General Morgan and Mr. LaGuardia
At the time of going to press it is not known who the senior official of U.N.R.R.A. was who is alleged to have said last week that certain Russian officials were using U.N.R.R.A. as a cloak for illegal activities. The facts need very careful handling. Illegal activities by U.N.R.R.A. officials have been detected and punished before without causing a major crisis. The report which started all the trouble originated in the American press and is still being investi- gated. And it is not yet clear where Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Morgan, until recently Chief of Displaced Persons Opera. tion in Germany, comes into the matter. The known facts are that General Morgan stated last January that there was a secret and organised mass movement of Jews out of Europe, was criticised in America, and was afterwards proved right ; that he has been released from his duties with U.N.R.R.A. ; and that he cannot comment on the announcement, which was made by the War Office. It is inevitably being assumed by many people that he is the official who made the alleged statement which started the trouble, and that the Director-General of U.N.R.R.A., Mr. LaGuardia, who has been in Berlin, and who has announced that Mr. Meyer Cohen will take General Morgan's place, was directly concerned with General Morgan's departure. This assumption casts a shadow on both General Morgan and Mr. LaGuardia, and consequently the full facts should be published at once. But quite apart from that, Mr. LaGuardia's recent behaviour has been far from correct. His state- ments about U.N.R.R.A.'s policy towards Jewish refugees have been tactless, to say the least, and show no appreciation of the fact that illegal, immigration into Palestine has its origin in Central Europe. Mr. LaGuardia is reported to have said of Palestine immigration: " If the British would just fire Bevin and ippoint me Foreign
Minister I could fix that." And finally he has done little to clear up the facts of the present situation. He has said of General Morgan, an U.N.R.R.A. official, that he is a distinguished soldier. It is tempting to return the compliment and say that, as Director-General of U.N.R.R.A., Mr. LaGuardia remains an outstanding Mayor of New York.
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