoping to go back to Palestine, from which they fled, of their own volition for the most part, in 1948. More than half of them are in Jordan, encamped on the borders of the land they left, and they and their hosts alike have refused lands for re-settlement, which would mean accepting what happened as final, as they are in no mood to do. If they listen to the outside world, they hear voices urging them to recognise that the Jews are in Palestine to stay; that many of the Jews also have been in need of a refuge, and that, while the Arabs will always have a sense of having been wronged, they would not be happy or secure if they went back, unless all the Jews departed; and that it is therefore much better for the Arab world, being a large and underpopulated area, to agree to accept the help of the outside world in resettling them in what will be, in the majority of cases, better conditions than they knew before. And, if there can be no permanent settlement, there is a great deal that can be done, especially for the children who are being born all the time in these unpromising conditions. They need to be educated in crafts with which they can earn their livings later on; and the provision of general and technical education will lift the miasma of helpless and brooding resentment, which is no atmosphere in which children should be allowed to grow up.

Of the European Refugees, victims of the last war, refugees from Communism, a hard core still remains, of whom some account is given in an article elsewhere in these pages. There are people whose age or illhealth has prevented them from obtaining visas to go to the countries where they might hope to obtain work or subsistence. In some cases there are families where the younger members have refused opportunities to emigrate, because it would mean leaving behind in a camp a parent who has been refused a visa, as likely through ill-health to become a public charge in the country of immigration. The regulations of such immigrant countries have often been hard and bureaucratic, and what is now needed is a fund from which the High Commissioner for Refugees can set at rest these fears of a refugee becoming a charge on the country admitting him.

A smaller group consists of the Europeans in China for whom Communist China has no use; these are largely White Russian refugees, from the Bolshevik Revolution, some eight or nine thousand in number.

The fourth category are the Chinese refugees from the People’s Commune, the nightmare which is presentday China. There are a million of these refugees, nearly all in Hong Kong, which cannot be more than a receiving centre and starting point. Their resettlement presents problems all its own, of a racial kind, because the places where the Chinese are admitted as immigrants are in the main Asian countries with large populations and so with little scope. But there are many countries in the world in which small numbers of Chinese can make their living, and enough countries in the world for it only to be necessary for each country to agree to receive a small quota of these hardworking and adaptable people.