Snt,—May I be allowed to thank you for publishing "A.
B. C.'s " letter in your issue of June 8th regarding the Aliens Problem? The attitude adopted by the authorities is indeed one of intolerance, even cruelty. Indiscriminately, without any warning, without a moment's notice, men are seized by the police and taken into custody in order to be transferred to internment camps. This procedure is apparently adopted with every enemy alien, whether he has been placed by the,legally\ established tribunals under class " B " or "C." There is one point, however, which has been overlooked by your correspondent to which I wish to draw your attention. Most of the enemy aliens—I do not refer to the Italians—are refugees from Germany or Austria who are of the Jewish persuasion. In their native countries they were seized by the Gestapo, imprisoned for no legal or just cause, beaten and tortured in concentration camps and robbed of their possessions. They were deprived of Their citizenship, their passports had been taken away from them ; these were returned to them on the one condition that, after all formalities of dispossession of their property had been complied with, they would emigrate. The pcssport, accordingly, was marked for "outward journey only "; re- entry into the blessed fatherland is expressly forbidden. I maintain that people travelling and living under such conditions have lost not only their citizenship, but also their nationality. It is wrong to class them as "enemy aliens." Surely the members of the Fifth Column cannot be found amongst them. I could cite many examples of undeserved hardship meted out to these victims of Nazi perverted persecution and cruelty, and now of the unrestrained suspicion of the authorities ; but in accordance with your request to be brief, I abstain from doing so.
I enclose my card and beg to sign myself.—Yours faithfully, X. Y. Z.
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