Food and Morality

Since World War II began, the U. S. has tried to evade one of the great moral problems of the modern world. Like all evasions, this one gained a momentary forgetfulness at the expense of a deep disquiet. The U. S. tried to evade the problem of supplying or not supplying food and medicine to the people in the conquered areas of Europe.

They needed both. There was no question about that. Even before the war, Europe* imported 15% of its foodstuff. A late spring, heavy rains and a poor harvest in 1940, the mobilization of armies, the gigantic and violent transfers of millions of civilians from one area to another, the withholding from production of millions of acres, the devastation of war and the looting of the Nazis vastly increased their dependency. The 78,000,000 bushels of wheat that Poland once produced had been cut down--nobody knew how much. More than half of the wheat-growing area of France (which once produced 244,000,000 bushels) was in the hands of the invaders.

In Belgium the bread ration had been cut to eight ounces daily, meat to two ounces (including bone) a day. There was no butter, no lard, no coffee, little sugar. In France even Marshal Petain had to dig out his out his ration card for the waiters, to have the coupons clipped for the grams he consumed--and an average meal meant less than four ounces of bread, three ounces of meat, half an ounce of fats--butter, lard or oil. Spain, ravaged long before the war, faced famine as the winter deepened. Typhus appeared in Warsaw. In unoccupied France, as stormy weather swept over the stricken cities, 2,000,000 children seemed doomed to malnutrition and the preventable diseases that go with it. Herbert Hoover, with contacts with most relief agencies, estimated that 18,000,000 people in Finland, Poland, Norway, Belgium and The Netherlands would be without food before the winter was over.

But no one could estimate the acreage of Europe's fields of hunger. It was only certain that their crop would be suffering --and it was possible that they would give forth famine and the pestilences that know no boundaries. The U. S. looked on, divided between fear that the conquered, if they were not helped, might lose faith in democracy, and fear that helping them might merely release more food to their German conquerors. With native generosity blocked as it had never been blocked by famine and earthquake, the U. S. remained at dead centre, turning its thought and energy to the defense of democracy, without finding out how it could aid the victims where democracy had lost.

Last week the U. S. moved off dead centre. In London the Ministry of Economic Warfare announced that it would grant a blanket navicert to the American Red Cross for a shipment of food and medical supplies to France and Spain. In Washington, Red Cross Chairman Norman Davis quickly supplied details. This month the old Hog Islander S.S. Cold Harbor will sail from Baltimore, U. S. flags and Red Cross emblems (brilliantly lighted at night) unmistakably painted on her. To Spain will go 4,500 tons of whole-wheat flour, 250 tons of powdered whole milk, 250 tons of evaporated and condensed milk. There will be more drugs and supplies, less food for France: 500 tons of powdered whole milk, 250 tons of evaporated and condensed milk, 25 tons of children's clothing, $100,000 worth of drugs and vitamin concentrates.

Stiff guarantees were given by the Red Cross. Its relief shipments are confined to medical supplies in the strict sense, dried or canned milk, children's clothing, vitamin concentrates. Because the British fear Nazi shenanigans around distributing points, distribution must be by the Red Cross itself. To Spain, where Franco's relief is now administered by social agencies, some of whose angels of mercy have Falange (fascist) symbols embroidered on their aprons (see cut p. 19), the Red Cross will send six U. S. experts to supervise the job and each Spanish agency distributing Red Cross food will be held responsible for the food it receives, must sign a receipt for each case it serves. To put all parties, including Nazis, on their best behavior, to make future U. S. aid contingent on honest handling of this first consignment, the Red Cross agreed with the British that further development of the program depends on the fulfillment of the terms under which the first is sent.

Yet the facts and conditions of U. S. aid were less important than its shift from worried apathy into tentative action. For weeks Herbert Hoover, urging aid specifically for the small nations of Poland, Finland, Norway, Holland, Belgium, has been preaching that U. S. ingenuity can somehow find a way to feed Hitler's victims in conquered countries without aiding Adolf Hitler.

Whether the first shipment worked out well, there was no question last week but that it marked a return to the old U. S. tradition of intelligent giving. There was the chance that, if it turned men's thoughts to what they could give rather than what they could get, it might be as beneficial to the U. S. state of mind as to European health. And it pointed toward a future fact that more & more citizens were beginning to accept--that in the long run, if the U. S. is to be the great arsenal of democracy, it must accept the responsibility of being the great plantation and the great workshop as well.

* Outside Russia, which has been without adequate food for years.

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