WAR ON BABIES ?

Grey River Argus, 17 January 1940, Page 2

WAR ON BABIES ?

VERA BRITTAIN. e 1 Writing in the “Daily Herald,” the ' novelist, Vera Brittain, says: Since i’ the war began, the phrase “economic - blockade” has been hopefully cherishs ed by many of this country’s’ betteri’ nourished inhabitants. Round it cir- , culates much of the wishful thinking i 3 in which our nation is at present m--5 dulging. Some of my acquaintances] ■ —kindly, well-meaning people who - would hesitate to kill a fly and could 3 certainly draw the line at running t over a dog —talk with glib optimism - about the effectiveness of “our block- - ade.” “After all,” they assure each 'other, “we’ve got command of ■ the 'seas. We’ll soon starve Germany into submission!” What exactly does that mean hi terms of social misery and individual i suffering? I have never forgotten an 1 evening in 1924, when I spoke about !' the League of Nations in halting Ger- , man to a group of tolerant, friend;y > razor-makers from a. factory at So- ' lingen, near Cologne. My host, the - local pastor, was the father of three - thin but riotous little sons. ! Before the meeting he showed me > the photograph of their eldest child. • “We lost her,” he told me with tears > in his eyes. “She was delicate, and • iwe could not get milk for her during i ] the blockade.” (| Only recently, a correspondent con- . firmed my own recollections of Cen- • ftral Europe during those nightmare ■ years which will soon repeat them- , 'selves i'n German homes. “What I I saw,” she writes, “in Germany soon . { after the last war when, as a mem- ' ber of the Society of Friends, I wem 1 /there to help with the feeding of tne 1 'children, has lain like a heavy bur- '. den on my mind ever since.” | , | Another post-war visitor to Central 1 Europe has told me how in 1921, he ( ! observed Austrian children, their i I bones soft as paper from under-nour-

ishment, lying like limp rag dolls In the parks of Vienna. By 1924, this pitiful suffering had been tidied out of the streets, but the slums and hospitals of German cities were still, filled with children of all ages suffering frim rickets and tuberculosis. And now we, who have made-pro-gress during the past twenty years m the feeding and care of _ our own young, are preparing to rejoice that German children will suffer once more. The policy of blockade, though less gruesome than air raids, is more malevolent because its effects continue. Long after States have ceased to quarrel, the consequences of their disputes are visible in the impaired development, the depleted vitality, sometimes even the living death, or their weakest and most -vulnerable citizens. Those who suffer most in economic warfare are pregnant women, nursing mothers, babies and small children. Bombs create surface devastation, but blockade cuts at the root of a people’s life, and its effects endure from generation to generation.