Hostages to Fortune

Last week one of the strangest and most moving contests in history sped to an unrecorded climax. On one side was the speed and efficiency of Hitler's war machine, preparing for the destruction of Britain. On the other was the desperate attempt to save British children.

Although Britain's King and Queen, urged repeatedly to send the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose to Canada, last week let it be known that they had decided to keep their children in England, many a British family would not face the risk their sovereigns faced. The parents of at least 100,000 children, it was estimated, tried to get them out of the country. The Government arranged to ship many to the Dominions, where up to last week 20,000 households had offered to take them. But it was the U. S., founded by British refugees, that most freely opened its heart to England's refugee children.

Beneath the drab details of the attempt--the conditions under which children were sent to the U. S. and Canada, the rate at which they could be moved, the amount of money needed to save them--the agony of Britain's waiting loomed like a symbol of modern war: it was as if, at the last moment before the blow fell, the people who believed that they were steeled to meet it found that they were not, that there remained one human sacrifice they were not prepared to make.

As ceaselessly in Britain children were registered, moved to western ports, prepared for the voyage into an unknown future by parents who feared never seeing them again, so on the other side of the Channel Hitler's preparations went forward. Sweating and laboring, the gun crews moved their cannon nearer the Channel; pungent-smelling aviation gas was stored for the bombers that would soon roar over the darkened cities; 500-lb., 1,000-lb., 2,000-lb. bombs were brought up to air fields, bombs destined to plunge through the roofs of houses, which always look vacant from the air.

No great spokesman arose in the U. S. to tell the meaning of this contest. But last week it was apparent that the U. S. willingness to harbor British children had roused a greater response than any single campaign since the war began. A Gallup poll disclosed that between 5,000,000 and 7,000,000 U. S. families were willing to take in British and French children for the duration of the war. The Manhattan headquarters of the U. S. Committee for the Care of European Children were swamped with appeals, crowded with visitors: in two weeks 15,000 U. S. citizens made arrangements to take in children. Only about 3,000 were inquiries from people who knew the children's families or were related to them.

Last week the advance guard of Britain's child refugees had begun to arrive in their New World. Due in Canada next week were the first arrivals of Canada's 10,000, to be followed through the summer by others at the rate of 5,000 a week.

Before refugee children could enter the U. S. in large numbers, there remained much red tape to be cut. Admittance of a child requires two affidavits from its prospective foster parents: that they are 1) willing & ready, 2) financially able to give the child a home. Knottiest red tape was the U. S. immigration law, which admits 65,721 British immigrants a year but sets a 6,572-per-month maximum.

Pointing out that the emergency was a matter of days, not of years, Columnist Raymond Clapper last week demanded amendment of the law, cried: "What are we waiting for?" The State Department moved fast to cut red tape, decreed that necessary affidavits could be cabled to England. Promptly Western Union arranged for affidavits to be sent from any Western Union office. The American Association of University Women arranged to find homes for 3,000,6,000 children of British university graduates; the Committee for the Care of European Children prepared to aid families that wanted them but could not afford to take them; the Living Age Committee prepared to build communities outside cities where children could be harbored in units of 100.

Although 90% of the space in all ships leaving for the U. S. through August had been reserved for children, Britain estimated that the maximum number of children it could transport by then was 15,000 to the U. S., 15,000 to Canada. Members of Parliament urged the U. S. to send its ships and Navy to help. Cried overwrought Major Albert Braithwaite, M. P.: "I say to them it is their bounden duty to send us ships and boats to take our women and children across to their country."

Last week there was no mystery in the willingness of British parents to let their children go into exile. Less clear was the reason for the U. S. response. One explanation was that U. S. citizens, frustrated in their desire to aid the Allies, had found an outlet for their emotional reaction to the war. Another was that sentimental U. S. citizens could not resist an appeal for aid that involved children. Here and there sophomoric analysts saw it as British propaganda.

But beneath the appeals to sentiment lay a hard U. S. recognition of a hard truth: that the British Fleet would never be surrendered to Hitler so long as the sons & daughters of British sailors were cared for in U. S. homes.

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