A plea for fair treatment of Central European refugees in Britain has been issued by a group of members of Parliament representing all parties.
“If instead of treating them as our natural allies we regard them with hostility and suspicion, harp on their racial origin and condemn them to loneliness and association only with those as unhappy as themselves, we may precipitate the very danger we fear,” the appeal said. “By doing this we force them to think of themselves as ‘Germans first’ or Austrians, Czechs or Jews, to brood on their real or supposed grievances, and to believe in such nonsense as that this is the capitalists’ war, and so on.”
The appeal was signed by Capt. Victor Cazalet, Conservative, president of the Parliamentary Committee for Refugees; R.J.G. Boothby, Conservative; Miss Eleanor Rathbone, Independent; R.D. Denman, National Labor; Col. Josiah Wedgwood, Labor, and Henry Graham White, Liberal.
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