Sir Victor Sassoon, in his statement to the Press on Thursday afternoon, not only emphasized the really fine work which is already being done for the refugees from Central Europe, but also the immensity of the task which lies ahead. With 8,000 refugees already in Shanghai, and the possibility of some 20,000 more arriving by the end of the year, a burden is being placed upon the city which it is ill-fitted to sustain. Consequently it is clear that if the work of caring for these unfortunates is to be ied on efficiently an increase in the monetary: nce which is available from abroad is imperatively necessary. There are, however, still directions in which help will have to be afforded locally, and Sir Victor pointed out one of these when he applied for more shelter for these people. How some 20,000 more are to be housed is a problem which will require very careful solution, though perhaps some unused factory building, or godown may prove to be the immediate solution. Possibly if some sort of encampment could be provided with land adjacent for cultivation much might be done in the way of ekeing out the funds which may be available, while the provision of employment along such lines might not only give the menfolk cause for content, but at the same time give them the sort of training which may be most helpful to hem in whatever the future has in store for them. The problem presented by this invasion of refugees is entirely different from that provided by the immigration of Russian refugees nearly twenty years ago. They descended on these shores more gradually and the process of absorption was consequently more comfortably carried on. In this instance Shanghai faces the prospect of a large body of people, mostly necessitous, being dumped upon her long before the process of absorption can be said to be really under way, and the probabilities of considerable difficulty cannot altogether be discounted. The one great ray of hope is that the committee responsible for caring for these refugees have handled matters so efficiently that there is every reason to expect that they will be just as able to deal with the larger problem. The real need at the moment, and will continue to be, is money. Most of that will have to come from abroad, but there is still much room locally for assistance in kind, the chief of which is undoubtedly the provision of adequate sheller.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.