HAVEN FOR REFUGEES

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20911, 16 September 1939, Page 10

HAVEN FOR REFUGEES

FREE ENTRY TO ALASKA PARADISE FOR FARMERS (Times Air Mail Service.) LONDON, Aug. 20. Regulations are being drawn up by the U.S. Department of the Interior to enable the free entry of refugees into Alaska without quota, reports Reynolds’ New York correspondent. The refugees will not be admitted as colonists, but as “ visitors ” awaiting entry into the United States as soon as the quotas for their respective countries become available. Tourists express surprise when they find that Alaska is not icebound, as they imagined, but a sunny summerlike land at this time of the year. Up in Alaska I have made my way through a field of knee-high strawberries. I have halted beside pea vine eight feet tall and heavy with plump, six-inch pods, •containing peas that were sweet and tender. No Insect Pests Where peas ended, potatoes began. And these same vegetables grow 60 miles beyond the Arctic Circle. I have seen fields where men gathered cabbage weighing 15 to 20 pounds each. Celery, letttuce, and cauliflower all grown on the same generous scale, and the rhubarb has sfalks as large around as my wrist. The refugee farmer will have an easier time than any other farmer on the globe, once he is established. There are no insect pests, and potato bugs arc unknown. Nor is the virgin ground naturally weedy. By the end of May flic farmer must have his grain in and his potatoes planted. He can leave his farm and, with a serene mind, go off to work in the gold mines, do road work, or put up salmon for himself or for the market. In August he comes home to •harvest—after the midnight sun has worked 24 hours each and every day.