4 APRIL 1947, Page 16

UPROOTED HUMANITY SIR, —May I refer to Sir Angus Watson's reply

published on March 21st. In our desire to be brief,. Sir Angus and I were not clear to each other. In the course of making three positive suggestions, I only showed inci- dentally that, as regards Jewish European refugees, they have been successfully settled on the land in Argentina and Biazil where, I admit, I had not understood that Sir Angus was envisaging a Jewish State. The penultimate line of my letter (March 14th) pleaded our own indus- tries' and agriculture's need of the skilled Allied refugees. More than 50 per cent. (that is, the majority) of the European refugees of Jewish faith are not of Allied hut, however ironical it may seem, of enemy or ex-enemy nationality. In number they are, moreover, only slightly more than 100,000 of the million refugees in Western Europe, who are mainly Allied and Christian. Sir Angus is, of course, right in saying that the former (save perhaps as textile workers) are not so easily and productively employable here.

I have closely observed, over a number of years and not without sym- pathy,- the main compact' communities of Jewish faith of various nation- alities in Eastern Europe, Arabic Africa and Arabic Asia, and one of the alternative projects which I ventured to submit to the Evian Committee (which succeeded the Nansen Office) was for the financing and creation of specific industrial cities of refuge in unindustrialised countries needing the industries in question. It was not suggested that it would be easy. But my letter on Western Europe's Uprooted humanity concerned more the million Allied refugees than any one particular group. For highly industrialised exporting countries (like Belgium, Britain and North America) a wider world-perspective of uprooted humanity is gained by the knowledge that the million refugees in Western Europe are relatively few among the tens of millions of bombed-out, or devastated and home- less, in China, the U.S.S.R. and Germany who have not yet regained even a prospect of purchasing-power to buy our exports when produced. Economically, reconstruction, like peace, is indivisible.—I am, Sir, your