Mission “entirely Exploratory,” Warren Holds

The six-man commission will sail for Georgetown, British Guiana, on Feb. 8 on a mission which is “entirely exploratory,” George Warren, executive secretary of the President’s Advisory Committee on Refugees, informed the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today. The commission’s terms of reference provide that it “determine the suitability and practicability of large-scale colonization in British Guiana for involuntary emigrants of European origin and the approximate number which might be settled.”

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, in his Nov. 21 statement, said that “at least 10,000 square miles” were available, but it was later estimated that approximately 40,000 square miles were available, Mr. Warren declared. This includes a stretch of 36,300 square miles, practically all of the country from 5 North Latitude to the Brazilian border on the west and south, and Surinam on the east, and another 4,600 square miles in the North-West District.

The members of the commission are Dr. Edward C. Ernst, chairman, who is assistant director of the Pan-American Sanitary Bureau in Washington; Dr. Anthony Donovan, sanitary engineer of the Pan-American Sanitary Bureau; Dr. Joseph A. Rosen, director of the American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation; Col. Howard U. Nicholas, engineer on leave from the United States Army Service in Panama; Emil C. Bataille, colonization expert of Newark, and Desmond Holdridge, of Baltimore, acting secretary of the commission. The British Government has assigned Dr. D.W. Dunnie, agricultural chemist of the Department of Agriculture, Georgetown, to aid the commission.

Mr. Warren said that Anthony de Rothschild of London had been requested by the British Government to assume responsibility for the preliminary investigations in British Guiana. The President’s Advisory Committee was collaborating with Mr. de Rothschild because of the availability of experts in the United States and this country’s proximity to the South American colony.