The Right of Asylum The likelihood that a certain number
of men of distinction unable to live safely in Germany may seek a home in this country, as so many refugees from political persecution have done in the past, makes it necessary to scrutinize the Government's policy- regarding the admission of aliens rather closely. The result of such study is not entirely reassuring. Two cases have attracted attention in the Press, in which Englishmen who settled for a time in America and became naturalized there have returned but been refused permission to remain in their own country. Technically, of course, they are aliens and the provisions of the Aliens Act can be applied. It is arguable no doubt also that if emigrants who cross the Atlantic to seek their fortune were to return in large numbers to cast themselves on an already flooded labour-market the burden laid on this country would be more than it could reasonably bear. Even so rules of thumb ought not to be followed blindly. In both the two cases that have aroused discussion there would seem to be good prima facie reasons for relaxing the general rule, and it would be an abandonment of all the best traditions of this country if our doors were to be closed to the men of eminence whom Germany is expelling from her borders. Our gain in admitting them would be manifest and it would not be merely a moral gain.
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