THE ADMINISTRATION: Anatomy of Failure

The U.S. had always prided itself on its generosity. Time & again, when disaster had struck other nations, U.S. food, clothing, medicine and money had been among the first to be sent for relief—generously and quickly. That was a matter of record. Now the U.S. people stood accused of gluttony in the midst of a starving world. Why?

The letdown from war had been mental as well as physical. Warnings of world famine got lost, somehow, in plans for vacations. For four years the Government had handled the nation’s global thinking; undoubtedly it would handle the famine —if one really threatened.

But when it came to planning meals for the world, the U.S. Government suffered from an acute lack of imagination. In the postwar world there were more immediate causes to get excited about—demobilization, the end of controls and shortages, reconversion, international political readjustments. Alongside them, the possibility of a U.S. failure to provide food for famine seemed a nebulous and negative thing, hard to forecast, harder to take seriously.

Last week the national failure was a fact, and its anatomy was as open to inspection as a skeleton in a museum.

Ready—. The first warning had come in August 1945. The five-nation* International Wheat Council, meeting in London, estimated then that Europe would need a staggering 15.4 million tons of wheat imports by June 30, 1946—approximately 11.7 million tons over the peacetime average. This report was sent to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It was ignored.

Similar warnings came to the Combined Food Board (the U.S., Britain and Canada), which was more concerned with dividing up the existing supply than prodding production. When the demands grew more insistent, President Truman made an occasional conservation appeal to the people. But it was not until Feb. i that the Government got down to brass tacks. On that date, Agriculture Secretary Clinton Anderson strode into a Cabinet meeting with the information that there would not be enough U.S. wheat to meet U.S. commitments, no matter how much the U.S. farmer produced.

Set—. The result was a rush to get the wheat, meat and fats off the farms and moving in all directions overseas. The President’s Cabinet subcommittee (State, Agriculture and Commerce) wanted a dark bread order, and controls on wheat and flour. The State Department wanted to raise the price of grain, luring farmers into selling it instead of feeding it to hogs and cattle. Secretary Anderson agreed, but Price Boss Chester Bowles paled at the thought of a general price rise. Honest differences of opinion seriously hobbled action. Said ex-UNRRA Director Herbert Lehman: the Administration had “failed to do everything it could,” had “gambled” with the lives of millions. Everybody seemed to have heard the feather step of famine at the same time, and everybody had his own idea of which way to run for help.

Go! In alarm, the President sent his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, abroad to dramatize the crisis. To prod the public and pressure the farmer, he appointed the Famine Emergency Committee, put crack Administrator Chester Davis at its head. Fiorello LaGuardia bounded onto the scene as director general of UNRRA, to succeed the tired and ailing Lehman. Cried LaGuardia, as he prodded the snail-paced Combined Food Board: “I am going to get wheat, or I am going to tell the world why not! . . . I am not going around like Evangeline Booth with a tambourine in my hand!”

Last week, despite the confusion and collisions, the false starts and the belated ones, the U.S. was sprinting to make amends (see below). But the early failures had already taken their toll; no matter what the U.S. did within the next two months, world famine would continue for at least a year.

*U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Argentina.