Mass Migration
The annoucement that Argentina is willing to receive 4,00o,00o Europeans at a rate of 30,000 a month is the most resounding President Peron has yet made. Coming on top of the Brazilian offer to take 120,000 refugees a year, it amounts to an act of profound political importance. It is well known that after the 1914-18 war there was a strong movement to get away from Europe. The main flow was then to the United States. It is essential that the next movement shall be as successful as the last. The evidence of pressure is already manifest in the movement of Jews towards Palestine and, nearer home, in the recent discovery that over a million British people are thinking of emigrating. Two things are already clear. The effect of the Jewish movement on the peace of Palestine and of the world has been almost completely bad ; and the effect on this country's economy of the emigration of all the young men and women of working age who want to go would be quite disastrous. The long- term political consequences of the movement also have an importance which it is difficult to exaggerate. Probably the case of Argentina is the most important of all. The head of the selection agency is a Catholic priest who will set up his headquarters in Rome. There is a presumption that Jewish would-be emigrants will not necessarily be placed at the top of his list, so that the presure of Palestine will not be relaxed. There is also a presumption that the United States cannot be indifferent to a vast increase in the power of Catholic Argentina, anymore than it can be indifferent to the rapid movement towards a Catholic Canada dut to the enormous increase in the French population. The Monroe Doctrine may survive but it can hardly escape modification in the process.
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