Questions of the utmost urgency connected with victims of air-raids
have distracted public attention from other grave problems like the treatment of alien internees, but it would be a great mistake to think that with the appointment of one or two committees and the issue of a statement adding to the grounds for appeals for release a sudden improvement has set in. There are few signs of any improvement at all. Case after case comes to my personal notice of men whose continued internment or imprisonment or deportation overseas is an indefensible outrage. And with regard to deportation there is an aspect of the question of which too little has been heard. When Canada agreed to take prisoners of war from Britain she did not agree, or expect, to receive internees who had been arrested wholesale and were being treated like prisoners of war. A private letter that has reached me this week from a very representative Canadian speaks of the serious mishandling of the problem, and the resentment it has caused and is causing in the Dominion. That feeling cannot safely be disregarded.
jANUS.
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