All former German and Austrian subjects who have become British subjects since December, 1932, have been ordered to report to the police today and Monday.
Meanwhile, the decision to create a category of useful Germans and Austrians is approved editorially by the News-Chronicle, which expresses the hope that large numbers eventually will be incorporated in a new international brigade and others will be mobilized for work in the fields, factories and propaganda departments.
Condemning the policy of wholesale internment, the paper urges that internees be given the option of working against Hitler or finding security in the Dominions. In the meantime, the editorial asserts, they should be allowed to communicate with people outside the internment camps and see newspapers, and anti-Nazis should be segregated from Nazis.
A demand for a Parliamentary investigation of treatment of refugees and of the War Office’s conduct of internment camps is contained in a Manchester Guardian editorial, which charges that a revolution in the Government’s policy is going on without any explanation in Parliament or public official statement.
The Guardian describes Britain’s past policy of liberalism and practical sense in admitting and absorbing elements of technical and intellectual ability that strengthen Britain. It declares that this policy has presently been scrapped.
“There are strong reasons for thinking that the new policy has not been inspired by the Home Office but is a creation of the War Office,” the editorial asserts. “What part the War Cabinet has had in making it, one does not know.”
After describing the qualities of the refugees and the contribution they have been able to make to the national effort, the editorial criticizes the harshness of the Government’s measures and demands that Parliament investigate the War Office conduct of the camps, “which have penal rules suitable only for convicted criminals.”
It points out that much of what is happening is due to bad management and adds that aside from humanitarian considerations it seems wasteful and unintelligent to deprive the country of the aid of these thousands.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
