LIMITED RELIEF

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 66, 18 March 1944, Page 3

LIMITED RELIEF

FOOD FOR BELGIUM

REPLY TO LORD SELBORNE (P.A.) WELLINGTON, this day. The following statement has been received from the Belgian Consul in Wellington:—"British Official Wireless on March 15 gives an account of a debate in the House of Lords on under-nutrition in occupied countries of Europe. In replying to the debate the Minister of Economic Warfare, Lord Selborne, referring to pleas to ship food to Germanoccupied countries, said Allied sailors in ships of countries other than those mentioned were risking lives every day to bring food to Britain, and he asked 'what justification should we have in asking them to risk their lives to bring food to the exclusion of their country to other countries which are in no greater straits.' " So far as Belgium is concerned the request of the Belgian Government for navicerts does not imply wholesale relief, the breaking up of the blockade and withdrawing from the war effort of a large number of ships. Belgian ships and their crews which contributed to bringing food and supplies to Britain during the last four years, in the course of which time their losses amounted to 50 per cent of tonnage and 25 petcent of crews, will continue to do so. Neither the Belgian Government nor the British Famine Relief Committee, under the patronage of ihe Archbishop of Canterbury, suggests wholesale relief for the entire population, but merely limited relief for mothers, children' and sick persons. The highest figure quoted for Belgium is about 2000 tuns per month, mainly powdered milk, vitamins and pharmaceutical supplies. One ship would be sufficient to ensure this limited relief, and the Belgian Government has already bought it with its own funds and has transferred it to the International Red Cross, under whose flag it would sail, and which would supervise the distribution as it has done successfully in Greece and France.

"Belgium has her own funds, and children can be saved without expense to British or other- Allied taxpayers. Furthermore, no supplies needed for British people or the military needs of the United Nations would be used. Far from prolonging the war, as I/ord Selborne fears, or sacrificing the lives of thousands of young men of the Allied forces, granting navicerts for what really amounts to medical relief would shorten the war by giving courage and strength to a democratic people who every day give their lives for the common cause, and in particular to rescue and shelter Allied airmen forced down in Belgium. How are we to reconstruct democracy if people who believe in it. perisn or become so weak in mind and body that only the Germans will have the strength to rebuild Europe? It is not necessary to have seen, Hku Howard Kershner. the starvationbloated stomachs of dying children, nor to have heard tne tubercular cough mingled with the cry for bread to accede to a just and moderate measure of relief."