Food

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 351, 15 March 1946, Page 5

Food

we interview ori Page 9, did not come here in the role of an official Oliver Twist. The express purpose of his visit is to thank us, on behalf of the British Ministry of Food, for New Zealand’s wartime productive effort. This is indeed a courteous gesture and one which will be appreciated, but Sir Henry would be carrying courtesy unreasonably far _ if, while thanking us for the first helping, he did not use the occasion to remind us politely that Britain’s plate is now almost empty and the people still hungry. And not only the people of Britain, but also the people of the Continent, who are, in fact, even hungrier. Sir Henry recognises that it is natural for New Zealand to want to help the United Kingdom before anyone else, and he is grateful for that attitude; but though he does not say as much in so many words he plainly has little sympathy for those who think that our responsibility extends only to feeding Britain, and that if this were done it would not greatly matter if other countries were to starve. Among other countries Germany is included, and it should be noticed that Sir Henry discounts the suggestion that the Germans are better off than the British. The problem of food is a world problem, the immediate ; significance of which is perhaps best summed up in the words of the Czechoslovak peasant woman who told an UNRRA worker, "We don’t negd much, but we need a little quickly." Peace can never be secure for the people of Britain or of any other country so long as the bellies of other people, even of Germans, are empty. So, although Britain desperately needs food and is looking to us for help, she is, according to Sir Henry, not asking for more than her reasonable share when available supplies are allocated. This is, of course, nothing but plain common-sense-but it is also altruism at the heroic level. We in this wellfed country are poor creatures indeed if we are unmoved by the fact that the people of Britain, with their belts tightened and their larders almost empty, are nevertheless quite willing to recognise the claims of their even less’ fortunate neighbours. / Ss" HENRY FRENCH, whom