The Faces of UNRRA

In Washington the world's hunger and pain were written down in neat columns of figures. The endless statistics from UNRRA headquarters in Washington remained just figures.

Men could look hard at UNRRA. They could suspect--and in some cases rightly--that there was waste; that sometimes supplies filtered into the black markets; that other mistakes were made.

But in the nine war-ravaged countries of Eastern Europe and the Far East, where UNRRA's rows of ciphers turned into living people, the view was different. Stalled until V-J day by lack of men, ships and supplies, UNRRA was working at last. It had shipped more supplies in the last three months than it had in the previous 21. Men whose lives depended on UNRRA looked at it with loving eyes.

Misery's Nurses. The face of UNRRA in the displaced persons camps of Upper Bavaria was a smiling, 36-year-old Bronx Negro, Ernest C. Grigg, veteran of city and federal social-service agencies. He had won the confidence of these strange latter-day slaves, some of whom still resisted moving into larger camp quarters, preferring to crowd together in their old, small barracks for protection against the nightmares Hitler had left them. Grigg and his aides were slowly preparing them for a return to the world.

In Poland the face of UNRRA was Canada's Brigadier General Charles M. Drury, 33, who commanded the 4th Canadian Division. Drury, a scion of one of Canada's wealthiest families (armaments), had accepted his UNRRA command with a faint dislike of Poland and the Poles. Swiftly and publicly he changed his mind. More remarkable, perhaps, Drury had overcome Polish Government suspicions that UNRRA would be used as a political weapon.

Two Russians, thin, sandy-haired, serious Peter Ivanovich Alexejev and bald, blue-eyed, humorous Mikhail Alexeievich Sergeichic, were the faces of UNRRA in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Two Americans, Buell Maben and Spurgeon M. Keeny, represented UNRRA to the Greeks and Italians.

A Thousand Maltas. Everywhere mixed-nationality teams made confused but increasing progress. Grain that may save 400,000 lives was now moving along the Dalmatian coast. Because railroads and bridges were smashed, leaving only goat paths, UNRRA had sent U.S. railroad locomotives. Hungry men worked slowly and happily, unloading UNRRA ships in Greek and Italian ports.

Missouri mules made themselves at home on Yugoslavia's tiny farms. Purebred bulls had been sent to rebuild herds slaughtered during the war. Tractors and plows were on hand to turn the earth of hundreds of farms. Pumps and pipes from the U.S. and Britain have restored Athens' water supply.

Sparkplug of UNRRA's present spurt was the Royal Australian Navy's fast-talking, reddish-haired R.G.A. Jackson. He had organized Malta's submarine supply line during the island's blitz. Later, as head of the Middle East Supply Center at Cairo, he had directed the imports of 20 countries. When Herbert Lehman made him senior deputy director of UNRRA, Jackson was given a job bigger but not much different from the one at Malta.

Last week Jackson was assured that there would be more stuff to send. The U.S. Congress, after sniffing suspiciously at UNRRA for long weeks, voted $550,000,000, completing the first U.S. contribution without which the agency would have folded by February.

But more money was needed. On Dec. 20 Congress acted on a $1,350,000,000 appropriation to carry UNRRA through 1946. Said Lehman: "UNRRA . . . will be unable to provide all the assistance which is so clearly needed in the world today."

At last UNRRA was beginning to respond to the plea of a Partisan widow who told an UNRRA worker in the ruined Czechoslovak village of Zlata Bana: "We don't need much, but we need a little quickly."

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