Common-Sense Charity Abroad
Anderson, George E.
COMMON-SENSE CHARITY ABROAD By GEORGE E. ANDERSON FOR the first time in its history the American Red Cross has refused, officially and publicly, to ask the American people to contribute funds...
...Whatever the cause or explanation may be, the practical fact is that the result of international charity is as much ill feeling as gratitude...
...So long as the United States sends abroad something like fifty millions of dollars each year for missionary and charitable enterprises, there is little to indicate that the American heart beats any less warmly in sympathy with other nations in distress than heretofore...
...That spirit is as strong now as ever it was, even though the charitable public in the United States is becoming increasingly disposed to apply a common-sense rule to its charities, and to look more deeply into the occasions for them...
...Perhaps this is based upon an implied inferiority which the giving and taking of relief may entail...
...However, the report also showed that this distress is due to chronic conditions in which the incidence of poor crops, drought, floods or other primary causes of famine have but a small part...
...it has been proved a thousand times and in all parts of the world...
...on the other hand there has been the feeling, now voiced by the Red Cross committee, that the situation in China which calls to the rest of the world is chronic, and that it is doubtful wisdom to continue contributions in that direction until there is some real effort on the part of the Chinese themselves to remedy the conditions which have recurrently brought it about...
...A second cause has been the action of the military despots in seizing railways, destroying tracks and cars for military advantage, preventing the distribution of food supplies from district to district...
...This in general is the spirit of the American people in such matters...
...The Central Committee's decision was based upon a report of a commission appointed by the organization to carry on a thorough investigation of the situation in China during the past four months...
...with the result that when any of the foregoing causes operate in a district for a year or two, starvation conditions rapidly arise...
...Among the causes for the terrible distress admitted by all familiar with the situation the commission names seven, and these seven form a picture of conditions in the country which will not only govern the American people in their eleemosynary relations with China in the immediate future but will have a profound influence upon the political relations of the two countries...
...To this statement of inefficiency and cynicism, the commission might have added graft and corruption in the native distribution of the relief afforded from outside, and the many interferences with such relief imposed by Chinese officialdom...
...COMMON-SENSE CHARITY ABROAD By GEORGE E. ANDERSON FOR the first time in its history the American Red Cross has refused, officially and publicly, to ask the American people to contribute funds for the relief of known distress abroad...
...A third cause is the banditry which naturally arises from the foregoing conditions, resulting in the laying waste of immense districts, the complete destruction of hundreds of villages and the robbery, pillage and murder of many thousands of innocent inhabitants under conditions so revolting and atrocious as to be unbelievable...
...The American people have been called upon almost every year for many years to afford relief to the stricken Chinese...
...But there is a streak in human nature which often shows resentment at relief of this sort...
...this, in some cases, has resulted in the destruction of thousands of tons of food supplies needed by the starving millions...
...These principles apply with equal force to relief for other peoples...
...Far more good has been accomplished by the intelligent use of charitable funds than ever was possible under the old system of indiscriminate giving...
...The American Red Cross rightly feels that Chinese leaders would no doubt give more thought to the removal of the causes which impoverish their peopk and bring on such tragedies if they realized the necessity for assuming full responsibility for resulting relief needs...
...A fourth cause is the crushing taxation of every sort imposed upon the people by these war lords, collected as much as three years in advance and collected with ruthless severity, to the utter destitution of millions of people...
...Perhaps it will not be amiss to add a few observations as to the effect of international charitable contributions upon international and interracial feeling...
...China as a whole is not grateful for the millions of dollars spent by foreigners in that country in the hospitals, schools, colleges and other such institutions founded and supported in the past eighty years...
...in fact China has been rather more grateful than the rest of the world...
...However, there has been nothing in the latest program for relief to prevent a recurrence of the same call for relief next year and the year thereafter, and so on indefinitely...
...One can "pauperize" a nation as well as an individual...
...They recruit armies in the name of law and order but for their personal aggrandizement, support them by billeting them upon the country, levy heavy toll upon the cities, ruthlessly strip the country districts of food, live stock and farming implements, rob the helpless peasantry of even seed grain, not to mention the meagre store saved for their own support...
...any acceptance of that responsibility by foreign agencies cannot but retard this all-important result...
...This decision is in keeping with the indisposition shown by the American public during the past year and a half to contribute as freely as usual to the cause of famine relief in China, and justifies that neutrality or indifference with which the Department of State in Washington was charged when first the subject of relief for recent conditions was broached about two years ago...
...The fifth cause assigned is the lack of highways and other means of distribution of available supplies...
...But that charitable contributions in themselves evoke a similar feeling from the recipients thereof toward the donors by no means follows...
...In all such charitable efforts the only justifiable object is that of relieving the distressed, affording advantages to the ill, the needy and the ignorant, all in the name of charity, without expectancy of reward and in the face of possible ingratitude and resentment...
...There are literally tens of millions of people there all the time who are on the verge of starvation and most of them have never known any other conditions in life...
...They have always responded liberally, as they should...
...That Americans in general have friendly feelings for other peoples is apparent...
...Against this picture of starving multitudes are placed the ineffective efforts of the Chinese government to afford relief by a bond issue whose proceeds were either spent for the support of armies, largely lost in bad financing or left unused...
...that, in short, China should be left to work out its own salvation...
...Hence the Central Committee of the Red Cross wisely decided that, until the conditions which have brought about the chronic situation now existing in China have been done away with, it is useless for foreign agencies to attempt relief...
...Yet it need not be thought that pictures of distress in China have been overdrawn...
...It has been evident for several years, however, that there has been a change in the nature and direction of this sympathy, particularly in a feeling that more discrimination should be shown by charitable people in the distribution of charitable funds...
...There is a disposition on the part of many who are concerned in the raising of funds for such undertakings to make much of the friendly feeling the people of the United States have for other peoples, and to enlarge upon the friendly feelings engendered in other peoples who have received help from this country...
...This report showed that there was widespread distress in China, the number of people destitute for lack of food at one time numbering probably 65,000,000...
...The sixth and seventh causes arise from the delicate balance between China's food production and its constantly increasing population, which can be fed only by the most severe economies...
...Those most familiar with China and conditions in China have long viewed with mixed feelings every movement for the contribution of large amounts for any form of relief there...
...The change has brought about a greater improvement in the social factors responsible for much of the distress than is generally understood...
...and further minor assistance in the way of free customs entry and free transportation for the relief afforded by other agencies...
...The new nationalism now rampant in certain classes of the population has promptly taken the control of most of these institutions out of the hands of the founders and supporters, and adopted them for its own use and purposes...
...The decision and the reasons on which it was based, in fact, form a classic in the common sense of international charity...
...Intelligent charity in American communities has come to be less of an effort to relieve immediate distress, although immediate relief is still afforded where it is actually needed, and more of an effort to find remedies for the conditions which have brought about this distress...
...On the one hand there is the natural and laudable desire to relieve suffering...
...And there is a growing feeling that it is unwise to continue our great gifts to other countries so long as the conditions which give rise to the need of them are allowed to continue...
...Without doubt the poor starving wretches in Shantung villages and farm huts would be grateful for relief, although they probably would have a very indefinite idea as to whence it came...
...This harrowing state of things is not confined to any particular portion of the country but is more or less general, and is due to social and economic conditions as affected by ancestor-worship, and a family life which is largely based upon ancestor-worship...
...First among these causes are the operations of the war lords in the various provinces...
...These conditions have been greatly accentuated by eighteen years of civil war, but in its essentials the situation has existed for untold generations...
...The same is true of the people of the near East...
...It indicated that there was enough food in China to have prevented starvation in 1928 and 1929, but that chaotic political and economic conditions in the country made the proper distribution of this food impossible...
Vol. 11 • November 1929 • No. 2
