CHINESE RELIEF

Evening Star, Issue 26043, 6 March 1947, Page 4

CHINESE RELIEF

CORSO'S DOMINION APPEAL IMMENSE HUMAN NEED “ As Unrra leaves China this month the whole weight of relief in the Ear East will fall upon voluntary bodies, of whom Corso is the combined agent in New Zealand,” said Mr A. M. Richards, Corso Dominion appeals organiser, who is visiting Dunedin in connection with the postmen’s drive for China relief funds that is being made next Saturday. Unrra, despite grave faults that were perhaps inseparable from its pioneering position in the world’s first big peacetime iiiter-Governmental undertaking, has put the greater part of Europe back on its feet, although, admittedly, it still stands very unsteadily and has hardly begun to walk, continued Mr Richards. However, Unrra lias spent much less per head in China than elsewhere, and started much later. The. voluntary relief bodies that are taking over from it will therefore have an immense task to complete, and they will have to do it, of course, on far smaller funds than Unrra had. For all that, they would probably get, with their flexible organisation ana volunteer staffs, far better results than Unrra, judged on pound for pound expenditure. “ Guerrilla relief workers, as •one might call Corso volunteers, living without set salaries and with a minimum of overhead, will be able to avoid many of the operating difficulties caused by China’s political division and runaway inflation. In short,” said Mr Richards, “ Corso’s Chinese relief projects are a thoroughly practical contribution to an immense human need.”

WAR’S LEGACY. Ten years of continuous warfare had left China in a state impossible for New Zealanders to imagine. Most hospitals, for example, had .had buildings destroyed, and year after year had seen their medical equipment dwindle, through use and breakages and thefts, without any possibility of replacing it. “ Even if we picture New Zealand totally without hospital services we would still have no real appreciation of the Chinese situatiofi, because we know nothing here of the post-war -dislocation and poverty that makes medical care more than ever essential for the Chinese. New Zealand money given through Corso will go before everything else into rebuilding and re-equipping hospitals—the biggest of them Christian institutions—and into training a new generation of nurses and technicians.” All Coreo’s contributions to China would have this double effect of immediate relief and long-run rehabilitation. The Chinese were the most selfreliant people in the world. Give them an inch of help and they would, by their own efforts, turn it into a yard of welfare. As one result olf this the country continued to progress towards modernity and a better standard of living, despite the struggles of political factions (in which, generally speaking, the people did not join) wherever a minimum of subsistence could be secured and wherever even a very little modern equipment and modern teaching could be given.

DIRECT CONTACTS. All the help Corso was giving'to China went direct to the people, said, Mr Richards, either as goods or else as expert aid given by New Zealand volunteer relief workere to Chinese hospitals and to village co-operatives. None of it was distributed through Government hands. , As one result, both the areas under the Central Go- | vernment and those under the Communists shared in relief assistance, and the rehabilitation of the country was able to go ahead even when tension between Government forces and '. Communist groups flared up in various places into open warfare. The ability of practical life to carry on despite Japanese occupation and post-war confusion was a very striking feature of China to-day, concluded Mr Richards Even the /most distressful conditions of epidemic and starvation were turned into .economic progress wherever a bare modicum of outside help was forthcoming. But conditions generally had fallen so low that without some initial kick-off- from outside most Chinese villages, schools, and hospitals would remain sunk in quite hopeless and desperate , need.