Greymouth Evening Star. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1943. RELIEF SUPPLIES.

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 November 1943, Page 4

Greymouth Evening Star. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1943. RELIEF SUPPLIES.

WHATEVER may be the duration of the ” war, there are increasing preparations in Britain and U.S.A, for its end, and these factors are more reliable guides than guesses by Press contributors, however interesting. In Britain, the appointment of Lord Woolton as Minister of Reconstruction is evidence not only that Britain’s food supplies are now satisfactory, —otherwise Lord Woolton would

have remained as Controller, but that the end of the conflict is near' enough to warrant active steps to establish post-war policy at home. The appointment has been widely approved. Lord Woolton had been Minister of Food since April 1940, and was generally acclaimed for the fairness to all classes of the rationing measures he enforced. It was impossible to prevent anomalies, harshness and £t black-markets” alto-

gether, but he achieved a great measure of success, and is regarded as one of the most efficient Ministers the war revealed. Previously, he was a successful business man in Manchester and Liverpool, taking little or no interest in party politics. He was knighted in 1935 and made a peer in 1939. He is aged 60 and should have the strength left to undertake his new duties, as difficult as those he has just relinquished. His successor at the Food Ministry, Colonel Llewellm, has filled several Ministerial offices, with efficiency, and should have little trouble in his new office.

The question of food stocks will remain as important after the war as during it. The demand for food and supplies will be enormous and without some degree of rationing world-wide, the problem cannot be solved. Producing countries will have to go short so that the people in less favoured lands may have bare necessities, and all classes must share in these sacrifices. Lord Woolton did not achieve his administrative success by yielding to clamour or appeals, and his firm example should be followed by Overseas Governments. Rationing is invariably unpopular and no Government would willingly impose it, but humanitarian, not political, ideals must prevail, if the whole woild is to recover from the war horrors and destruction. Some of the nations appealing for aid may not appear deserving, but their plight cannot be ignored. The immensity of the need was stressed by Mr. Roosevelt in his latest message to Congress. Tie asked for enormous expenditure, and it is intimated that contributing countries will be assessed at one per cent, of the national income during 1940. Britain and U.S.A, will thus have to do most of the contributing in this as in most other directions. Doubtless, the assisted nations will be urged to develop self-help, but the temptation to rely on easy money from abroad will be strong. In the area so far seized from the Germans, the inhabitants appear impressed with the idea that it is more blessed to receive than to give. It is to be hoped that a sense of proportion will be retained by those whose task it will be to devise schemes of relief for “occupied” lands, and that they will be just to their own people as well as being generous to others.