Who Gets the Food?

The plain fact was that, as the world entered the last half of the sixth year of war, there was simply not enough food to go around. Since the U.S. is the greatest food producer in the world, the big troubles piled up in Washington. Last week the flame of conflict among three Government groups burst from the pile.

First there was able, boot-tough Lieut. General Brehon Burke Somervell, boss of the Army Service Forces. With ever more & more men to feed, General Somervell demanded more & more food. The Army, which already feeds part of the French and Italian armies, prisoners of war, etc., recently added 300,000 liberated Philippine Scouts to its chow line. General Somervell was out for all he needed, and he needed a lot.

Second, there was Marvin Jones, War Food Administrator. He was worried about the decline in civilian food supply. Very few civilians had to be told by Marvin Jones that they were getting less meat, butter and eggs. Marvin Jones wanted to keep the supply from shrinking.

In the third corner was the State Department, vigorously backed by Harry Hopkins (who was still at the Mayo Clinic suffering from a nutritional ailment). State argued long & loud that the U.S. was losing face in liberated Europe because of the scant food supplies sent there. In Belgium, for instance, the hungry populace was growing desperate. In France, to which the U.S. has sent only 10% of the food and other supplies furnished by the Germans, there was a growing chip-on-the-shoulder attitude toward the U.S. Argued Hopkins and the State Department: democracy in the liberated countries will founder on empty stomachs.

Who's Winning? In the fight, some bitter suspicions developed. The Army accused Hopkins & Co. of trying to give away too much. Marvin Jones argued that, after the Army, U.S. civilians should get the next best slice of the U.S. foodpile. At week's end, there were reports that General Eisenhower had cabled for more food for French and Belgian civilians.

To help solve the dilemma, "Assistant President" Jimmy Byrnes had appointed a committee, headed by FEAdministrator Leo Crowley. It found no immediate solution. Hopkins & Co. cried that the committee was packed in favor of the Army.

Then Franklin Roosevelt stepped in. He had been disturbed, he said at his press conference, about talk of want on the home front. There would be no want in the U.S., said the President, but there would have to be a tightening of the belt, because more food would have to be sent to liberated countries. This, the President concluded, was just a matter of decency.

Next day the President's lecture was translated into fact: a new division of the U.S. meat supply (which will be 9% lower than last year) illustrated the new policy. The Army won an increase of 4%, to a new high of 1,381,000.000 lbs., for the second quarter of 1945. Lend-Lease shipments to Great Britain were cut from 207 million lbs. in the first quarter of 1945 to 25 million for the second quarter. U.S. civilians were told that, in the second quarter, they would get 12% less meat than in the first--reducing the civilian meat larder to the lowest point in ten years. How much would go to liberated countries was not announced, but it was certain to be more. Something had to be done about food for Europe; it was not merely a matter of decency, as the President had called it, but of the preservation of democracy.

The battle for food was not over. It would continue until war's end, and longer. With U.S. food production almost certain to fall off in 1945, the battle would also get sharper.

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