Tonic Tantrum

In Geneva, Chairman Fiorello H. La Guardia treated his colleagues of the UNRRA council to a tonic tantrum. His chief targets:

P: The Russians, whom he accused of diverting UNRRA supplies in Austria to Red occupation armies. The council sustained his indignation, 21-to-6, instructed its policy committee to debate the matter. The committee debated, but, due to Russian Delegate Nicolai Feonov's expert obstruction, took no action.

P: A "highly placed Allied military source," who had charged that UNRRA served as an "umbrella covering Russian secret agents and criminal elements engaged in wholesale dope-peddling and smuggling." Everyone hastily promised to help La Guardia investigate at once.

P: An UNRRA subcommittee, which had passed a resolution suggesting that an appropriate body ("whether international or not") should care for the D.P.s when UNRRA shuts down and turns over its functions to U.N. at year's end.

Sputtered LaGuardia: "Have you read this paragraph? . . . Do you know what it means? Do you get that 'or not'? . . . It is intentional; it is vicious; it is malicious. Why, I ask you in the name of decency and humanity, did you put it in? Is it the [U.S.] Army? If it is the Army, come on, let us speak up. Let us say that we are going to throw [the D.P.s] to the brasshats. The program of the Army is to throw these people loose on the German economy. You know what that means?

. . . Where were you, Feonov? . . ."

At the session's end, chastened Delegate Feonov told a reporter: "We did our job. It was fruitful work." Asked a reporter: "Very fruitful?" Said the Russian gravely: "No. Just fruitful."

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