Starvation and War
STARVATION AND WAR THOUGH Mr. Hoover's Armistice Day speech I was never trivial, it rose to great heights through the somewhat venturesome proposal of a new idea. We have grown unaccustomed to this...
...Once that moment arrives, the practical obstacles in the path will be removed...
...Looking upon war as a disturbance to which societies are inevitably exposed, they hope to avert most attacks by making them so costly and unpopular that governments will think hard before giving marching orders...
...We should remove starvation of women and children from the weapons of warfare...
...Statesmanship might, in theory, quite easily reconcile Mr...
...and we believe that his appeal represents, over and above American sentiment, the American conscience...
...Today the thought is even more horrible...
...To them all it has been a matter of sincere regret (and also of annoyance) that the United States has steadily refused to join this effort...
...First, it is abundantly clear that naval parity must mean, if anything, that the seas are open to food shipments if Washington desires them to be and if the right of blockade be abrogated...
...I have held," he declared, "that food ships should be made free of any interference in times of war...
...The rapid growth of industrial civilization during the last half-century has created in many countries populations far in excess of their domestic food supply and thus steadily weakened their natural defenses...
...The nations of the old world feel that they have devised machinery to insure concerted action against a possible aggressor...
...This may be said to repose at present upon three things: The naval power of certain nations is sufficient to keep food supplies from their enemies...
...The sight of Rhenish children well-nigh broke the hearts of American soldiers, many of whom lost all interest in victory when they beheld among its causes scrofula and pernicious anaemia in wholesale lots...
...As people think it over-and owing to differing circumstances they must be allowed plenty of time to do so -they are likely to feel that a new concept of justice has been advocated and that refusal to consider it will afflict the social conscience...
...The argument runs pretty much as follows: Competitive armaments undermine the permanence of international peace...
...As a consequence, protection for overseas or imported supplies has been one of the most impelling causes of increasing naval armaments and military alliances...
...Let us examine all of these in their relation to the government of the United States...
...Hoover's humanitarianism with the insistence upon sanctions emphasized by the League covenant...
...But European public opinion is involved and remains dedicated to a number of hostile convictions...
...We have grown unaccustomed to this sort of thing from our Presidents...
...international law recognizes the right to enforce a blockade over and against neutral peoples eager to sell supplies...
...Now Mr...
...It is not pleasant to remember that the soldiers of the Confederacy had to get on without essential medicines, or that Belgium was fed with a meagre spoon...
...The blockade tradition nevertheless has its legal status...
...Is M. Briand the only man in all Gaul who can think internationally...
...If the United States were a member of the League, all could be accomplished without too much difficulty...
...This right could be relegated to the scrap-heap of outmoded legislation by an international treaty...
...and the "economic measures" which the League of Nations may appeal to in opposing an outlaw government certainly include interference with the commissary...
...Hoover's suggestion does undoubtedly weaken the sanctions upon which Geneva can rely, however strongly one may feel that the business of starving women and children is indefensible...
...It does not, perhaps, realize the extent to which Washington might be prepared to defend a newly granted right to keep open the channels of food supply...
...Meanwhile we wish that French opposition to the Idea had not been so pronounced...
...the insecurity of a nation's food supply obliges it to arm for protection of that supply...
...Wilson was the last chief executive to offer ideas, and he was possibly a little too hasty and too generous...
...and therefore an international guarantee against starvation, upheld by a strong United States navy on a free ocean, will destroy the necessity for certain kinds of armament...
...After all, why should Paris think that in case a revival of war-time hatreds were to arm Germany once again, a blockade would be effective...
...Europe is not accustomed to thinking in these terms...
...Since Wilson's time they have listened to one President after another declare that America must go its own way in dealing with international affairs...
...There remains, accordingly, only the problem created by the League of Nations...
...But as things are now, the move appears temporarily to have ended in a stalemate...
...Science can rush to the aid of a beleaguered population and (as in Germany) sustain life through food substitutes which seriously impair health...
...Nobody saw more of this kind of thing than Mr...
...What can be said for Mr...
...Assuredly there is need, at this point, for another sanction...
...We believe, however, that the President's reasoning is utterly sound and unusually appealing...
...It is, one must concede, a very difficult problem...
...It is essentially a move to prevent war by removing one of its causes...
...We imagine that nobody is very proud of a code of martial chivalry which rules that war-time blockades may starve men, women and children into submission...
Vol. 11 • November 1929 • No. 4
