SUFFERING EUROPE.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 160733, 20 August 1920, Page 8

SUFFERING EUROPE.

The appeal made by the Church Army on behalf of the starving children of Europe is one that merits sympathetic and practical support. In various parts of New Zealand just now similar appeals are being made for help for Central Europe, where conditions are tragic in the extreme. Austria is described as a nation absolutely dying on her feet. Two years ago disease and starvation were rife in that country; and, despite assistance from Britain and America, the position is still most appalling. Austria has not the means to live, even if she had the will, and the condition of other nations }s almost as direful. Mr George Ren-* wick, one of the most experienced of English foreign correspondents, is now contributing to a London, paper a series of articles on the “Tragic Cities of Central Europe,” which make most pitiful reading. After a tour which included Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, Warsaw, Kieff, Dantzig, and Berlin, he declares that the strongest impression left on his mind was one of hopeless misery. “Life seems to be for the great majority of the people something approaching a nightmare; food and the other necessaries of life are dearer than ever.” A ghastly air of gaiety still pervades Vienna, once one of the gayest and brightest cities of Europe; but, says Mr Renwick, all the colour and gaiety of the place

are only for a small tithe of the people. Behind it all, out in the sombre suburbs, and the repulsive slums, the middle-classes merely exist, and the poor starve still. Between 70 and 80 per cent, of the city’s children cannot hope to live unless they receive assistance from outside. Poland and Galicia he found to be scourged with typhus, which is now in its fifth year. “It is a most tragic experience to visit most of the villages; scores of them are simply being slowly but surely wiped out, and many can be found where there is not a single living soul; every inhabitant has perished of typhus.” There is no sanitation, no soap, often no adequate water supply, little food, and fewer medical supplies, and the efforts so far of the British and American relief organisations are comparable only with an attempt to sweep back the sea with a broom. Central Europe is one of the gravest problems of the day, and its solution can only be brought about by the co-operation of more fortunate countries, upon whom devolves the task of preserving civilisation in an area which holds many millions of human beings. The appeal, therefore, made by Mr F. W. Whibley (hon. sec. to the Church Army in New Zealand) for subscriptions to save some of Europe’s children is worthy of the heartiest practical support.