The Task of Unrra
Many questions were put and suggestions made in the Commons debate on Unrra last Tuesday, and it is reassuring to find how thoroughly the ground has been explored and how readily the questions could be answered. This is partly because the scope of the Administration's work was clearly defined at the outset. Its task is not to deal with world reconstruction, but with the immediate needs of liberated countries for the necessities of life and the means of getting essential services going again. It will not be pouring into them food and materials out of an unlimited world-supply, which unfortunately does not exist. Part of its task, therefore, will be to ration countries according to their needs, and to see that countries which have means of buying supplies do not get more than their fair share. To do this work properly a vast mass of information will be needed, but even before Unrra came into being this fact-finding work had been well started by the Inter-Allied Committee on Post-War Requirements set up nearly three years ago. The relief sent in to needy countries by the Administration will be if necessary a free gift, for there is no intention of turning the applicant Governments into debtors and imposing on them a burden for the future. The cost, obviously, will be very great, and on the basis of a contribution of one per cent. of national income Great Britain will have to pay a sum amounting in round figures to £8o,000,000. The plan has been admirably concerted between the many Governments concerned, the British and American necessarily taking the leading parts, and what is now of supreme importance is that it should be carried out on the spot in each country by qualified men who have fully studied their job. Simultaneously, a much larger contribution by the United States has been unanimously approved by the House of Representatives and is now before the Senate..
