It was officially announced today that Sir Neill Malcolm, retired British major-general has been appointed League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Coming from Germany. The appointment became effective on February 14.
While Sir Neill succeeded to the position from which James G. McDonald resigned on December 29, his duties will be different. He will confine himself to the legal and political aspects of refugee work, leaving the problem of economic assistance and settlement to private organizations.
Assistance to refugees will be carried on temporarily under the direction of Norman Bentwich, director of the High Commission. He is a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and former attorney-general of Palestine.
It was understood that in the future refugee work will be conducted by an organization working under the plan proposed by the British delegation headed by Sir Herbert Samuel in the United States, whereby 100,000 Jews will be expatriated from Germany in four years at an estimated cost of $15,000,000, about half of them going to Palestine.
Sir Neill will serve until next September’s meeting of the League Assembly, when measures for permanently aiding refugees will be considered and the High Commission may be absorbed by the Nansen International Office.
One of his first duties will be to call an inter-governmental conference, to which the United States will be invited, to set up a system of legal protection for refugees. It was understood that he accepted the position after a discussion with Joseph Avenol, League Secretary General.
In an interview today with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Sir Neill declared that he will confine himself to the legal and political aspects of the refugee question, adding that economic assistance will be left to private organizations.
“I am entirely concerned with the political and legal side, after the people become refugees,” he asserted. “That is to say, I have nothing to do with political and internal conditions in Germany. And even when the refugees are out of Germany, the League concerns itself purely with the political and legal status of the people.
“The League does not concern itself with their economic position,” he continued. “This must be entirely the concern of philanthropic and charitable organizations. There is a clear division between the work which the League is going to do and that which the League and the High Commissioner were doing.”
A veteran military leader, Sir Neill served with the British forces in India, South Africa and the Somaliland and in the World War. He retired in 1924 at the age of forty-four and is former chairman of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, president of the British North Borneo Company and of the British South Africa Company.
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