RELIEF: Like Mother Used to Make

It sounded like a cruel joke. This week, the New York Times reported that during the past six months about 80 tons of food parcels had been shipped to the U.S. from one of the world’s hungriest countries, Greece. The parcels contained olive oil, salami, cheese, figs. At the very time the U.S. prepared to give Greece major economic help, the shipments had risen to a peak of 16,000 parcels a week.

Greek consular officials in the U.S. were fussed. Said one: “Very mysterious . . . extremely peculiar. . . .” Said another: “Anything is possible.” In Athens, Foreign Minister Constantin Tsaldaris ordered an investigation. The Times speculated that the Greek senders might be victims of “an unfriendly ideology whose followers are spreading propaganda on the bad state of affairs in America.”

Actually, the food shipments seemed to spring from more human, less political, motives. One, undoubtedly, was a little international racket which encouraged individual Greeks to send the parcels as gestures of gratitude for U.S. aid, thus avoiding Greek Government restrictions on food exports. The other source was. plain Greeks who (like plain people all over Europe) had always sent the old special delicacies to their emigrant families in the new world. For everyone knew that though America was great and incredibly well fed, it just couldn’t produce the kind of salami that brought tears to your eyes and fire to your palate—the kind that mother used to make.