THE STARVING WORLD
Villard, Oswald Garrison
The Starving World By Oswald Garrison Villard EVERY DAY brings more and more alarming news about the world food situation which is now being officially discussed at the Atlantic City meeting of...
...European Demands Heavy Especially in Europe will there be heavy demands upon us, as there are now, not only because the starving are nearest to us there, but because we have a greater stake in them in view of our pending invasion of the continent...
...Telling of another case, his inability to have vitamin concentrate sent from the United States to France, he asked: "Can it be that Britain did not want America to continue to be the sole recipient of gratitude for feeding the children of France...
...Surely," he said, "there can be nothing more important for the Council of the UNRRA to do at Atlantic City than to probe into this and this whole question of the pending European situation...
...As a result the milk went to Germany instead of giving a new lease of life to some of the starving babies in France...
...The Parliamentary Secretary to the British Ministry of Economic Warfare, Mr...
...It will be if humanity is not beyond any other consideration in dealing with what is ahead...
...He insisted that the relief plan called for no movement of food through the blockade and that no military considerations were involved...
...Herbert Lehman did not attempt to minimize the magnitude of the task which confronts him...
...Howard E. Kershner, who was director of European relief for our Quakers from 1939 to 1942, there is every danger that, if present conditions continue, the Germans will be the only people to have the health and strength to rebuild Europe if we permit the democratic peoples slowly to perish...
...All in all, the problems which will confront the Allies when the war ends give point to the latest quip that "peace will be horrible...
...In accepting the directorship of the UNRRA ex-Gov...
...How dreadfully that will affect the relief problems is obvious...
...The daily food ration in Poland is reported to be only 800 calories a day, with only 400 for Jews...
...To this Dr...
...He then cited case after case of British interference with actual food shipments...
...British Interference In one instance, he asserted, he bought 350 tons of powdered milk in Switzerland and got permission to take it to France, but that the American Treasury at the behest of the British Embassy refused to pay for the milk out of blocked dollars in New York...
...The Starving World By Oswald Garrison Villard EVERY DAY brings more and more alarming news about the world food situation which is now being officially discussed at the Atlantic City meeting of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration...
...In the first place there is the famine situation still going on in India, but no longer being as freely reported as a couple of weeks ago...
...Kershner replied sharply that, if Europe went down, the British policy of preventing the delivery of food to the starving children of our friends and allies would bear the responsibility...
...These people will be demanding immediate restoration to their homes and families, yet they will dangerously clog the surviving railroads and the highways if they are allowed to pursue their own way home...
...It would seem to be beyond dispute that we ought at this hour to be putting food under proper conditions into the occupied countries which _we are planning to enter by armed might in order that when our men arrive they will not be handicapped by the surrounding misery and the inability of many to give the physical aid our armies will need...
...To return to the general situation, Mr...
...It would seem as if military considerations alone would demand it...
...The Belgian member of the Council of the UNRRA reported at Atlantic City that the people of Belgium are "half starving" and are receiving only from 1,200 to 1,300 calories a day as contrasted with the 2,700 to 2,900 pre-war standard...
...Lehman and others declare that the whole problem will be greatly complicated by the fact that no less than 20 millions of people will have to be repatriated when the war ends...
...According to Dr...
...Thus, he declared that "we shall be confronted when victory comes with the spectacle of nation after nation dangerously undernourished, menaced with disease, in dire need of food, medicines, clothing and shelter...
...D. M. Foot, told the Commons that if mercy food shipments like those now going into Greece were to be sent to Holland and Belgium it would be a "form of Lend-Lease to the enemy" and would induce them to "create extreme shortages over much wider areas...
...He made this statement to a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after reading in the dispatches of a fresh refusal by the British Government to relax the blockade to permit the sending of food to occupied territories...
...In China the Japanese again have been making progress in the vital "rice "bowl" and private reports are that one reason why the Chinese troops are not making better headway is that many of them are actually in dire need of food, especially as they have not been paid in months...
Vol. 7 • December 1943 • No. 49
