MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD N1cOLSON
IT is more than a year since on this page I referred to the effect of the blockade upon our Allies in Europe, and made a special plea for the relief of those who at that moment were dying of starvation in Greece. Since then the Greek situation has improved. Meanwhile, however, the food situation in other allied countries has grown from bad to worse. It is known that conditions approaching those of famine prevail in Poland, occupied Russia, and parts of Yugoslavia. Other allies, in the following order of urgency, are suffering from a shortage of foodstuffs which bears especially upon the women and children: Belgium, France, Holland, Norway, Czechoslovakia and Denmark. There are those who quote Goering's recent dictum, " Whoever starves, it will not be Germany," and who believe that the deliberate policy of the German Govern- ment is to fatten Germany and to let Europe die. There are those again who contend that the aim of Germany is so to debilitate occupied Europe that the population will lose all energy and all powers of resistance. Under this theory the special objective is to weaken the younger generation while keeping the adults alive. I fear that the German purpose is more scientific and more immediate than this. Their control of foodstuffs and ration cards does, in fact, provide them with a potent means of pressure ; they well know that the man who would without flinching face a firing squad, may quail and hesitate when he sees his wife and children starve. They thus use food as a cat-and-mouse weapon with which to obtain slave labour. In the words of Mephistopheles:
Fur einen Leichnam bin ich nicht zu Hints • Mir geht es wie die Katze mit der Maus.
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It is inevitable in such a situation that humanitarian feelings in this country should be deeply stirred. Nor need we blame the Allied Governments in London if their anxiety regarding, and their duty towards, their suffering peoples tempt them at moments to overstate the problem or to magnify events. Yet if we, wish to approach this grave difficulty with the eye of reason it is necessary from the outset to discard the distorting lenses of 'sentimentality and prejudice. The humanitarian becomes a sentimentalist when he allows himself to suppose that there exists some easy compromise between unconditional pacifism and the fact that, if one desires to win a war, one is obliged to commit warlike, and therefore cruel, acts. Conversely we need not steel our hearts merely because the protagonists of the " Feed Starving Europe " movement, alike in this country and in the United States, are identified to some extent with the Peace Pledge Union, or with the particular brand of isolationist associated with ex-President Hoover. It may be irritating to discover that those who today are most anxious that wb should feed Greece, or Czechoslovakia, or Poland, are the people who in 1938-1941 were most ardent in their opposition to our defending these countries against aggression. It may be discourag- ing to find that those elements in the United States who, from the first, were hostile to American intervention are now using the "Feed Starving Europe " campaign as a stick to beat the President and ourselves. Yet, in fact, these people, although they have sought to collar the movement, and are certainly most vociferous, do not stand alone ; there are many others who, while ardently desiring the early victory of the Allied Nations, while not wishing in any important way to weaken such pressure as we are able to exert, yet feel in all sobriety of mind that the purpose of the British Navy is not to inconvenience our enemies at the cost of starving our friends. It is to those sensible and right-minded people that I submit the following arguments.
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There may be some Nazis, and Goering may be among them, who desire to starve the subject peoples for the benefit of the Herrenvolk. I much doubt whether those who hold practical authority in Germany today have any such intention. Apart from humanitarian reasons,. they well know that the morale of an army of occupation suffers seriously from the spectacle of hunger' in its midst. However much they may seek to ascribe this hunger to the ruthlessness of the British Admiralty, both the troops and the population know very well who it is who takes ,the food. Moreover, as I have said above, it is their deliberate policy to feed all those whose labour is of sc value to their war effort, and they have, in fact, established an ascending scale of rationing under which the heaviest worker gets the heaviest food. Nor is the " normal consumer " (namely, the person who is unable to work in factories), reduced to actual starva- tion. Even in Belgium, which is one of the countries suffering most from hunger, the normal rations are above starvation level. Every Child under three in Belgium receives three and a quarter litres of milk a week. The normal consumer in a week obtains 55 ounces of bread, 7+ ounces of meat, 21 ounces of fat, and 122 ounces of potatoes. Such' a diet is unquestionably below maintenance-level, but it is above starvation-level. And the rations accorded to the workers are substantially higher than that. Those who suer most seriously in Belgium are the invalids, the aged, and the children between three years of age and fifteen years. Such victims are kept at a permanently low level of nutrition, and suffer from debilitation. But the remainder are supported by the Germans themselves ; the food which they consume diminishes proportionately the stocks which the Herrenvolk can „use.
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There are those who argue that if we could organise food relief for Belgium under the International Red Cross, we might prevent the Belgian labourer from being blackmailed into working for our enemies. Yet if Belgium, then why not also Poland, France, Nor- way and Holland? There is no logical reason why Belgium should be specially favoured. Yet to feed all these countries would so diminish our limited shipping' resources as definitely to prolong the war. Is it conceivable, moreover, that the Germans, who have discovered that hunger is the most potent of all their weapons, would, in fact, permit any international organisation to snatch this weapon from tick grasp? In the last war Mr. Herbert Hoover organised an elaborate system of relief in Belgium. The Germans, under William II, were not as ruthless or as indifferent to the conscience and good opinion of the world as are the Nazis of today. They were at the same time immensely anxious to cultivate the sympathies of the United States, and to convince them that acts of charity were not being abused. Yet,' in fact, Mr. Hoover's relief scheme proved of value to the Germans during those difficult years, and postponed many of the effects of our blockade. Many Germans have since confessed to me that they thought it odd at the time that, while barring the front door, we should allow Mr. Hoover to bring in food through the back. Let me quote three passages from the memoirs of Ludendorff : " The waning morale at home," he writes, " was immediately connected with the food situation." "The occupied territories," he writes again, "helped us with food sup- plies." " The measures taken," he writes, " by the Entente (by which he means Mr. Hoover's organisation) relieved us of anxiety as to the feeding of Belgium." We can have no wish today, how- ever humanitarian we may feel, to relieve Germany of any anxiety.
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I am opposed for these reasons to any large-scale or immediate scheme for feeding Europe. This does not mean that I advocate that nothing should be done. Two things should be done. In the first place, we should accumulate stocks and plans for the im- mediate relief of any liberated territory. In the second place, we should consider carefully the scheme suggested by the Famine Relief Committee in this country, and by those in the United States who are working with Mr. John Dulles and Professor van Dusen. Under this scheme limited supplies of vitamins and dried milk would be sent in for the "relief of children, expectant or nursing mothers and invalids. If, for instance, we sent in 22,030 tons of dried mills and 241 tons of vitamin capsules to Greece or Belgium the total shipping required in a year would not be excessive. And in each country more than two million people would be rescued from starvation or ill-health. Our enemies would benefit but slightly ; the benefit to our friends would be great indeed.
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