WHEAT FOR SPANIARDS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19820, 23 December 1938, Page 5

WHEAT FOR SPANIARDS

PREVENTING STARVATION CIVILIAN POPULATION ANGLO-U.S.-FRENCH MOVE (Reed, Dec. 23, 9 a.m.) WASHINGTON. Dec. 21.

The State Department has announced plans to distribute the surplus United States wheat in order to prevent starvation and the spread of disease among Spain’s civilian population, and has also invited other nations to give food or money. The United States Government is purchasing 3,000,000 bushels of wheat during the next six months and turning it over to the Red Cross Society for storage and transportation costs, after which the wheat will ; be milled into 600,000 barrels of Hour, which will be distributed impartially among Spanish non-combatants. The announcement that the United States is sending wheat and Hour to Spanish civilians elicited the observation in British and American circles that the nutritional problem in Spain has been giving concern not only to numanitarian bodies in the British Empire and the United States, but also to departmental experts who have been connected with the League of Nations’ work.

Australian Contribution A report is in circulation that Australian circles advocate that the Commonwealth should make a contribution of dried milk for undernourished women and children of both factions in Spain. It was stressed that the need for essential vitamins is becoming paramount among the civilians, and such a contribution would be of first-rate importance for the relief of suffering and perhaps be more important than wheat. A British Official Wireless message from Rugby states that the Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, Mr. R A. Butler, in the House of Commons to-day, said that Britain was in consultation with America and France regarding the despatch of supplies of food for the civil population in Spain-