CHEAP AT THE PRICE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 234, 17 December 1943, Page 6

CHEAP AT THE PRICE

Where These American Food Talks Touch Us E, the New Zealand Public, are dimly aware that conferences concerned with feeding and generally rehabilitating the world after the war have been, or are being, held in America. Press editorials have assured us that they are no less important in the long run than the more obviously useful, exciting and colourful conferences — at Quebec, Casablanca, Moscow, Cairo and Teheran. Nevertheless, the papers that said this gave them no banner headlines or columns of surmise a la Quebec, Moscow, Casablanca, etc., but only occasional Bald paragraphs in out-of-the-way corners. Instead of front page politicians in attendance, we were given chiefly mames we had never heard before. And even the conference titles were cumbersome and meandering — United Nations. Conference on Food and Agriculture (Hot Springs, May-June), and United Nations Relief and Reconstruction Administration (UNRRA, Atlantic City, November). However, when Mr. Nash told us during the election campaign that we should have to keep our belts pulled in after the war until Greeks, Jews, Russians, Frenchman, Chinese, Italians (and even Japanese), could let theirs out a hole or two, we realised where Hot Springs touched us. Now UNRRA has promised to touch us, too-for eight million dollars! What It Will Cost All the nations are being similarly billed-U.S.A. itself for $1,100,000,000! Yet actually these sums are about one per cent of national income-2%2d in the pound. Compared with one week’s

war expenses, or considered as the cash price of building a better world, they strikingly reverse the usual ratio between demolition and construction costs, However, a better world, not in windy phrases but in solid terms of human welfare, is just what UNRRA is after, It is not merely another resolution-pass-ing conference, note, but an international "Administration" in active being, with World and Regional Committees, and a permanent Director-General in Herbert Lehmann, ex-Governor of New York State, and head of OFRRO (Office of Foreign Relief and. Rehabilitation Operations), which restored North Africa.

Food-And Exercise! Its personnel, too, are not likely to be dull-not intellectually dull at any rate, since they are the experts for whose planning our statesmen will in due course-take full credit. The Hot Springs delegates appear to have been bright in other ways also. Hot Springs Homestead (!) is an enormous healthresort hotel in the Virginian mountains, and golf clubs and tennis rackets as well as statistics sheets and agricultural tomes swelled the load of luggage. Though working from 9.0 a.m. till midnight on solid technical sub-committees, the Conference’s "spiritual father"-white-haired and witty Frank Lidgett McDougal from Australia-and our own James Fawcett, Director-General of Agriculture, made time to show that Australia and New Zealand have other uses besides agriculture for green fields. India’s Hardit Singh Malik put Europe and both Americas in the shade by excelling not only on links and debating floor: but on tennis court and ballroom floor also. Conference jists reveal a preponderance of Spanish names. For Latin America is a sick man’s society largely through lack of balanced diets, and its Governments were intensely interested. But Chinese, Filipino and Persian faces also appear in the conference photographs-not to mention the black face of Yilma Deressa (Ethiopia), vicechairman of the committee concerned with "Measures for Shifting Production Out of Commodities in Chronic Surplus "Toward Commodities the Supply of Which Should be Increased." Political considerations barely intruded among these practical men bent upon results rather than personal prestige. (However, reports say that though the Giraudist delegate spoke excellent English, he would never use it in the presence of his purely French-speaking de Gaullist colleague). And when, on the final day, Alexei Krutikov (nicknamed "Inskrutikov"), who, with his Russians had sat silent and sphinx-like through all discussions, announced that the Soviet would stand solidly behind the decoy of the last 16 days, it was plain that’ world agreement on how to attain world food sufficiency was, in outline at least, attained. | (continued on suas panes

(continued from previous page) But Hot Springs confined itself to long-run "recommendations" on how to produce plenty or cut costs. UNRRA, its successor, has been out to get immediate, practical, concerted action. They Listened to New Zealand Our New Zealand representatives have been much consulted. George Duncan, Director of the Export Division of the Marketing Department, who was our second delegate at Hot Springs (the third was R. M. Campbell, Secretary of the High Commissioner’s Office in London), was chosen chairman of the Committee concerned with "Improvement in Agricultural Marketing, Processing and Distribution’-a tribute not only to our agricultural efficiency but even more to our overseas marketing organisation which enables butter to sell in Newcastle or Manchester with less distribution-toll than American farmers frequently have to face to get theirs to their own cities. Dr. Campbell again headed the UNRRA group, assisted by Geoffrey Cox, the Otago Rhodes Scholar, who went from Oxford to Fleet Street and from Fleet Street to the Spanish War, and now heads our Washington staff; by Bruce Turner of the Prime Minister’s Department; and by Dr. Allan G. B. Fisher, once Pro-

fessor of Economics at Otago University, and more recently of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Though no government is bound by these conferences beyond its own interest or conscience or the weight of local or world opinion, they are of far-reach-ing importance. First, and not least, they should ensure the impoverished people of Europe against a recurrence of their experience in 1918, when relief was held back for six months after the Armistice partly from lack of transport but partly for punishment. The Allied armies will come this time as liberators-from tyranny first but also from starvation. OFRRO. fed and reconstructed Africa and South Italy from the day the troops arrived. UNRRA will be ready for worse needs in wider areas. Winning the Peace By Work Secondly, these conferences suggest that the leading governments realise that peace is secured not merely by negotiations or by unconditional surrender; but by practical hard work. In other words, these Food and Reconstruction Conferences are attempting to plan peace ahead of its outbreak. Whatever the politicians say later, the experts, the practical men, are getting their say

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A.M.

R.