The sun. [volume] (Newberry, S.C.) 1937-1972, December 10, 1943, Image 7
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1943 THE NEWBERRY SUN
“MAKE IT DO”
SAYS BRITISH BLOCK FOOD TO
STARVING
Washing-ton, Nov. 11—Charging
that the British Government blocked
shipment of food to starving Euro
pean children, although American of
ficials and public opinion were n fav
or of resoung the Nazi victims, Dr.
Howard E. Kershner told a Senate
Foreign Relations Subcommittee that
the policy might leave only Germany
healthy enough to reconstruct the
continent in the (post-war period.
Dr. Kershner, who directed relief
for the American Society of Friends
in Europe from 1989 to 1942, related
instances in which, he said, the ob
jection of the British Government
alone prevented! the -shipment of food
to children in occupied countries, al
though the plan involved no move
ment of food through the blockade.
“If the democratic people of Eo-
rope perish and the Germans alone
have the health to reconstruct Eorope
after the war, the British Govern
ment will bear the responsibility,’/
Dr. Kershner asserted. “Its unyield
ing policy of preventing the saving of
the children of our friends and allies
will be the cause.”
Summing up the physical condition
of children in the Nazi-domnated
countries, Dr. Kershner said:
“I have seen the starved wrecks
that women become by the time they
give birth to babies of half-normal
weight. The children of the occu
pied countries -are coming to school
in the morning with little or no
breakfast. They .sit with practically
bare feet on stone floors in unheat
ed schoolrooms.
“Examining their lunch baskets,
we found a small piece of bread and
perhaps a few radishes of a boiled
turnip. For dinner, vegetable soup,
with occasionally a scrap of meat of
cheese. Large categories got no
more than seven to nine hundred
calories iper day. This is about one-
third of what we give our children
and not enough to sustain life over
a long period of time.
“The children of Europe are dy
ing.”
Dr. Kershner, who appeared on be
half of the National Committee on
Food for the Small Democracies,
New York, said that in November
1941, he bought 360 fons of powder
ed milk in Switzerland and got per
mission to take it to France, but
that the Treasury Department, on
the objection of the British Embassy
refused permission to pay for the
fund out of blocked dollars in New
York. ,
As a result the milk went to
Germany, instead of giving a new
lease on life “to the starving babies
of France,” he declared.
Afterward he said that he found
10 tons of beans in storage in Mar
seilles since before the war, but
that again the Treasury, “because of
opposition stemming apparently from
the British Embassy,” refused a lic
ense to pay dollars to the New York
owner, and “not one of these beans
was eaten by our hungry little wards
in Southern France.”
He told of instituting a vitamin
distribution to 250,000 of the most
needy Children in southern France in
the fall of 1940. Each chocolate
square was wrapped, in a piece of
tin foil carrying a message of friend
ship from the people of America to
the children of France.
“To sihow their appreciation, the
girls made bows of these wrappers
and wore them for hair ribbons for
days,” he said. “Everyone knew of
this feature of friendship, a nd every
body was talking.”
The papers were filled with col
umns of publicity on the action and
the whole nation was grateful, but
the following winter permission was
refused for bringing the vitamin
concentrate from America he said.
Quoting from President Roose
velt’s radio appeal for contriutions
to the National War Fund and from
th e literature of the fund’s cam
paign to show that the money was
solicited for feeding the hungry in
the occupied' countries, he declared':
“If we do not send food to the
children of the German-occupied
countries, we will have obtained
$125,000,000 from the American
people in part under false pretenses.
The people have been promised that
some of their money would be used
for this purpose and' they expect
that promise to be kept.”
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