MIGHTY PROBLEM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 November 1943, Page 4

MIGHTY PROBLEM

POST=WAR RELIEF & REHABILITATION ORGANISATION OF UNITED NATIONS AGREEMENT CONCLUDED IN WASHINGTON (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.30 a.m.) RUGBY, November 9. An agreement for setting up a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (U.N.R.R.A.) was signed in Washington today by representatives of the 33 United Nations, ten associated nations and the French Committee of National Liberation. President Roosevelt, in an address, said the people of these 44 nations included 80 per cent of the human race and were now united by a common devotion to the cause of civilisation and by a common determination to build for the future a world of decency, security and peace. The President outlined the purpose of U.N.R.R.A.—to organise relief to war torn lands, aid displaced workmen to return to their homes, and help to restore agricultural and industrial production and essential services. Each nation signing the agreement undertook to contribute a share according to its resources. Mr Roosevelt said no one country could or should attempt to bear the burden of meeting the vast relief needs, either in money or supplies. The work confronting U.N.R.R.A. was immediate and urgent. As it now began operations, many of the most fertile food regions of the world were either under Axis domination or had been stripped by the practice of dictatorships to make themselves self-sustaining on other people's lands. Additional regions would be blackened by the German and Japanese forces in their retreat, leaving scorched earth behind them. “It would be a supreme irony for us to win the victory,” Mr Roosevelt said, “and then to inherit a world in chaos simply because we were unprepared io meet what we know we shall nave to meet.” He referred to the success of the assistance given in the form of seeds and agricultural equipment by Britain and America to North Africa. Concluding, the President said: “When victory comes, there can certainly be no secure peace until there is a return of law and order in the oppressed countries, until the peoples of these countries have been restored to a normal, healthy, self-sustaining existence. This means that the more quickly and effectively we apply measures of relief and rehabilitation, the more quickly will our own boys overseas be able to come home. We have acted, together with other United Nations, in harnessing raw materials, production and other resources to defeat the common enemy. We are working together with the United Nations in full agreement in action, in fighting on land and sea and in the air. We are now about to take an additional step in combined action which is necessary to win the war and build foundations of security and peace. The sufferings of the men and women who have been ground under the Axis heel can be relieved only if we utilise the production of all the world to balance the want of all the world. Wc have devised a mechanism, based on processes of true democracy, which can go far toward the accomplishment of such an objective in the days and months of desperate emergency which will follow the overthrow of the Axis.”