The Telegraph-courier. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1888-1946, 1917-07-05
THURSDAY, JULY 5, 1917.
Str alton With Plenty.

may face Kenosha, the United States
and even the world, if American men
and women and boys and girls do not
realize the role which they must play
in the vast theatre of war. The first
demand made upon the United States
by the allies after the declaration OF
hostilities was for food--food for their
starving citizens in Europe, food for the
armies defending our rights against the
threatening Teuton, even though IT
meant that we were to go hungry. 1t
was tremendous task but there has
arisen a man in America who says it
can be done. He is a man who knows
whereof he speaks, who knows what
America must do in the present crisis,
who has the confidence that does not
know defeat and who has the key that
will unlock the intricacies of this prob
lem. 1t is Herbert G. Hoover, known
far and wide as the saviour Of thousands
of starving Belgians and recently hon
ored by appointment as Food Dictator
of the United States. His story teaches
a lesson which may well be studied by
every patriot American and which has
meaning fraught with import at this
very moment.
Let us digress., There was Belgium
! in 1914 and 1915 filled with suffering
and starvation. The invading Ger
man with no justification for his attack,
had swept clean all that blocked his
carnival Of slaughter; thousands died in
the wake of war not from the ,bayonet
but from starvation. The men in the
prime of life were in the trenches of
Louvain and Liege, fighting with the
courage Of despair while their fathers,
mothers, wives and children starved at
home. Poverty and Indebtedness are
no respecters of persons and children and
parents, youth and age died because the
bounty of this side of the world was
denied them. Belgiur, lay bleeding be-
meath the heel of the invader and the
greatest suffering came not from the
quick steel Of the bayonet but from the
longer pain of hunger and starvation
endurd by the helpless thousands left
without home, without clothing or food,
to end heir existence in anguish and
despair.
The pathos of it all was not so much
that thousands died-for they as truly
offered themselves upon the altar of
freedom and patriotism as did any Bel
gian soldier who persisted in the siege
of Louvain--but that they continued to
perish needlessly. Tho time came when
the world awoke to the fact that little
Belgium was the martyr and that the
brunt of the war had fallen on state,
dragged into it solely because it hap
peued to lie on the border line between
two mighty opposites. Neutral coun-
tries, and beligerents as we'll, opened
their hearts and their purse strings and
food was sent to the starving thousands
of Belgium America sent grain by
the thousands Of bushels; England sup
plemented it with what she could spare
in wartime and vet, strange to say,
Belgium still starved The cause was
this: there were many in Belgium who
had plenty and to spare; there were
some, who when America and England
began to send food to The country, even
lived as extravagantly as they had in
ante-bellum days and for their plenty
the many died from want. Conserva-
tion of resources by all would have
saved the lives of thousands; proper
division CT the food supply would have
meant life to many who died in that sec
ond summer.
stage He was appointed chairman of
the American Food Commission to the
Bolgians; he studied the problem and
best of all he found solution. He util-
led the material which Belgians had
wasted and so sustained those who had
heretofore starved; he taught the few
to eat less less in order that tn many
might have more and all might have
enough to exist He showed that by
saving one roll of bread day, person
might save the life of child for that
day He took the same amount of food
on which Belgians had starved and by
conserving it, fed them to satisfy but
not to gluttony. BY his genius and the
cooperation Of the people starving Bel
GUM was transformed into land not
filed with plenty at the best, but at
least organized in such way as to
live on its 1essened resources.
Hoover brings the same lesson to
America today but the scope has wild
ened; to prevent restitution and starv-
alton, such as may now engulf the world
as it did Belgium two years ago, is the
task now assigned to Hoover. Profit
gate consumption of food this year will
most certainly bring our nation and its
slllies to the condition in which Bel
GUM found herself in 1914 and 1915.
4 Conservation Of food by every man, wo-
N and child in America, practiced as
~ N