The announcement that Lord Halley, as chairman of the Co-ordinating
Committee for Refugees, is to be assisted in the specific task of co-ordination by Sir Henry Bunbury, who haS had a long and distinguished career in the Civil Service, is peculiarly welcome, for it has long been evident that the various voluntary organisations, dependent as they are almost exclusively on volunteers, for whose self-sacrificing devotion no praise can be too high, have a task to cope with which is rapidly overwhelming them. In the tragic problem they are dealing with arrears of work may mean consignment to concentration-camps or worse of men and women who, if they are not got out of Germany or Czecho-Slovakia quickly, may never be got out at all. As The Times very rightly pointed out on Wednesday the Government should be moving more actively than it is in this matter. There can be no question of superseding the voluntary organisations, and the right course is being taken in stiffening them by the introduction of men of the calibre and experience of Sir Henry Bunbury. But what is needed, as Sir Arthur Salter recently urged, and as The Times now urges too, is the appointment of someone with the status of Lord Samuel or Lord Harlech to evolve a practical scheme for the per- manent settlement, in or outside the Commonwealth, of the refugees to which this country is more than ready to offer temporary shelter.
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