Food Parcels for Britain

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 471, 2 July 1948, Page 5

Food Parcels for Britain

T will be most unfortunate if doubts about the safe arrival of food parcels to Britain check the flow at the source. The statement issued a few days ago by the Aid for Britain National Council made it clear that there had been some pilfering on the way, but equally clear that an overwhelming proportion of parcels arrived safely at their destination. Pilfering is such an abominable offence that it is not easy in any circumstances to condone it-and least easy when it means stealing by the well-fed from the hungry-but in general we must regard it as satisfactory that most of the parcels we send to Britain reach the addressees within a reasonable time, and nearly all of them in the end. It has to be remembered that ships sometimes have insufficient space to take all the parcels waiting in.our ports, and that the Post Office in Britain has now almost ten times as many parcels to distribute week by week and month by month as it handled before the war. The most useful thing we can do to insure our parcels against loss or delay is first to wrap them securely and second to give them a legible and sufficient address; the most foolish thing is to cease sending anything in case ours is the parcel in ten thousand that a blackguard steals or an accident of some kind destroys. We might as reasonably refuse to buy goods to send because some trading firms are exploiting the situation in New Zealand and doing very well out of it. We all know that this is happening, and many of us will remember the worst offenders. at another time. But our duty in the meantime is to concentrate on the monotonously filled cupboards of Britain and add a little wholesome variety. The simple fact isalthough some of us may try to think otherwise-that neither the exploiters at this end, nor the brigands on the journey, nor the black marketeers at the other end are delaying relief as successfully as our own apathy and selfishness,