IN THE INTERESTS OF HUMANITY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 229, 12 November 1943, Page 4

IN THE INTERESTS OF HUMANITY

What The Inter= national Red Cross Is Doing-And Is Ready To Do When Peace Comes TFs week a conference representing the United Nations will meet in Washington to discuss the rehabilitation of the world after the war. It would be reckless to say that preliminary plans will be made, but agreements may be reached that will prepare the way for such plans. Of course rehabilitation will begin with relief. It would be a mockery to lay plans for any kind of world until millions of uprooted and starving people are provided with food and shelter. So, instead of filling space at this stage with blue-prints of a new Europe or a new South-Eastern Asia we have asked Captain M. S. Galloway, Dominion Secretary of the N.Z. Red Cross Society to give us some idea of the machinery of relief now in existence and working, and to indicate in what way the Red Cross will, fit into these plans of world resettlement. T was a big request, Captain Galloway told us, and not easy to decide where it was best to begin. To most people in New Zealand the Red Cross did not start at all. It grew. It is older than they are, and they can’t imagine a world without it. But its birthday is almost as definite as their own. "It was conceived," Captain Galloway told us, "on the battlefield of Solferino in 1859, and the idea that came then to Henry Dunant led five years later to the Geneva Convention from which modern war accepts its international obligations on the humanitarian side." Henry Dunant is in fact a story by himself, if there were space here to teéll it. There isn’t; but Captain Galloway asked us not to forget what the world owes to this amazing man, a banker and company-promoter, who went to Solferino to look for the Emperor Napoleon IlI.-not to talk humanitarianism with him, but to discuss business concessions -and who stayed to bind up wounds and to start a movement that has been doing this on'a world scale ever since. Well, that was 84 years ago. To-day the Red Cross is an international organisation serving the whole world but remaining steadfastly aloof from all the world’s quarrels. The International Red Cross Committee is a strictly neutral body of 25 Swiss qjtizens who accept responsibility for carrying out the Prisoners of War Convention of 1929. To carry on this work, which the Swiss accept as their duty to mankind, the Committee employs a staff of 4,389 men and women, of whom less than one-quar-ter are paid. The organisation is housed (continued on hext page)

(continued from previous page) in 27 different centres, and the Bureau index at Geneva holds fifteen million cards. Closely connected with that organisation is what is known as the Secretariat of the League of Red Cross Societies, which links up the work of 68 different nations, and has a membership in excess of forty millions. There are thus two great organisations based on Geneva-the International Committee in charge of war work, and the League of Red Cross Societies working to promote health and mitigate suffering all over the world. For there is neither class, colour, nor creed in the Red Cross. Its parliament, for example, which is called together once every two years, had its last pre-war meeting in London, but the meeting before that was held in Tokio. "You will understand its position today," Captain Galloway said, "if you remember that its aim is to be something like an international fire brigade-a relief organisation so thoroughly staffed and equipped that the pressing of a button would bring it instantly into action wherever a disaster was reported. One of its testing places was Spain, where it first realised to the full the urgent need of helping civilians uprooted by war, and ministered to both sides without taking sides." . And the present war is of course Spain on a vastly more tragic scale. "Our attitude to the Washington Conference," Captain Galloway said, "is that we have the machinery now for relief and for the other preliminaries to reconstruction. We have a vast organisation for distributing food and clothing, and for fighting disease. We say to the United Nations ‘All this is at your service. Get behind us with all your resources if you want wheels to turn without undue friction and delay.’" "Our Own Shipping" "It is not generally known," Captain Galloway added, "that we have our own

shipping company. As the war advanced, and our work was threatened with suspension through lack of transport, we assembled our own ships, and to-day have more than fifty thousand. tons of shipping flying our own flag. So far not a single ship from our own fleet has been sunk, though there have been one or two cases of chartered ships striking mines; one last week, for example." Another very interesting fact mentioned by Captain Galloway was the provision already made for coping with epidemics. In Geneva, he told us, there are four large warehouses filled with drugs and vaccines as a_ precaution against outbreaks of typhus and other

~‘ infections. "No: such provision had been thought of during the last war, and as a result millions of people died of epidemic diseases whose lives might otherwise have been saved." The Far East When we asked about the Far East, Captain Galloway said that the Japanese had moved so quickly over Malay, the Dutch East, and hundreds of islands in the Pacific that _ their army and navy had outrun their Red Cross. "But they have a Red Cross, and it was before the war one of the best organised in the world. Most of the things that are done here by the Health Department are done in Japan by the Red Cross-the staffing of hospitals, training of nurses, health education among the public-and if the Japanese Red Cross has broken down since hostilities began it is a temporary breakdown. I know that lists of prisoners and internees are now coming ’'to hand more freely, and we have information that in some camps at least there was a very real attempt made to provide both mental and material comforts last Christ-mas-traditional dinners, decorations, and so on," "You think then that relatives of prisoners in Japanese hands should not be unduly apprehensive?" "They can’t help being worried, but they certainly should not assume that the Red Cross is not functioning in Eastern prison camps. I am sure that it is, and that conditions will improve steadily as time goes on. One of the difficulties of course is that the Japan-ese-civilians as well as soldiers-have a much lower standard of living than we have, and can be satisfied with much less in the way of food. But we are dealing with that problem as far as we can.’ (continued on page eight)

ae ee a ONE thing which has aroused wonder and admiration in all who have worked among the famine-stricken population of Greece must be mentioned here, and that is their extraordinary | dignity in suffering, their patient | endurance and the unfailing gratitude with. which they have accepted every measure judged necessary by those whom they know are trying to help them. There have been no revolts, few thefts and few abuses. WNothing could pay higher tribute to this imposing moral _ discipline than the fact that the distributions are, made under the supervision, not of gendarmes or other agents of the law, but of ladies, members of well-known and respected families whose presence is authority enough to ensure right dealing and good conduct on both |f sides of the counter. The Red Cross representatives are the object of the most touching demonstrations of respect wherever they appear.

THE RED CROSS IS NEUTRAL

(continued from page five) Returning to our own shores Captain Galloway explained that comforts for Axis personnel detained in New Zealand comes to New Zealand from Axis sources. Parcels are distributed through the New Zealand Red Cross, and Red Cross representatives have the right of entry to all areas where enemy nationals are detained, and exercise their right conscientiously. "It has also happened," he said, "that enemy prisoners passing through New Zealand ports have been supplied with food, tobacco, clothes, and games-sometimes at very short notice. For this purpose we keep stores of material on hand, and we have also provided comforts for friendly nationals passing through New Zealand to friendly countries-for example, a shipload of Polish women and children who are now safely in Mexico." "But what you really wanted to know when you approached me was whether the Red Cross is participating in the Washington Conference this week, and whether it will be used in the task of reconstruction after the war." "I am not able to answer your first question definitely, but I am sure I can say Yes to your second question. In most cases-I should think almost all-

the Red Cross will be on the spot, and it will therefore be common sense to use it. The task will of course be so vast that Red Cross activities alone will not be sufficient: all the resources of the United Nations will have to be brought into action if vast populations are not to be extinguished altogether. And therefore the direction and control of all this reconstruction will be» in the hands of the Allied Governments. But not to use our machinery would be to lose invaluable time when time counts most, and I do not fear for a moment that it will not be used. All I fear is lack of co-ordination and therefore of co-operation, in the early stages of reconstruction and that is why I hope, but am not quite sure, that our organisation is taking a prominent part in the discussions now going on. "It is of course obvious

that there must be_ longterm planning as well as a programme for immediate relief. The most urgent task is no doubt the regeneration of agriculture in all the countries that have been over-run; but roads and railways will have to be reconditioned, shipping and harbours restored, health and education services re-established, and at the earliest possible date internal economy will have to be stabilised.

All that is work for governments, but voluntary organisations can sometimes do things that governments find. difficult, and I hope I have convinced you that the International Red Cross is the biggest voluntary relief organisation in the whole world." (continued on next page)

---- (continued from previous page) * How appropriate it is that Switzerland should be world headquarters for the Red Cross, and how seriously the people of Switzerland take their responsibilities, may be judged from this extract from a recent BBC talk by Lester Powell: It was quite early in the war that the suggestion came, from the Swiss people themselves, that their country should be turned into a refuge home for the homeless. children of Europe. During that terrible summer of 1940 this suggestion was. turned into a reality. Units of the Swiss relief organisations were able to go. among the pitiful streams of refugees bringing with them food and medicine, milk and clothing. And then when the terror temporarily subsided and Peétain had accepted the German terms of France’s humiliation, representatives of these organisations went to the Nazi occupying authorities with a scheme for sending homeless. Dutch, Belgian and French children into Switzerland to be cared for and fed. The Nazis agreed, not so completely perhaps as the Swiss had wished, for they refused to sanction. anything like a regular quota. But by persistence and unceasing patience nearly

10,000 children from the Low Countries and France were brought into Switzerland during the first year after the collapse of France. They were placed with Swiss families prepared to receive them-and few Swiss families had not volunteered. They were fed, reclothed and nothing was spared to bring happiness back into their little pinched faces. And the children which the Nazis would not allow to come to Switzerland were not forgotten either. A system of adoptions was worked out whereby families in Switzerland could adopt children who remained in Holland, Belgium and France. Each family paid ten francs monthly towards the upkeep of the child it had adopted, and in addition to this the adopters were encouraged to correspond with the child and to take a personal interest in its welfare. As Hitler’s plans for the domination of Europe. flourished and his New Order spread further and further across the continent, more children with thin bodies and big sad eyes appeared in the Swiss mountains: Slavs, Serbs, Greeks. To-day the Swiss Red Cross is feeding 25,000 children in Athens, and in Salonika it keeps open ten canteens where every day.2,000 children are fed.