CONDITIONS IN GERMANY

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25088, 21 January 1947, Page 3

CONDITIONS IN GERMANY

Sir, —We are told that British people are voluntarily reducing their scanty diet still further in order to send food to Germany. One may applaud the British character, which not only forbids kicking an enemy when he is down, but makes this very material sacrifice to help him to stagger to his feet; yet it would surely be more practical if the New Zealand Government permitte i those who wished to do so to send food parcels to Germany from New Zealand, where food is plentiful, rather than have our friends and relatives in Britain, where food is so scarce, making this new sacrifice.— Yours, etc., I. LAING. January 18, 1947.

Sir,—To anyone who has known the awful wide-eyed stare of starvation, a mother who starves with babies at her breast is a mother who starves with babies at her breast, whether she is British or German, Indian or Chinese. I suggest this problem is complicated by Semitic control of food sources of a vengeful character. Retribution falls on women and children; and Britain will not allow democracy to be hated as an instrument of starvation. In this age of fissure chain reaction, when the atomic bomb plants of Oak Ridge and Hanford set the pattern of the future, we now have before us. the clear choice between adjusting the pattern of our society on a world basis to prevent wars or of following the outworn traditions of self-centred econorffcr and national self defence, which, if carried through to their logical conclusions, must result in catastrophic conflict—Yours, etc., THE TURN OF THE SCREW. January 19, 1947.,