Drama in Atlantic City

Into Atlantic City’s Claridge Hotel stalked trouble for the United Nations’ brand-new Relief & Rehabilitation Administration.

For days India’s official delegate, mild Sir Girja Bajpai, had never dared bring up the bitter question of India’s right to petition UNRRA for desperately needed food in time of famine. Sir Girja knew that in Bengal this week there was no celebration of the bumper Aman crop (the December rice crop). There was no celebration, only desolation, and silent villages ravaged mercilessly by hunger and disease. For there was no one left to harvest the Aman crop—the stricken peasants sat on doorsteps mourning their dead families, too tired, too sick to take courage from the ripening paddy fields.

But J. J. Singh, president of the India League of America, moved into Atlantic City, called his own press conference, and forced the question into the open. Let UNRRA rush food to India at once.

Chairman Dean Acheson and British Colonel John J. Llewellin demurred. UNRRA relief, said they, was only for areas liberated from the enemy. Bluntly retorted Interloper Singh: If relief is for war victims, how can the United Nations refuse aid to famine-stricken India, where war has stopped all rice imports from Burma?*The big nations, embarrassed but adamant, refused to reconsider.

New Dissension. But the big nation delegates could not succeed in shushing down small or poor nations on all questions (each participating Government has an enual vote). When the U.S. and Britain proposed that UNRRA relief be given free to postwar Germany if she was unable to pay, the small nations rose in storm. With a violent and tumultuous “no” they voted down the proposal. Said they: Germany must pay for all the relief it gets.

Thus, even before Dec. 1, when the Council expected to close its first conference, Director General Herbert Lehman’s vast job was smashing into snags.

It could hardly be otherwise. Delegates from 44 nations had sat down at a green baize-covered table to work out a democratic formula for relief to war-torn countries containing 500 million people, where human wreckage is on a scale almost too huge to conceive.

After three drudging weeks, and in spite of squabblings, most major policies and procedures had been argued over, fought over—and mostly solved: > Director General Lehman had won his right to allocate materials to countries most in need, regardless of their ability or inability to pay.

> Relief would be of two kinds: immediate necessities to sustain life,and seeds and equipment to restore economic independence.

>The cost would be $2 billion, paid for by a contribution from each country (where possible) of 1% of its national income.

New Dimension. And yet, as one by one the delegates from occupied countries described the monstrous desolation that would face them on the day of liberation, conferees breathed in a sense of urgency, and the conference took on a new dimension. Slowly UNRRA plotted the first task of peace. If it succeeds, it will do more than bring relief to destitute peoples: it will prove that the United Nations can create a workable machinery of international cooperation.

At least one thing was clear. The total estimated $1 to $1.5 billion cost to the U.S. was approximately half what U.S.

citizens paid out in relief through Herbert Hoover’s committee after World War I.

This time, others were sharing the burden.

The invaded countries asked for rehabilitation only to help them stand on their own feet—and they would pay to the limit of their ability.

*For news of U.S. relief to India, see p. 45.