WAR’S GHASTLY TOLL OF HUMAN SUFFERING STILL DRAGS ON

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 49, 25 May 1948, Page 5

WAR’S GHASTLY TOLL OF HUMAN SUFFERING STILL DRAGS ON

Sixty million children in Europe and uncounted millions more in Asia are living today on the verge of starvation. Their future now depends largely on the success of the United Nations Appeal for Children—the cause to which New Zealanders are now being urged to contribute all they can spare. Children on two-thirds of the face of the earth are in dire need of help. They are living in caves made out of rubble, in patched-up buildings and in war-time dugouts. Their faces—old, emaciated, green from deficiency diets—show the nature of the enemy. Thousands are mutilated for life, without arms, legs and lacking even the artificial limbs to replace them. Nearly all bear the deeper wounds of the spirit r —the result of broken families, lost faith, and hunger. 1 These children do not complain. No one has ever seen them gather in angry, self-pitying mobs before .some ambassador’s house or government headquarters with hunger placards. In fact, like the proverbial ■children, they are not—diplomatically speaking—heard at all. But they are terrifying there-—for all to see who want to see. Their greatest problem is food. Some of the problem derives from the military war which turns countries into battlefields and destroys farms, villages and cities. That military phase of World War II took a grim toll. It not only mutilated ■children, it killed their families robbing them of love and security; it cut into their means of existence, taking the basic foods, especially milk, which children must have for and growth.