FOOD: Flat Failure

How was the U.S. doing on its food commitments abroad? This week UNRRA’s Fiorello LaGuardia, who does not believe in nonsense, told the unvarnished facts. The record added up to the worst failure yet.

During the last week of April, actual shipment of relief supplies abroad had once again fallen miserably behind. The box score:

¶ 13,900 tons of rice promised, 32 tons shipped.

¶ 161,500 tons of bread cereals promised, 89,000 tons shipped.

¶ 12,000 tons of fats promised, 2,440 tons shipped.

Cried LaGuardia: “Availabilities, future commitments, hopes, statistics, quantities, are no good to hungry people. . . . These figures speak for themselves. . . . People surely are going to die unless UNRRA gets the cooperation for which I have begged and pleaded.”

The U.S. had failed in the emergency crisis. How was its wind for the long-distance grind? The Department of Agriculture now predicted that Europe’s food shortage would last into 1950. Food and Agricultural Organization experts of U.N. chimed in: “A critical world food shortage will continue at least until crops are harvested in 1947 . . . widespread drought in the months immediately ahead might well be even more disastrous than . . . the droughts which developed in 1945 and early in 1946.”

High officials in Washington hinted privately that tougher measures were called for, that a return to rationing might be in order. President Truman said that he did not believe rationing would do any good now and that he had no new measures in mind. He had already put into effect all the drastic measures he could think of, said Harry Truman.