STARVING EUROPE AND THE NEXT WORLD WAR
Follette, Sen. Robert M. La Jr.
Starving Europe And The Next World War FOUR GRIM WINTERS have already taken their awful toll among the ravaged peoples of occupied Europe since this war began, and now a fifth, probably the...
...The deficiencies are less in the case of younger children because an effort has been made to take the fats away from the adult diet and give them to the children, but nevertheless the ration is 60 per cent deficient in the 6-14 age group, and 85 per cent deficient in the 14-18 age group...
...A gram is approximately l/30th of an ounce...
...The National Committee on Food for the Small Democracies, under the leadership of former President Hoover, undertook in 1940 and 1941 to work out a plan to provide relief for the people of Belgium, but the British refused to approve it...
...There is unquestionably a lack of medical care and supplies to combat disease, but it is the lack of proper food that has made the peoples of occupied Europe helpless to resist the inroads of disease...
...Bread alone is not enough...
...The medical service of the Red Cross reports that the legal rations of fats in Belgium are from 20 to 85 per cent deficient as compared with average needs of the different age groups...
...Thirty-five per cent of Belgium's 2,300,000 children are reported tubercular now and 40 per cent threatened...
...Disease and malnutrition are on the march, and like invisible claws of a giant pincers movement they are moving in to destroy the helpless civilians, women, and children, who are imprisoned in Hitler's European fortress...
...This is a better fats ration than the Polish people have but it is Still less than half the amount in the normal American diet...
...Growing children need fats, minerals, and other food elements which adults can do without, temporarily, at least, if necessary...
...In Belgium the most reliable estimates to be had indicate that tuberculosis has increased 800 per cent since May 1940...
...The efforts of various other groups in the occupied countries have been almost negligible, and the result is that the Allies are still withholding any effective help from these men, women, and children...
...Let it not be forgotten that the seeds of revenge that finally bore the bitter fruit of Nazism were planted in the hearts of the German people during the years of blockade, despair, and devastation following the last war, culminating in the inflationary debacle of 1923...
...In other words what our children eat for breakfast is equivalent to the ration that is allowed to children in the occupied countries for the entire day...
...It overlooks also the admitted fact that 7,000 tons of food per month are going to prisoners of war in-Germany itself with no appreciable loss to the enemy...
...The military argument that is used against the proposals to send food to these helpless victims of the war overlooks the admitted facts of the success achieved in handling the relief shipments to Greece...
...For three years we have been talking about it, but little has been accomplished except in Greece...
...Example Of Greece In the name of common humanity and common sense America and the other United Nations must offer its help to these innocent victims, the women and children of those occupied countries under the Nazi heel...
...It is these fats and other critical food elements that are scarcest...
...The dangers of broken bodies and twisted minds among those that live are just as horrible to contemplate, and more far reaching in their effect...
...In Norway the daily ration of meat has been only 7 grams although it provides for approximately 50 grams of fats...
...Bread Alone Isn't Enough The reason for these horrible conditions is not hard to find...
...It does, however, extend to the children of war-torn Europe a helping hand which may be able to stifle the otherwise inevitable flames of bitterness and hate that may again break out in another world conflagration 20 years from now when Europe's children of today become its leaders of tomorrow...
...In Poland the daily ration of adults last January was composed of 210 grams of flour and bread, 350 grams of potatoes, 15 grams of sugar, 20 grams of meat, and 5 grams of fat...
...To prevent Germany from gaining any advantage from the importation of food into Greece, the neutral governments of Switzerland and Sweden first obtained guarantees that Germany would take no foodstuffs out of Greece...
...It Can Be Done If methods can be worked out whereby the delivery of food can be made to prisoners of war in Germany without aiding the German war effort, and if the Swiss and Swedish commission handling Greek relief can deliver from 18,000 to 20,000 tons of foodstuffs to the people of Greece without aiding the Nazis, it can be done in the other countries...
...Thus since the relief authorities can make sure that the imported food goes to the Greeks for whom it is intended, and by agreement closely watched there is no opportunity for Germany to remove whatever other food might be available in the country, it does not break the blockade on Germany's war effort...
...Greek relief is supervised by a joint Swiss-Swedish neutral commission of 30, and aided by 3,000 local Greek committees in Greece itself...
...In some countries it is worse than in others...
...It is estimated that in Poland the war will destroy 50 per cent of the population...
...The alarming increase of contagious disease in Holland is reported to have resulted in a German order to members of its armed forces instructing them to keep away from theaters and other public gathering places...
...Compare that with the normal American diet which includes on the average 243 grams of bread and cereals, 217 grams of meat, fish, and eggs, 340 grams of milk and cream, 134 grams of butter, cheese, and other fats, 376 grams of vegetables and potatoes, 276 grams of fruit, and 142 grams of sugar and syrup...
...It is estimated by Belgian officials that 20 per cent of the Belgian population will perish by the end of next year...
...The consequences of malnutrition cannot be adequately measured in terms of deaths alone...
...Generally speaking the children in occupied Europe have been forced to get along on about a third of the food we consider necessary for American children...
...The food is shipped in Swedish ships, and passage is arranged for the ships through the Allied blockade through advance understandings...
...The Seeds Of Revenge The situation in France, Norway, and some of the other occupied countries is slightly better than in Poland, but it is desperate in all of them...
...Britain has taken the position that to send food to these starving people would defeat the military effectiveness of the blockade, and our State Department has in the past weakly acquiesced...
...The success of the relief program in Greece, however, has demonstrated that it can be done in other occupied countries without aiding the enemy one iota...
...Starving Europe And The Next World War FOUR GRIM WINTERS have already taken their awful toll among the ravaged peoples of occupied Europe since this war began, and now a fifth, probably the grimmest of them all, is upon them...
Vol. 7 • December 1943 • No. 52
