Neutral Countries Discouraged; Want Anglo-american Guarantees on Refugees

Considerable interest has been aroused in government circles here by the announcement in the House of Lords yesterday that Britain and the United States have reached an under standing on a program for rescuing Nazi victims in Europe, which will be implemented at the forthcoming Anglo-American conference on refugee problems.

It was pointed out here today that the announcement is discouraging for neutral countries insofar as it contained no reference whatsoever to possible moral and material support for those neutral lands which are maintaining refugees who succeeded in escaping from the Nazis. This feeling of discouragement has been aggravated by the fact that Viscount Cranborne, in making the announcement in the House of Lords, emphasized the fact that Britain has given shelter to only 150,000 refugees. Switzerland alone is now sheltering and feeding 20,000 people who have fled from Nazi territory.

It was predicted here today that as a result of the failure of Britain and the United States to guarantee that refugees now sheltered in Switzerland will eventually be allowed to enter British or American territories, it can be expected that all neutral governments bordering Germany will henceforth guard their frontiers even more closely than hitherto. “Thousands upon thousands of persecuted people are still hoping for the day when they will be able to cross the German frontier into a neutral country; it is therefore the duty of the Allied powers to make, as soon as possible, binding declarations assuring the neutral governments of extensive moral and material support for all refugees admitted as well as guarantees that they will not remain in the neutral countries when the war is over,” a spokesman for a relief organisation stated, summarizing the views prevailing here.