Detroit evening times. (Detroit, Mich) 1921-1958, 1944-09-08
BEHIND
News
By Paul
Manon

w one thumbs his nose at
Santa Claus, Ell?
You have not card of
UNRRA, the great government
agency under ex-Gov. Lehman,
created TO feed a world that was
supposed to be starving and eX-
pected 10 rehabilitate a world
laid waste.
An especially tight censorship,
imposed by the army, has pre-
vented the accurate extent of
UNRRA'S predicament, failure
or Checkmate from becoming
publicly judged. II may be that
the army has accumulated great
stores of food itself, far beyond
any possible needs. and intends
10 perform itself whatever feed-
ing is found necessary in Eu-
rope. Perhaps also Britain is
overstocked.
A GOOD Washington author
"A ity on the subject has eStI-
mated hundreds of millions of
pounds nf canned goods tmeat,
fish, fruit. milk, vegetables in
government-owned storage, and
says the government does not
know what 10 do with il all. He
says the army alone can feed
Europe for six months or more.
Certainly il is true both the
army and State Secretary Hull
have coughed in their sleeves
whenever UNRRA is mentioned.
They have always appeared to
consider ii a somewhat political
or acknowledgements outfit.
created by Mr.. Roosevelt TO
satisfy those Wallace devotees
who will insist on feeding the
world whether or not it is
hungry, and feeding il quart
OF milk day even if for gener-
atoms ii has spurned milk.
But no longer can this be
entirely concealed;+the Euro
pean governments do not like
UNRRA, do not want it, and
we do not know or have not
begun TO know how much
starvation there is in Europe.
THE governments which are
u beginning to take back
their liberated countries want
TO run their own shows them
selves and are telling us so.
Gen. de Gaulle, in his state
ment on the liberation of Paris,
first praised the French for
having liberated their own
country, then, in the next para
graph said the United Nations
also did great work along that
line. The Americans or British
were not mentioned by name in
the liberation statement.
These people look at them
selves first. naturally, and they
consider their countries their
own, not ours. UNRRA pro-
posed TO go in and set up things
for them, but it has not gone
anywhere yet, and Italy, held
now for some months, has been
handled by the army and the
civilian administration is pre-
pared" for that purpose. AS
matters now stand the army
apparently intends 10 handle
the rest of Europe the same
way.
Through the censorSh p
enough fragmentary light is
developing in the press reports
10 raise a question whether the
line our officials have been
dining into us chiefly on the
radio for months is even near
the right world-feeding track.
Upon landing in Normandy,
~ our troops found no deStitu-
ton, but eggs, milk and vege-
tables (even wine more plentiful
than in the England they had
just left. Paris reports, since
the liberation, uniformly suggest
the people look and claim to be
in good health.
But this only proves we do
not know, and not necessarily
that feeding is unnecessary. An
adult may live well on a cereal
diet, but a check of the Partisan
children hospitals might disclose
a different result in tuberculosis.
For Italy, the North African
wheat supply has been lost by
failure of the crop, but thrifty
farmers in the mountainous re-
gions there are reported to have
buried their grain, concealing IT
from the NaziS during occupa-
ton. Indeed. the published re-
ports attribute the Italian food
shortage to administrative mis-
management and poor handling
by our army people or civilian
followers.
DENMARK has been reported
~ TO have a larger dairy cattle
population than before the war,
but these reports seem question
able because Denmark relied
entirely on imported protein
feed from us. and no one can
see where she could have re-
Ceived a war supply.
These reports lend some
credence to one inside gov
eminent story that Mr.. Roose-
welt suspected this condition and
gave Lehman the relief Job
mainly so he would not be out
of work after leaving the gover-
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