THE WORLD'S EXILES
The Refugee Problem. Report of a Survey. By Sir John Hope Simpson, K.B.E., C.I.E. (Oxford University Press. 25s.) In any ill-seeing spirit gazing down like the Pities in The Dynasts on the picture of Europe presented in this volume the spectacle might well evoke only despair for mankind. We have in this country been concerned lately with only the most recent results of the apparently endless problem of refugees. In the twenty years since the War exiles from an ever-increasing list of countries—Greeks, Bulgars, Turks, Armenians, Assyrians, Russians, Italians, Germans, Spaniards, Portuguese—have been deprived of the elementary protection of the State in the country very often of their birth and have been driven to appeal to the world at large for the bare necessaries of life and freedom which the fortunate inhabitants of more liberal countries take for granted as their birthright.
In this volume of 63o pages, which is issued under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Sir John. Hope Simpson presents a survey of refugees which was undertaken in September, 1937. It studies exhaustively the origins and course of refugee movements and also records the methods adopted in dealing with the problem, both inter- nationally and by individual Governments, and describes how the great philanthropic organisations have struggled to cope with situations which have taxed their resources to the utmost. This volume takes the place of the Preliminary Report which was issued in July, 1938, for the use of those who at Evian in that month and at the League Assembly in September had to make decisions on the questions involved. The material on which the survey was based was collected up to October, 1938. Events since that date have carried a problem which was already unmanageable into a sphere where the action of Governments alone can attempt to cope with it. For their guidance the material arranged in this volume will be invaluable. It deals only with post-War refugee move- ments which originated in European countries, in the Ottoman Empire and in the Russian Empire. Limited though the inquiry has had to be in scope, it has nevertheless been possible to consider a first group of refugees whose settlement
is now complete, such as the million Greeks who were compelled by political circumstances to leave places which had been the homes of their ancestors for centuries and to take refuge in Greece; the 250,000 Bulgars who returned during and after the War to Bulgaria; and the 578,000 Turks who left Balkan countries for Turkey. Next come groups of immediate post-War refugees whose settlement is still in- complete : non-Moslem groups including Armenians, Assyrians, Assyro-Chaldeans and others, displaced in and from territory of the late Ottoman Empire; and refugees from Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution and the Civil Wars. These all received protection from the League of Nations under the Nansen Office. Finally come more recent groups of political refugees from Germany (including the Saar) and Austria, from Italy, Spain and Portugal. Of these League protection is given to the fugitives from the Saar, placed under the Nansen Office, and to refugees coming from Germany and Austria, under a League High Commissioner.
The main sources from which the problem of refugees arises are, of course, political and religious intransigeance and the claim of the nationalist State to exclusive domination, and though international co-operation, which can alone solve the resulting problem, is similarly retarded by the same causes, at the same time increasing speed of travel and rate of communication are contracting the world in so remarkable a way that for the refugee to-day, as Sir John Hope Simpson points out, " to a certain extent the world is his asylum and the world is concerned in his fate." There are hopeful aspects even of this tale of tragedy. Much has been done in the past. Apparently insoluble problems have in the end proved manageable. But if the present refugee problem is to approach solution large-scale measures, which only Governments can take, must be put into operation at once. To quote the final sentence of the book : " The machinery for governmental action was created at Evian in July, 1938; the need is no longer for machinery, but for action."
FRANK SINGLETON.
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