REFUGEES ERRANT
By PROFESSOR NORMAN BENTWICH
ONE of the most tragic aspects of the refugee problem is the shiploads of exiles wandering over the seas and rejected at port after port. They are, in the literal sense, human flotsam and jetsam. It has been the fate of refugees from political and racial persecution in the past to be tossed about the seas and to be the prey of pirates. Christopher Columbus records in the diary of his voyage to America that he saw ships carrying Jewish exiles from Spain ; and we have chronicles of their sufferings, till they found a haven in the Ottoman Empire. But never has the fate of those driven from their home been as desperate as it is today, when all the world is linked together and forms one neigh- bourhood, and yet every country is closed or, at best, half- closed to the alien. One port, indeed, is open to the wandering refugee. It is the International Settlement of Shanghai, where no visa is required, and where no immigra- tion regulations are in force. And so each month some 2,000 men, women and children are dumped from German and Italian boats in the Settlement, almost all destitute, almost all without prospect of employment.
The " errant ships " are those seeking to discharge their cargoes of refugees in countries which do demand visas and which enforce rules of immigration. There are two prin- cipal regions of wandering: the Caribbean Sea and the shores of the Central- and South-American States ; and the Mediterranean Sea and the shores of Palestine and Syria. The circumstances of the wandering Jews are different in the two regions. Those who turn to the Western Hemi- sphere have obtained visas, before they leave, from the dip- lomatic or consular offices, and hope against hope that their visa will be respected. Those who turn to the East have no visas, and hope against hope that they may be smuggled into the land of their ancestors. What has caused the rejection of the ships bearing the exiles to the New World is usually some change of regulations, made since the visas were issued. That was the fate with the shipload of nearly i,000 persons on the Hamburg-America liner ' St. Louis,' which caused a stir throughout the world a few months ago. Its passengers had visas for Cuba, but the Cuban Govern- ment, which was undergoing one of those changes not rare in that part of the world, refused to honour the visas of its European agents. The despairing r,000 were sent back to Hamburg, the port from which they set out. Repatriated they could not be, because they had no patria ; but they could be returned to a concentration camp. The thought of that fate moved the Jewish organisations in America, England, France, Holland and Belgium to make a great effort ; and they prevailed on the Governments of those four European countries to admit without visas those who had been rejected from their destination for which they had a visa. So the t,000 now await in the different lands of their asylum the opportunity of setting out on a fresh voyage.
Hardest is the lot of those who have tried and failed to enter Palestine. The Colonial Secretary announced recently in the House of Commons that the British Govern- ment knew of 4,000 men, women and children on ships in the Eastern Mediterranean which were hovering off the shores of Palestine. He did not tell the rest of the story, how some of these ships, which were old, decaying tramps, had set out, months before, from Danzig, from Constanza, from Athens ; how they had wandered about till all their provisions and water were exhausted and sickness had broken out ; how men and women had died of want, and others had gone mad with despair ; and how the vessels had been prevented from landing their human freight by the British patrols. In two cases the wanderers have literally burned their boats, hoping that they might move the rulers to compassion. But, saved from the burning ships, they have been brought, not to their bourne in the Promised Land, but to Greek Islands and to Rhodes, to suffer fresh trials and fresh hopelessness. Another boatload tried a more fortunate device. They rose in mutiny against the ship's officers. A British patrol, responding to the call for help from the ship, brought them to a Palestine port. Once there, they were not sent back. Another of the ships, on which plague had broken out, turned to the French authori- ties in Beirut ; and there is some chance that the Odyssey of the despairing passengers it carried may be ended in Syria.
Some way must be found of stopping the tragedy of the errant ships. What is more bitter today even than the deliberate inhumanity of man to man in the countries of persecution is the impersonal and involuntary harshness of man to man in countries of expected refuge. The Govern- ments of the liberal peoples appear to be compelled, against their will, to deny a right of asylum, because they fear that, if they open the sluice-gates at all, they will be overwhelmed with the flood. But the conscience of the public in the free countries rebels against a policy of letting the fugitives die on the seas, or forcing them back to a lingering death in the countries from which they fled. The Governments will have to face up to the position, and find some spot on this still wide globe where a few thousands can have refuge and be allowed to come to land.
Some years ago Lord Cecil of Chelwood, then chairman of the Governing Body of the League High Commission for Refugees from Germany, declared that there were great physical spaces and great intellectual spaces to be filled. It would be a worthy experiment of the League of Nations, combining with the Intergovernmental Committee for the Settlement of Refugees, to establish under international administration an Alsatia in one of the empty spaces for those who are rejected by the National State.
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