Children and Starvation

Willing as it was, there was little U. S. charity could do to help Europe last week. The first boatload of British child evacuees to come directly from England under the sponsorship of the U. S. Committee for the Care of European Children was due in Manhattan. When the next boatload would arrive, the committee could not tell. Problem was to find ships to bring them. This week the Senate approved the Hennings Bill (already passed by the House) to amend the Neutrality Act, allow U. S. ships, plainly marked, to go into combat zones to evacuate children. The Bill was not likely to be vetoed by the President; more likely to be vetoed by Adolf Hitler.

How much safe conduct Hitler might be expected to pledge* was suggested last week as the U. S. Army transport American Legion cleared from the Finnish port of Petsamo for Manhattan. Aboard were Crown Princess Martha of Norway and her three children, bound for the haven of the U. S. at the invitation of Mr. Roosevelt; Minister to Norway Mrs. Florence J. Harriman; nearly 1,000 fleeing U. S. citizens. Said Berlin ominously last week: "The Reich Government must . . . disclaim responsibility should any damages be incurred by the ship. The responsibility must be borne solely by the United States Government."

This week the State Department bluntly informed the Nazis: the U. S. "expects that the vessel will not suffer molestation by ... the German armed forces." The story of a hungry Europe behind the British blockade was clouded with contradictions. Authoritative reports boiled down to this: there was probably food enough to feed the continent meagrely through the winter, if Germany would or could distribute it. Cold probability was that the victims of the Nazis faced famine. Fortnight ago, Herbert Hoover proposed that the British lift their blockade to let ships from the U. S. pass through with supplies for Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland. According to Mr. Hoover, his proposal was put up to the British Government by Hugh Gibson, the London representative of the European Food Distribution Commission.

Basis of Hoover's proposal, by which England would be asked to sheathe her chief weapon, the blockade, would be a guarantee from Germany not to requisition any of the supplies. (Such a guarantee was asked and given in 1914, when Hoover's committee fed nearly 7,500,000 Belgians; for the most part Germany stuck to her word.) Mr. Hoover planned a U. S. commission to check up on the fulfillment of Nazi promises. What he was proposing in fact, as Columnist Walter Lippmann pointed out, was an internal blockade of Germany, in "a vast territory occupied by German armies." Other promises Mr. Hoover hoped to exact from Nazi Germany were a return to the conquered nations of the equivalent of the food Germany had already seized from them, and permission for the conquered countries to import supplies from Russia and the Balkans. These conditions would also be watched by the U. S. commission. Said Mr. Lippmann: "It does then seem a bit premature . . . for anyone to begin talking as if a fine humanitarian plan of relief was being opposed by the British and the American Governments ... Is there any good rea son to think that Hitler would permit Mr. Hoover to exercise any such control as Mr. Hoover proposes?"

*Commenting on Hitler safety pledges, Arizona's Senator Henry Fountain Ashurst remarked: "Absolutely worthless. Anyone who believes Hitler's promises has sweetbreads for brain's. Hitler is a lycanthropist [a werewolf]."

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