[Distributed to the Council and the Members of the League] C. 524. M. 187. 1924. II. Geneva, October 30th, 1924. LEAGUE OF NATIONS THE SETTLEMENT OF GREEK REFUGEES SCHEME FOR AN INTERNATIONAL LOAN PROTOCOL Arranged by the League of Nations and signed at Geneva on September 29th, 1923. Amended by the Additional Act signed at Geneva on September 19th, 1924 WITH THE RELEVANT DOCUMENTS AND PUBLIC STATEMENTS, INCLUDING THE STATUTES OF THE REFUGEE SETTLEMENT COMMISSION LEAGUE OF NATIONS RRATUM AND ADDENDUM TO DOCUMENT C. 524. M. 187.1924. II The Settlement of Greek Refugees. Page 6. Heading III. — The beginning of the second paragraph should read as follows: "As will be seen from Document XII, the property so transferred, and to be trans­ ferred to, (2) and held with a clean title by, the Refugee Settlement Commission", etc. A note should be added at the bottom of page 6 as follows : (2). “The position as to the delivery of land is as follows: In accordance with the terms if the Protocol of Geneva, the Hellenic Government has already transferred to the Refugee iettlement Commission all the cultivable lands left in Greece by Musulmans who have dépar­ ti from Greece under the Lausanne Convention for the Exchange of Populations between :eece and Turkey. After deducting from this area such portions as are not available for irious reasons for the settlement of refugees, it is estimated that at least 220,000 hectares of iltivable land will remain on which refugees can be established. In addition, the area of the nds already requisitioned with a view to expropriation, and the physical possession of which is already been given to the Commission with an undertaking on the part of the Hellenic ovemment that the lands will be formally transferred later to the Commission, amounts to jproximately 40,000 hectares. In addition to these areas 25,000 hectares of lands belonging > the Greek State have been formally transferred to the Commission. The total of these areas 285,000 hectares. Refugees are, in fact, occupying this area of land. The application of the Agrarian Law throughout Greece places the Hellenic Government in a position to obtain nd transfer to the Commission the 215,000 hectares necessary to make up the half-million hec- ires which, under the Protocol of Geneva, they have undertaken to provide for the purposes 1 the Commission. Arrangements to secure and transfer to the Commission this balance of ^.ooo hectares are actively in progress. ‘The statements and amounts mentioned under heading III above and in Document XII lould by read subject to the fuller statement contained in this note.” CONTENTS Preface by Sir A rthur Salter........................................................................................................................... ^ I. Extracts from the Report by Dr. Nansen, November 18th, 1922.........................j II. Resolution adopted by the Council of the League of Nations, April 23rd, 1923. .. 5 III. Extracts from the Report of the Financial Committee, June 25th, 1923................10 IV. Letter from the Greek Minister in London to the Secretary-General, August 16th, 1923 13 V. Extract from the Minutes of the Twenty-sixth Session of the Council of the League of Nations, September 29th, 1923............................................................................................ 14 VI. Report of the Refugee Settlement Commission (August 25th, 1924).........................16 VII. Report of the Financial Committee on the proposed amendments to the Protocol and the Statute (September 12th, 1924)..........................................................................22 VIII. Resolutions adopted by the Council and the Fifth Assembly of the League of Nations (September 1924).............................................................................................................................28 IX. Protocol and Statutes relating to the settlement of refugees in Greece, signed at Geneva on September 29th, 1923, and amended by additional act on Septem­ ber 19th, 1924.............................................. y X. Declarations signed by three Governments concerning the International Financial Commission at Athens (1923 and 1 9 2 4 )..............................................................................33 XI. Memorandum addressed by M. Tsouderos, Greek Minister for Finance, to the Financial Committee relating to revenues assigned to the refugees loan (Sep­ tember 18 th, 1924).........................................................................................................................34 XII. Declaration by Mr. Morgenthau and Mr. Campbell, September nth. 1924 . • • 35 PREFACE L EVENTS FROM 1922 TO JULY 1923. The late Greco-Turkish War involved a very considerable displacement of population. The Treaty of Lausanne requires members of the Greek Orthodox Church established in Turkey to emigrate to Greece, and Moslems established in Greece to emigrate to Turkey. This pro­ vision of the Treaty had already, however, been anticipated by the flight of a large proportion of the persons concerned. During the retreat of the Greek Army and the capture of Smyrna and the rest of Asia Minor by the Turkish troops in the latter part of 1922, hundreds of thou­ s a n d s — and ultimately more than a million—of inhabitants of these regions left their homes and fled to the coast. Some of them reached Greece by their own efforts; others were collected in concentration camps and transported later to Greece with the assistance of Dr. N a n s e n , acting on behalf of the League. Those who remained have since been, or are now in the course of being, transported under the arrangements made by the Mixed Exchange Commission set up by t h e Treaty of Lausanne. The total number of refugees so added to the population of Greece amounts to some mil­ lion and a-half. About 200,000 or 300,000 of this number were possessed of some means, and a considerable proportion of the others have claims in respect of the property left behind in Asia Minor. The great bulk, however, amounting certainly to over a million, came practically estitute and in urgent need of assistance; and most of these found their way into Greece in 1922 or early in 1923, before the regular machinery of the Mixed Commission was in operation. In the first months the situation of the refugees was appalling (see Document I); emer­ gency assistance had to be improvised as best it could by the Greek Government, assisted by the invaluable work of American and British charitable societies, particularly the American Red Cross, the Near East Relief and the All-British Appeal. The refugees on the islands were jchiefly fed through the agency of Dr Nansen. In this way the immediate distress was relieved, and many hundreds of thousands of lives [saved; but relief of this kind was obviously only a temporary measure and could give no per­ manent solution. As early as the autum n of 1922, representatives of the League, Colonel P r o c t e r and Colonel T r e l o a r , made attempts to establish some of the refugees on a self-supporting |basis. By the middle of 1923, some 15,000 had been established in a colony of fifteen villages. This experiment demonstrated the practicability of settlement, and showed that the refugees Iwere good material and capable of supporting themselves if once given a reasonable start ('). j It was, however, evident that private relief organisations could not be expected to provide the sums necessary for the definite settlement of all suitable refugees in productive work. Nor could the Greek Government hope to accomplish such an immense task without the assistance of a n external loan. The refugees numbered more than 2 0 per cent of the total population; and the resources of the country had been strained by a period of more than twelve years of (intermittent war and continuous mobilisation. A loan of the dimension required, however, presented great difficulties, for the financial ■credit of the Government in the money markets of the world had been necessarily weakened |b y the recent war. In February 1923, therefore, the Government asked the Council (2) for the moral support land technical help of the League of Nations; and the Council transmitted the request to the Financial Committee for examination and report. On behalf of the Committee, M. Parm entier, Imember of the Committee, and M. S t o p p a n i , of the Secretariat, visited Athens to enquire into |me situation, particularly as to the securities which the Greek Government could offer and to the most suitable organisations for the control of the securities and the expenditure of |r|!f *0an" Simultaneously, Colonel Procter made a full investigation as to the needs of the Meanwhile, the situation became more acute on receipt of a note dated March 31st from the I cretary of State of the United States to the British, French and Italian Governments to the I .ec,.°at the American Red Cross had decided to terminate on June 30th, 1923, its emergency °n w^*ch more than 500,000 refugees were entirely dependent, and that the Near L. also desired to discontinue its emergency relief as soon as possible. The note added, |fo r th ^ ^ a constructive plan could be worked out for an apportionment of the task and Ico. 8radual solution of the refugee problem, American relief agencies would be ready to lon°T>erate’ even a^ter the termination of the emergency relief work of the American Red Cross IN’ea ^actj charitable assistance has been continued, particularly through the I r,p^aSt though on a reduced scale. ■Greek's gestion was discussed by the Council (*), which constituted for the purpose a special ■to wh ommittee, composed of the British, French and Italian Members of the Council, a,™ a representative of the Greek Government was added (Document II). |Comm- " the *nvestigations of M. Parmentier, M. Stoppani and Colonel Procter, the Financial ItheSuh r reP.orted on the whole problem (Document III) and, after considering their report, l°f a sch t *ttee t *le Council, at its meeting of July 9th, 1923, approved the main lines lindfn«„jme ior ^ e settlement of refugees to be financed by a loan and administered by an I «pendent Settlement Commission.