President Roosevelt’s gratification with the contract for settlement of refugees in the Dominican Republic was revealed yesterday by James N. Rosenberg, president of the Dominican Republic Settlement Association, reporting on his activities in Ciudad Trujillo to a meeting at Town Hall presided over by James G. MacDonald, chairman of the President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees.
Rosenberg read the following message from Secretary of State Cordell Hull forwarded to him through the American Legation in Ciudad Trujillo: “The President has received your telegram and is highly gratified to learn of the conclusion of your arrangement with the Dominican Government looking toward the settlement of refugees. The success of the venture will augur for the gradual and progressive solution of this great humanitarian problem.”
Rosenberg declared in his address: “There is at stake the whole fabric of the refugee problem, the whole future policy of the western world toward this world tragedy. Many of these countries need man power such as ours did a hundred years ago. Today they fear to accept refugees. It is for us to wipe away these fears. We must and will prove that the refugees will become rich assets and fine citizens of the Dominican Republic. If we succeed here a real hope exists that the doors of the western world will open further.”
Other speakers were Robert T. Pell, of the State Department; Paul van Zeeland, executive president of the Coordinating Foundation, and George L. Warren, executive secretary of the President’s Advisory Committee, who read messages from Chairman Lord Winterton, Vice-Chairman Myron C. Taylor and Director Sir Herbert Emerson of the Intergovernmental Refugee Committee.
A meeting of the Settlement Association’s board of directors prior to the Town Hall gathering ratified the contract, which now must be approved by the Dominican Congress meeting on Feb. 20, and added Stephen V.C. Morris, secretary of the Intergovernmental Committee, to the board.
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