AIDING REFUGEES
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—With reference to Mr. Hill's account of the apparently insuperable difficulties placed by Home Office regulations in the way of getting a refugee out of Germany, may I say that his discouraging experience has been my own in almost every particular, and also that I gather from others who have travelled much the same road with equal unsuccess that our cases arc only according to the common form ? Apart from a certain number of children, the Home Office seems on the face of it absolutely determined to refuse admittance to any refugee whose every expense is not absolutely guaranteed by some or other individual, and for whom it has not black-and- white evidence of being able to rid itself within a strictly limited period of time. .
This may be official or even national discretion, but that it is either charitable or Christian seems to me much more open to question. The response to the Baldwin and other more local but by no means negligible refugee appeals has been that of a people eager to help these unfortunate men and women as well as a few selected children. It stems regrettable that the Home Office too does not share something more of that eagerness.—Yours faithfully, The Cardinal's Hat, 6 Holywell, Oxford. GEOFFREY WEST.
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