A PEOPLE STARVES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 140, 15 June 1944, Page 6

A PEOPLE STARVES

UNITED NATIONS RELIEF

• More than -three years of starvation and oppression lie -behind the people of Gx'eece whose hour of liberation now'seems to be. approaching, said their vice-consul in Wellington, Mr. S., Garland, today in an appeal, on the' eve of the .street collection for the relief of distress among the people of the occupied nations to New Zealanders to do their utmost to support the appeal. The full story of the plight of those members of the United Nations under Nazi domination will not be i known until the Allied armies finally I clear their countries of the: enemy, he I said, but enough has filtered through the enemy censorship to 4'show that whole nations, are in danger of death through starvation and disease. Although Red Cross relief ships have carried considerable ,supplies of food to Greece the total has not been enough, and although the days when small children were dying at the rate of 500 a day in Greece, and the streets of Athens and Piraeus presented the frightful spectacle of men and women dying of hunger where they fell, may be gone, there is now. an even greater danger that the accumulated effects of years without' sufficient. nourishment, medical care, and shelter may prove to have undermined the health of a whole nation. As long ago as 1942 a total of 422,000 Greeks were known to have died of hunger. More recent reports place the numbers suffering from malaria and tuberculosis at more.than 3,000,000. New Zealand and the other countries of the Empire owe a debt to Greece that their fighting men are only too ! eager to repay when they are given the opportunity.- No single British soldier in hiding is ever known to have ben betrayed by a Greek. Greek civilians shared their pitiful food supplies with hunted New Zealanders and Australians after our forces had to withdraw. Now New Zealand civilians have the opportunity to subscribe to a fund which will provide for Greece and the other liberated nations the clothing, medical care, and above all the food that they so desperately need.