THE refugee problem is as old as history. Practically every war which has been waged in the past has occasioned an influx of refugees from the scene of fighting into the territory of at least one of the belligerent powers. In the past, when populations were more mobile, it was no uncommon thing for an entire people to leave its homes before an advancing invader; and such popular migrations usually resulted in desperate fighting between the newcomers and the inhabitants of the country which they had entered. What distinguished the refugee problem with which the League of Nations had to cope after the World War was partly its magnitude, unexampled in modern times, and partly the fact that for the first time a serious attempt was made to deal with it systematically, and along international lines. For it was understood, when the waves of destruction broke successively over Russia, Armenia, Greece and Bulgaria, that these were not problems which affected those four States alone, or could be dealt with by them alone. Most of the States of the world shared, in greater or less degree, the responsibility for the catastrophe; practically every State felt its repercussions. It was therefore as necessary as it was fitting that the task of healing the wounds and banishing the misery of the refugees should be undertaken by the supreme international authority, the League of Nations. It was fitting, too, that the League should entrust the duty of
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carrying out this work mainly to that one man on whom all the world learnt to look in the past decade as the purest embodiment of the international spirit in its highest form: Dr. Nansen.
Even before the outbreak of the World War, the refugee problem was already a serious one in Greece and in Bulgaria ; and during the War the Armenian question also became extremely acute. It is possible, however, that these problems might have been solved, as that of the Belgian refugees was solved, without any big international organisation, but for the catastrophe which overtook Russia, and which was obviously of a magnitude transcending any individual or national effort. The refugee work of the League grew out of the Russian problem. The Armenian, Greek, Bulgarian, Assyro-Chaldean, etc., settlement schemes had their origins in many cases in events prior to the catastrophe in Russia; but, for the sake of clearness, the method has been adopted here of presenting the successive problems in the order in which they forced themselves on the attention of the League of Nations.