The Press THURSDAY, JUNE 3, 1943. Post-War Relief

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23964, 3 June 1943, Page 4

The Press THURSDAY, JUNE 3, 1943. Post-War Relief

Although the Hot Springs food conference is essentially concerned with the long-run policies and programmes of peace and not with measures of relief, the two sets of problems are not disconnected. The New Zealand, Russian, French, and British delegations all in one way or another sought to bring the question of relief before the conference, in spite of its exclusion from the agenda; and it may be surmised that the agenda would have been stretched, had Mr Dean Acheson, Assistant Secretary of State, not been able to announce that a separate conference on relief would soon be held. There is one large reason why it is harder to keep the problems of relief and reconstruction apart than it might have been, and it is an anxious one. The course of the war during 1942 was such as to change very much for the worse the Allied supply situation. The exports of Malaya, Burma, the East Indies, Thailand, and Indo-China were all lost; and though foodstuffs were net the heaviest loss, it was heavy, and heavier than crude subtraction would suggest. When supplies of oil and‘rubber were restricted, for example, it became impossible to develop mechanised farm production as fast and as fully as became necessary. At the same time, the Russian grainlands of the Ukraine were lost; and German exploitation of the occupied territories has grown steadily more ruthless. One other major cause lies in the extension of the war to the Pacific and in the increasing diversion of available resources of every kind to the war fronts and their service. Production has mounted; but scarcities have extended and become more severe at the same time and in consequence. The meaning of the process that converts a war potential into maximum power and transports it to the fronts of Europe, Africa, and Asia is scarcity, and can be nothing else. The situation therefore has altered greatly since the Allied Governments, conferring at St. James’s Palace in September, 1941, laid their plans for the relief of Europe after the war. These were, first, to proceed systematically to estimates of requirements and priorities; and second, to work out schemes of collection and transport. Some progress has since been made in organising and training relief personnel; and problems of administration, military at first and civil later, have no doubt been considered. But the bodies set up for the first two purposes, the Inter-Allied Post-War Relations Committee and the Post-War Requirements Bureau, had no sooner begun their work than its extent and conditions changed, and continued to change. In a too simple but useful phrase, it may be said that the assumption of abundance turned into the certainty of shortage. The work to be done became more difficult but also much more important. Moreover, the distinction between relief plans, as such, and reconstruction policies, as such, was narrowed, though it remains. The United Nations will not move towards and into peace with such reserves as had, been hoped, unless in the wheat pool formed by the International Wheat Agreement; and the situation in occupied Europe has deteriorated beyond any estimate of 18 months ago. In occupied Europe alone, for example, livestock losses certainly exceed 30,000,000 cattle, sheep, and pigs. The agricultural committee of the Post-War Requirements Bureau now believes that it must take five or six years to restore Europe’s food sufficiency; and this depends on relief measures—food, seeds, fertiliser, machinery, fuel, transport, trained personnel—which will require of the United Nations hard, sustained, co-operative effort. These are circumstances in which it will be difficult and may be impossible to pursue long-range reconstruction plans independently of short-term relief. The former, it can at least be said, must to a considerable extent be conditioned by the insistent demands of the latter.