TRAGIC FOOD SHORTAGE

Chronicle (Levin), 22 March 1946, Page 3

TRAGIC FOOD SHORTAGE

EUROPE'S PITIFUL PLIGHT DIFFERING INTERPRETATIONS / The tragic shortage of food in Europe has stirred the conscience of the world, but the news of the disaster has been interpreted in different ways by different groups. The Communists are busily explaining that the shortage is due to the "system." of producing food for profit, the argument beihg that not enough food is being produced, because the prospects of profit are not sufficiently bright. Others . regard the shortage as inevitable, ■ and they point to the widespread 1 devastation of the war. Others ; again appear to think that money will rectify matters, -and they have 1 themselves made sacrifices to donate cash to relief schemes, ; oblivious of the fact that it is a i shortage of food, not money, that I is the cause of .hunger and starva- | tion in Europe at present. i Of ohe factor, there has been little mention, and it is time that attention was given to it. While it is true that, under any circumstances, there would be a shortage of food in Europe to-day, ! it is certain that the shortage has I been aggravated beyond all mea- | sure by political policies. In Europe to-day, according to a statement made by Mr. Sevin, between twenty to twenty-five million homeless and dis'piaced persons are on the move. Most of them are Germans, men, women and children — uprooted from their homes in East Prussia, West Prussia, Pomerania, Upper and Lower Silesia, the Sudetens, Poland, ' Hungary, Rumania, Jugoslavia and the Baltic States. Millions of these people were previously engaged, direetly or indirectly, in the production of food. Now they are helpless, hopeless refugees, safe enough from bodily hann where they have reached the protection of the British and American zones of occupation, but elsewhere subjected to brutality that defies description. Whether these people should have been expelled from the areas where they were living is not a question that the writer cares to argue. The behaviour of many of them left much to be desired when Germany was on the crest of the wave and the German in neighbouring countries had control over j the native populations. Mass expull sion of Germans may have been j inevitable; but that does not alter the fact that the expulsions should 1 have been delayed until the food j situation in Europe was reasonably secure. Not Visitors The Germans were no mere migrants; German people haye been living" in neighbouring countries for centuries; and now they are being thrown out neck and crop at a time when the spectre of starvation hangs over their heads and over the heads of everyone else in the countries from which they Ure j being expelled. I Imagine wliat New Zealand's l plight would be if, overnight, the ! entire population of oue of our j richest provinces, and a high provportion of the population elsewhere, j were abruptly dispossessed and herded into another part of the ! country which itself had been devastated by war — that gives a Ifair idea of the state of Europe to-day.

Bisease Follows J Shortage of food means disease : and civil tunnoil; there is plenty of ; that; but when to hunger is added | brutality and torture, the woe of ' • . millions is dreadful to contemplate. i "Typhus was spreading fast; 234 I suicides were recorded in five j months. Endless columns of people i roamed for miles in search of pota- | toes. The corn was over-ripe but j there was no oue to gather the I harvest. The expelled German | tried to return, only to be expelled I again." Tlris is a report from a disj trict in Sudetenland. | "We were like hunted deer. The ; Russians swarm about and behave ~ I like savages. During the period 1! from February to April I was asIsaulted about 20 times. I often I tried to protect myself by holding I my youngest child in front of me, Ibut it was of no use." And then . the dreary march towards the j British zone: "Many weak and ailling people, old people and children, j had to be left behind on the road, j dead. Many of us looked like skeletons . . . The fields were almost ready for harvest but were desertcd." This is a report from Poland. Mere repetition of instances cannot emphasise the tale of suffering. And, in any case, we cannot feel much sympathy for the Germans, though British ways of life do not include the visiting of the sins of the fathers on helpless women and

children. Apart altogether from this question of morality, the hard fact remains that, considered from a purely economic point of^view, the food shortage in Europe is due in no small measure to political action that can only be described as unwise. Our Mr. Fraser would have been far better engaged in tackling questions like these than in ' getting heated over minor questions as to procedure or the essentially personal question as to whethei he was not a friend of trade unions. At the UNO Conference, on issues that .involve the very lives of millions his contribution appears to have been small.