Old Mother UNRRA

On his own typewriter Pope Pius XII pecked out a warm greeting to UNRRA Director General Herbert H. Lehman: "May God strengthen your hands, give light and courage to the promptings of your heart -- grant you the precious consolation of doing untold good . . . a truly Christlike work."

But kind words alone were not enough for Herbert Lehman, surveying Europe and weighing its relief needs against UNRRA's means to meet them. Normally too easygoing for his own and UNRRA's good, he had been stung by widespread criticism of his giant relief agency. In defense of UNRRA, he turned to the attack.

"The Wildest Luxury." He told correspondents in Rome that UNRRA fell far short of meeting Europe's needs. But, said he, the fault was not UNRRA's. He blamed the governments of nations which "still have what to the famished people of liberated Europe must seem like the wild est sort of luxury." And these govern ments were not living up to their commitments. Describing the complete con fusion into which UNRRA's supply posi tion had fallen, Lehman said: "Availabilities change hour by hour and it is now practically impossible to plan any long-range program and fulfill it." Unless sacrifices were made, he implied, the win ter's "fateful deadline" might well bring starvation, political unrest and violence. He did not say so, but he was talking mostly to his own Government.

To most Europeans, UNRRA was a U.S. agency. It was headed by an American, and among the 44 participating nations the U.S. had assumed the lion's share of responsibility. An UNRRA failure would be a U.S. failure.

Certainly UNRRA was undersupplied. For the third quarter of 1945, UNRRA had received only a fraction of the required amounts of dairy products, meats, fats and oils and sugar.

How much was the fault of the U.S.? After promising 100,000 tons of pork to UNRRA for the last half of 1945, the U.S. had supplied 7,000 tons and can celled the rest of the allocation. The U.S. Army had 50,000 or more surplus trucks in Europe. But only 3,022 had been released to UNRRA, which needed trucks to haul food as badly as it needed the food.

Failure of the U.S. to meet its commitments had an effect on other supplying nations. When UNRRA agents found 12,000 tons of cottonseed oil in Brazil, the Brazilian Government balked at furnishing an export license. If the U.S. was not releasing scarce items, why should Brazil?

The Cupboard Was Bare. The U.S. had some excuse. Its own food outlook was anything but bright (see BUSINESS). There was plenty of will to help Europe but almost no will to make any real sacrifice, and nothing short of real sacrifice could begin to meet UNRRA's and Europe's needs.

Herbert Lehman and his lumbering agency had plenty of faults of their own to answer for. But the nations unwilling to sacrifice scarce food might well ponder the whole question of UNRRA's existence. No relief agency at all might be better than one which promised much but could deliver little.

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