OCR Text |
Show , i l l I I I I I I 111 I I : ' I' n.:li'lnnft FORWARD MARCH By H. S. Sims, Jr. WE MUST HELP FEED THE VICTIMS AND THE VANQUISHED . . . The plea for food continues to arise from officials cognizant of the imminence of starvation in European and Asiatic countries as a result of the war and failure of important crops. Between 400 million and 500 million people, it is said, are now living on diets that will seriously impair their health. Responsible officials assert that many will inevitably in-evitably starve to death, but that the death toll can be lowered if the people of the wrold who have surplus foods make a prompt response re-sponse to the plea to share their food. While there are some areas in1 : which individuals posess equal I rights, neither the Army nor the Navy does more than business and other organizations in making mak-ing a distinction in compensation I and perquisites between those occupying oc-cupying higher and lower positions. posi-tions. We know of no business in the nation which places the day-laborer upon the same basis, in regard re-gard to authority and privileges, with the president of the company, compa-ny, nor do we know of any organization, orga-nization, civic, social, fraternal or religious, that has devised any scheme to give members in the ranks an equal voice with officials in the management of the group. The truth of the matter is that many enlisted men in the armed intelligence to be officers. It is difficult, at times, to explain their failure to be promoted. Nevertheless, Neverthe-less, in the vast majority of cases, officers earn their positions by virtue of experience, ability and intelligence in-telligence and they enjoy, in military mili-tary service, the same privileges, preferences and extra compensations compensa-tions that are the rule in other activities connected with human existence. ' For those who object to feeding the people of former enemy countries, coun-tries, let us point out that the need in the areas devastated is tremendous. tre-mendous. To give relief to the innocent victims of the war machines ma-chines of Germany and Japan will require all the food the world can spare. No one is justified in refusing re-fusing to cooperate in this humanitarian hu-manitarian effort because of the belief that the people of former enemy countries deserve the suffering suf-fering that they endure. For ourselves, we have nothing to sugest in ameliorating the penalty that the enemy nations must accept, as a result of their failure to conquer the world, but we recognize that, when the United Unit-ed Nations accepted the unconditional uncondi-tional surrender of German and Japanese forces, they immediately immediate-ly resumed an obligation in respect re-spect to the helpless populations; We do not suggest that the German Ger-man or Japanese people deserve anything; we do insist that, as one of the victor nations, we must meet a reponsibility that cannot, in good conscience, be avoided. DISCRIMINATION UNIVERSAL . . . We have been interested in various var-ious news accounts, tending to decry de-cry what is termed "discrimination" "discrimina-tion" between officers in the military mili-tary services and men in ranks, services have the experience and |