MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
FOREIGN statesman recently indulged in an epigram which
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is worth recording. " The British people," he said, " are the most generous on this earth. It pays better, therefore, to be their enemies than their allies." No Briton can allow such a remark to pass unchallenged. It may be true that, being a tolerant and easy- going race, we are more apt than others to forgive and to forget. But it is not true that we invariably make friends of our enemies and enemies of our friends. Our loyalty, for instance, to such allies as Russia and the United States has been sustained and noteworthy : it is only towards our weaker associates that we sometimes display in- constancy. And is it really true that in this year 1944 the British people are generous to a fault? In the nineteenth century, of course, when our power was unquestioned, our commerce flourishing and opportunities for emigration almost unlimited, we were proud indeed to succour the oppressed and to defend the weak. We were glad to feel that those who could escape from the claws of foreign despots might find in this country, not asylum merely, but an opportunity to make a profitable and respected living. The health and wealth of this island benefited much from these continental refugees. Every school-child is taught that our economy was enriched by the influx of Flemish and Huguenot immigrants. Yet although today the oppression to which racial or political outcasts are submitted in Europe is even more terrible than in the fifteenth or the sixteenth centuries, the Government attitude towards refugees cannot be described as a generous attitude ; it is niggardly, bureaucratic, evasive and insincere. Even a man of Herbert Morrison's humanity and courage is unable to surmount the prejudices or stem the selfishness which today exist.
I have been reading this week a pamphlet on the subject which has been issued by those astringent planners of Queen Anne's Gate, who call themselves P.E.P. It is estimated that as a result of Hitler's racial persecutions, as a result of the New Order, something ap- proaching thirty million people have in the last ten years been removed from their homes. A large proportion of these homeless individuals are either prisoners in Germany or working as slaves for the Nazi war machine. Some of them, either before or during the war, have been able to escape to Allied or neutral territory. Of these a large proportion will desire after the war to return to the countries of their origin. There will, however, remain a hard core of people who, for racial or other reasons, do not desire to return to their homes. It is not to be expected, for instance, that any large proportion of the Jews who have escaped from Germany will wish. (however complete may be the destruction of the Nazi system), to return to a country where their families have been so brutally persecuted, and where their children will be exposed to the stench of the corpse of Nazi propaganda. There will remain, therefore, a minority of " unpatriables," of people who do not wish to return home. It will be the duty, it will be the responsibility, of the vic- torious nations to see that these unfortunates are not merely allowed to stay in their countries of asylum, but that they are gladly absorbed into the community. Already an Inter-Governmental Committee has been established to consider the problem, and to partition between the several countries the share of responsibility which they should assume. It is to be hoped that the British people, being so famed for generosity, will accept their quota with unselfishness and a due recognition of the benefits that will accrue. For, in fact, the problem is not so immense as the prejudiced assert or the ignorant assume.
* * * * Government policy towards the admission of refugees into this country has since the last war been determined by vested interests. Organised labour has naturally been unwilling to allow foreign workers to enter into employment ; the professions were naturally opposed to foreign competition. The Aliens Orders of 19zo and 1938 had the effect of limiting the categories of refugees either to the very old or the very young, or to those who could bring capital with them from their home country. The latter either became =nu. facturers, and thus employers of British labour, or merchants, who, owing to their former connexions, were able to open up new lines and new markets. It is noticeable, for instance, that refugees from Germany started as many as eighty new fur firms with an annual turnover of some L4,000,000, thus seriously impinging on the practical monopoly hitherto enjoyed by Leipzig. When the Nazis forbade non-Aryan doctors or dentists to practise in Germany or Austria a further influx of valuable material was received in this country. The Government offered in 1938 to allow Soo alien doctors to practise, but owing to the representations of the British Medical Association, who were understandably afraid of competition, this number was reduced. It is estimated that in September, 1939, there were some 1,700 foreign doctors and dentists who had found refuge in Great Britain ; of these only 46o were allowed to practise. This can scarcely be described as a generous allowance.
After war broke out the treatment of refugees passed through three distinct phases. Technically, many of these refugees were enemy aliens, but the Government adopted a wise policy in dis- tinguishing between those who might be supposed to have Nazi sympathies and those whose detestation of Hitler and his works was proved beyond doubt. When invasion appeared imminent in 1940 this liberal policy was inevitably reversed ; all aliens were interned indiscriminately, and much hardship, confusion and injustice resulted. The Home Office cannot be blamed for this, since the emergency was a real one, and no benefit of the doubt could possibly be given. It is to its credit, rather, that so soon as the immediate danger had passed it reverted to its former policy of liberalism. By December, 1942, 20,000 internees had been released and admitted either to the Services, the Pioneer Corps, or employment of national benefit. It is calculated that the number of foreign refugees in this country today is approximately 140,000, of whom 9o,000 are of Allied nationality and 5o,00o ex-German or ex-Austrian. The Poles, the French, the Czechs, the Belgians and the Greeks will go back to their own countries once the armistice is signed. Of the Germans and Austrians, some To per cent. are political refugees, who will return home once democratic conditions have been re-established. Of the German and Austrian Jews a certain percentage will be able to emigrate either to Palestine or to the New World. It is thus probable that after the war we shall be left with some 30,000-36,000 Germans and Austrians of Jewish race who will probably wish to remain in this country. About 45 per cent. of these will be over 5o years of age. Assuming also that some of the Allied nationals may also wish to remain, it may be concluded that the total refugee population of this country after the war will not be more than 40,000—the equivalent of the population of Dover. In other words, the percentage of aliens in Great Britain after the peace will not be larger than it was in 1931.
It is useful to state these figures. They show in the first place that the agitation against the refugees is not only a selfish but an ignorant agitation. They prove that Great Britain is being asked to absorb a smaller percentage of refugees than exist in Switzerland. France or Holland. They indicate that, owing to the impending decline in our own population, it would be valuable for us to receive, not fewer refugees, but more. And they surely suggest to us that these unhappy exiles should be regarded as welcome and not as unwelcome ; that from our vast granary of tolerance and kindness we should accord to them a bushel of generosity ; that we should give them full rights of British citizenship ; and that we, who have been granted such favours, who have earned such wide renown should share some at least of our fortune with the unfortunate.
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