Freedom from Want
The " first United Nations' conference," as President Roosevelt described it in a message to the chairman, opened at Hot Springs, Virginia, last Tuesday. The subject it has to examine is the pro- duction, distribution and consumption of the world's food as a part of general planning, and not with a view to the temporary problem of relief. It is a body which has met in the first place to ascertain facts and secondly to recommend policies for the consideration of the Governments represented. The broad aim is to ensure that the population of the world, one half of which is in normal times under- nourished, shall be able to enjoy a diet adequate in quantity and quality for health. Its inquiries therefore will begin at the con- sumers' end, and will ask what quantities of various kinds of food were consumed before the war and what quantities should have been consumed under a scientific diet. It will go on to consider what food was actually produced before the war, and what should be produced to meet the consumers' need. The constructive work in the inquiry will consist in equating production and consumption by organisation of distribution. The delegates are not plenipotentiaries. Their job is to ascertain the facts and find the means by which this first part of the problem of " freedom from want " can be solved. The con- ference will not be concerned with the stabilisation of production at the old low level, but with a vastly increased production, for which modes of payment must be found by exports from the con- suming countries. It follows that trade in food cannot be isolated from other considerations of world trade. But the present con- ference is to be regarded as the first of a series which together should build up a complete picture of world economic organisation.
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