FOOD FOR GERMANS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21556, 19 January 1940, Page 7

FOOD FOR GERMANS

Responsibility Rests With Nazis Debate At Church Convocation United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright (Received January 18, 6.30 p.m.) LONDON. January 17. The Bishop of Birmingham (the Rt. Rev. E. W. Barnes), at the Upper House Convocation of Canterbury, urged that a petition be sent to the Government to allow the free importation of foodstuffs to Germany in accordance with the Divine precept that “if an enemy hungers, feed him.’’ According to a British Official Wireless message the Bishop of Birmingham sought means of distinguishing between militarily useful supplies and those the deprivation of which might result in starvation for civilians. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Cosmo Gordon Lang) informed the Bishops that he had consulted with the Government on the question and had learned that no discrimination was possible in practice between foodstuffs which could be converted to war uses and foodstuffs for civilian consumption. The ultimate responsibility for feeding the German civil population rested with the Nazi Government which in willing the war must be taken to have willed the results of the war. The Archbishop associated himself with the Bishop of Birmingham in deploring among the many unspeakable horrors which the war had let louse the suffering and want inflicted on women and children. Everything that could be said against such horrors of war was an argument against the use of war as an

instrument of policy. The Nazi rulers of Germany had chosen to use that instrument and evil as was the war in which that choice had plunged Europe, they could not feel, Dr. Lang declared, but that a great evil would have come upon the world if these rulers had not been resisted.

The Bishop of Birmingham withdrew his motion after the Primates speech, saying that he had no wish to emphasise the difference which he was certain was on practical considerations rather than on moral fundamentals.

The Bishop of Chichester (the Rt. Rev. G. K. A. Bell) said that hundreds of thousands of Pastor Niemoller’s followers and Roman Catholics were rallying to Hitler’s flag in the belief that the Allies were determined to destroy and dismember Germany. Britain’s soldiers should be told what kind of a Europe they were fighting to establish.

The Upper House of Convocation passed a resolution trusting that salesmen of neutral and belligerent countries would eagerly watch for an opportunity to negotiate a just and durable peace.