A WORLD CRISIS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26078, 15 February 1946, Page 4

A WORLD CRISIS.

“ One thousand million people throughout the world might be faced with famine this year,” stated Mr Ernest Bevin at a sitting of the General Assembly of the United Nations. This statement is the most striking that has yet been made concerning the extent and gravity of the present food shortage. The number quoted is so enormous as to leave no room for doubt, if there had been any, that it is indeed a major world crisis that has to be faced. The broader emphasis is necessary to correct any impression which might previously have existed that the danger was more or less confined to the warstricken' areas of Europe. Actually the threat is present over almost all the lands between the North Sea and Japan and also over- South Africa and India and portions of the tropical Far East. The effects of shortages over an area so vast as this must eventually be felt in some degree everywhere else in the civilised world. It had been estimated earlier this year that there would be a wheat shortage of 5,000,000 tons for the first six months of 1946, but since then the position has become even more serious because of crop failures in South Africa, where natives are already starving, and in India, where the menace of hunger is exciting a politically unstable situation to an' explosive degree. It is only proper, therefore, that the problem should be discussed by the General Assembly of the United Nations for it embraces the possibility of a disaster fully as great as that of a world war. It is an occasion, as Mr Bevin has emphasised, when the members of the United Nations must put aside their differences and join together to meet the challenge. He has proposed various measures to control the situation nationally and internationally. There must, he said, be rigid supervision, so that every ounce of food was used to the best advantage and that nothing was wasted; Governments must combine to ascertain the availability of all supplies of foodstuffs and to collaborate in their distribution; and, in particular, there must be an over-all control of grain stocks to ensure that they are utilised as economically as possible. This would only be a beginning, since these proposals are all intended to meet the immediate emergency. The crisis, it is anticipated, will continue for about a year, but the battle must go on until normal food conditions are restored throughout the world. This is truly a world cause in which every nation and every community must take its part. The only hope for tiding the affected countries over the period of greatest shortage must

be the fullest effort and sacrifice on the part of the food-producing countries to achieve maximum exports, even at the cost of lowering their own standards of living. Mr Stettinius has pledged that the United States will join in this war against starvation, and Australia, despite its own difficulties, has pledged assistance to a degree that will strain the national resources. New Zealand has suffered some losses in production in both the North and South Islands this season and it is essential that, apart from the possibility of reducing consumption of meat and dairy produce, an effort must be made to increase the yield of cereals so that this country will not have to draw upon world pools for its needs. There has still been no positive statement from the Government concerning the action which it is prepared to initiate, but public demand for a response to this call of humanity cannot much longer be denied without grave damage to the reputation of the Dominion.