ONUS ON NAZIS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 August 1940, Page 9

ONUS ON NAZIS

FOOD POSITION IN EUROPE NO NEED THAT PEOPLE SHOULD STARVE. IF SUPPLIES ARE DISTRIBUTED. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, August 18. The question of the food situation in Europe during the coming winter and the possibility of widespread starvation has provoked much speculation in Britain, ihe United States and other parts of the world, not excluding Germany. The whole question is ably reviewed in the current issue of “The Economist.”

“First may it be said that there need be no starvation,” states “The Economist,” “even in a Europe that is cut off from overseas supplies.

“On the three-year average from 1930 to 1938 the Continent was entirely self-sufficient in potatoes and virtually so in rye, barley, oats, beans and sugar. Against a production figure of some 42,000.000 tons of wheat, 19,000,000 tons of maize and 1,000,000 tons of rice, the import figures were about 3.000,000 tons of rice.

“The uniformly bad harvests due to the hard winter, the calling of agricultural labourers to the colours and the actual destruction of warfare will have increased Europe’s dependence on cutside supplies, but there are large reserves to draw on. Livestock can be killed off and tinned foods and Germany’s own stocks consumed. “The Nazi leaders boast that over 7,000,000 tons of grain are'stored away in the Reich, a figure which all but covers Europe’s normal deficit, and though the peoples of the Continent must inevitably go short of tropical foods and certain luxuries and suffer from a deficiency of fats, a forecast of starving is not warranted by the actual Quantities of food that are likely to be available. THE REAL PROBLEM. “The problem, in short, is one of distribution and not of actual supply.” It had long been one of the main points of Nazi propaganda that her food position was perfectly assured and the British blockade thoroughly broken. Yet there was evidence of a severe shortage in the German-occupied countries. Stringent rationing was already in force in Holland, which, for example, lost to Germany 90 per cent of her butter reserves in one week, and Belgium and Denmark, whose pigs and poultry were being compulsorily slaughtered and dispatched to Germany and Norway, and further rationing was about to be introduced in unoccupied France.

“The Economist” points out that though the British blockade is far from broken it yet cannot be held responsible for any food shortage in Europe. Prior to the occupation of Norway and the Low Countries the British blockade, which had been then in operation for over six months, had in no way interfered with the flow of foodstuffs into these countries. Only did the food shortage arise there when they fell under German control. Where neutrality was still operative the blockade did not interfere with the supplies of food.

“Clearly, therefore,” “The Economist" continues, “it is no action of ours, but rather Germany’s violation of these various States’ neutrality which has led to the present situation. The Nazis must take the full moral responsibility for cutting off the peoples they have conquered from the sources of world supply and at the same time they must fulfil the obligation, which is fully recognised in international law. of securing the well-being of the territories they have occupied.”