The League of Nations

Settling the Greek Refugees

[Sir John Hope-Simpson, who has had wide experience as an administrator in India and sat in the 1923-4 Parliament as M.P. for Taunton, is Vice-Chairman of the Greek Refugee Settlement Commission, appointed by the League of Nations Council.]

IT is probable that in the history of the world there has never been an enforced and immediate transfer of masses of popula- tion at all similar to the transfer during recent years of the Greeks of Asia Minor to the Greece of Europe. The population

of Greece had been augmented on various occasions from the time of the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 by the transfer of Greeks from other countries to their homeland. All these movements were thrown into the shade by the influx which followed the retreat of the Greek Army and the capture of Smyrna by the Turks in the autumn of 1922. It is difficult to imagine the appalling intensity of misery which accom- panied the exodus of the surviving Greeks from Smyrna and its neighbourhood. In the course of two or three weeks some 800,000 destitute beings were thrown upon the hospitality of a few islands and of the maritime towns on the mainland of Greece. The population of certain of these towns was doubled in a fortnight.

No adequate provision for an incursion of this magnitude was at all possible, and it reflects the greatest credit, both on the Government and on the generous hospitality, of the indigenous population, that the catastrophe was met at least in such degree as to avoid the horrors of epidemic disease, of starvation and of anarchy which might well have been expected.

Dr. Nansen was deputed by the League of Nations to report xi the measures necessary to be taken. As a result of his report and of an application by the Greek Government, the settlement of the Greek refugees was entrusted in 1923 to an international commission appointed by the League, and con- sisting of an American citizen as chairman, a British citizen as vice-chairman, and two Greek members. This commission was constituted an autonomous organization. Under the auspices of the League, in 1924, the Greek Government raised a loan of ten million pounds sterling nett, of which the proceeds were made over to the Refugee Settlement Commission. Large tracts of land, much of which was virgin soil, were made over by the Greek Government to the Commission in proprietary right,. the area now held by this organization being 2,000,000 acres, of which over one and a-quarter millions is cultivable land, the balance being pasture. On this land the Commission has settled some 150,000 families consisting of about 600,000. people. It has built 2,000 villages or new quarters in existing villages, has provided the colonists with houses, with imple- ments and animals for husbandry, with seed for the original sowing and with maintenance for their stock and themselves until the first harvest was reaped. In addition, the Commission has established and maintains fifty-nine dispensaries and hospitals. It has .a hydraulic engineering department which is engaged in sinking artesian wells throughout the plains of

Macedonia and Thrace, of which nearly 200 have been suc- cessfully completed. It also maintains experimental farms, some . ninety. demonstration plots, stallion, bull and boar

stations for stud purposes, nurseries for the supply of mul- begx and fruit-trees and vines, and the whole of this sty, pendous work has been carried out at the cost of less than 260, per family. In considering the, financial cost of settlement it, mitst be remembered that the Commission paid nothing for the land, and has received from the Greek Government over

66/000 houses of displaced ,Turkish and Bulgarian subjects, free of ,charge. Of the agricultural .refugees who have been

settled nearly 80 per cent. are to be found in Macedonia. From, the political point of view the Macedonian settlement, where nearly 80 per cent. of the agricultural refugees have made.their homes, is at least as important. Before the influx after the Smyrna disaster and the ,migration of populations .

consequent on treaty . obligations,. the Preek:population in Greek Macedonia amounted to 42.6 per gent. of the total

population, the balance being made. up in the main of Bulgarians and of Turks. This mixed population was -always fertile ground for political ferment. Since the settlement, the

Greek population in Macedonia is 89 per cent. of the total. Thus, ethnical problems, which were always fraught with danger to the peace of the Balkans, have been solved in so far as they affected Greece.

Naturally there are weak spots in operations of this magni- tude. There are still villages where the refugees are not satisfactorily settled, and there are many villages where con- siderable additional outlay of capital would be more than repaid by the resultant production from the soil. But, taking the results as a whole, the settlement of the agricultural refugees has been a great success. There is, for example, the settlement of New Pyrgos in Northern 1..:uboea. This village of 550 houses was planned in a hurry during the initial rush. Its site was at the side of a swamp of some 500 acres—a swamp which produced nothing of value except a few reeds, and which, as a breeding-place of the malarial mosquito, was exceedingly dangerous to the neighbourhood. The refugees settled there came from Pyrgos, a village close to Constan- tinople, and were fortunate that among their number was one Socrates Kiouyioumdzogolou, an enthusiast and apostle of hard work. Under his leadership and direction the colonists have transformed the swamp into 500 acres of market garden. The whole of this work was done by hand, each clump of reeds, each thornbush dug out by the roots and a short drain constructed connecting the swamp with the sea. The stream which fed the swamp was turned into irrigation channels, and is now used for irrigating a portion of the market gardens. The refugees are beginning to make serious repayments of their advances from the Commission.

The Commission, as has been said, deliberately concentrated its main effort on the settlement of the agricultural refugees. At the same time considerable work was done to house a portion of the refugee population in the towns. In Athens and Piraeus the Commission has constructed four new quarters, of which the largest, Kokkinia, contains some 30,000 souls, the others some 45,000 among them. Quarters not so large in size have been constructed in a number of the smaller towns ; while the Government has also been responsible for a solution of the urban problem in various places. Taking all together, the Commission has provided quarters for .23,303 urban families, the Government for 28,228.

One of the great difficulties of dealing with the urban problem lay in ignorance of its extent. The Commission has recently undertaken a census of all unestablished urban refugees, and has come to the conclusion that there are still some 25,000 to 30,000 families who require assistance if they are to be decently housed. But the provision of houses by no means exhausts the question of establishment in the case of urban refugees. In every town there is a limit to the possi- bility of economic absorption of refugee population, and it would Le disastrous were an excess to be encouraged by building in any of the towns in the country too many houses for refugees. The census of the urban refugee population in Athens and Piraeus shows a remarkable absence of un- employment, and it is probable that accommodation can be safely provided for almost all the urban refugees to be found in these towns. On the other hand, hi Salonika and in Kavalla, the two largest towns in Macedonia, unemployment is serious and general.

The influx of refugees into Greece must be characterized as a temporary disaster, but from it may confidently be expected:. not only the solution of ethnological and political problems,. but also the initiation of ,R period of prosperity for Greece. perhaps unequalled in its past history. But the Commission's resources are nearly at an end and further funds must be made available if it is desired to bring the work of settlement to a satisfactory conclusion.

JOIIN HOPE-SIMPSON.

[Since this -article was written the funds needed have been made available, the League of Nations Council having in the second week of December given its approval to a new Greek Loan of £9,000,000, of which £3,000,000 will be devoted to the com- pletion of the Refugee Settlement Scheme.]