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Show t - - Voluntary Help Can Save Europe's Dying Children By BAUKIIAGE News Analyst and Commentator WASHINGTON What to do until the doctor comes. Pretty important to know that. Pretty Important to be willing and able to do it. There are 230 million children In thii world today who need first aid. The European recovery plan (E.C.A.) will help a lot of these children who have the itamlna to outlive the ugly Interim period when, dirty, almost naked, they must roam the countryside or live In cellars and hovels, hungry or starving. But the E.C.A. is a huge undertaking, under-taking, and like all great bodies, it novcs slowly. Anyhow, ltd chief rr,vj(gii'''''i purpse i pr- f- , :j vide the means to f restore- normal J J conditions to the vl ,triclten arca of i EuroPe- 1 large-,fS? large-,fS? I 'y indirect aid, not L I i vldual cases. 7'y - -' 'Meanwhile thou-, thou-, sands upon thou-sandf thou-sandf of these chil-dren chil-dren will die. Some f -a wiB be avcd by '.'.-'tyri Individual help your help. To make that help effective effec-tive the many humanitarian organ!-tations organ!-tations which seek to save as many .roung lives as possible have been merged . into one great Crusade tor Children1. Local groups are oiganlz-tng oiganlz-tng in the cities. In the rural districts, dis-tricts, the Farm Grange, Farm Bureau Bu-reau federation, Farmers' Union, Council for Farm Cooperatives, U.S. department of agriculture and other (roups are furthering the movement. To anyone who has seen this tortured tor-tured young generation, the effect Is as staggering as the sight of a battlefield. To a young soldier, there Is no shock Ilka the sight of your first dead comrade. That atlll form, wearing the same uniform you wear, lying crushed against the earth. To me, the shock of the sight of European children moving with the shadow of a living death npon them was a terrible thing too. I can remember getting off a train In what once had been one of the treat railway stations of Europe rubble ground Into black mud, the ghastly smell of those buried dscp under the foundations of ruined Homes and shelters. Military police, hardened to the sights around them, walked back and forth. In the sinister sin-ister shadows of the ruins the ghostly ghost-ly movement of little wraiths slip-pins slip-pins In and out of sight, bent on any mission, no, matter how fair or foul, that would win some chocolate, a piece of K-ration, a cigarette that might be traded for some bit of food. No matter what the sins of the fatten, they could not be great enough to Justify the punishment Inflicted on these children. Then Is only one way their bodies and their souls can be saved. That Is thrcush the groups which are sup-parted sup-parted by Individual donations, nnt.l economlo life Is restored to a dejree of normalcy when society can be rebuilt, broken homes mended and the Institutions which can care for the homeless put into operation as a part of a healthy community existence. Government aid, like E.C.A., cannot can-not establish direct contact with the Individual It Is a matter of arrangements ar-rangements drawn up between nations. na-tions. It means dollar credits which make It possible for the receiving sations to buy supplies. Some of this money, of course, ioes into food. But it takes time for Bie machinery to get into operation, and even after it is In operation, it !s Inadequate to satisfy the needs of the whole people. Much of the as-listance as-listance goes into material things luch as the reconstruction of factories, fac-tories, replacement and modernization moderniza-tion of tools, machinery and agricultural agri-cultural supplies. Frequently, supplies of such simple sim-ple things as rakes and shovels are .,. v.- ... , This tiny child, long In need of medical aid, Is now In a hospital supported by the U.N. International Internation-al Children's Emergency Fund. Funds are being raised through the Crusade for Children of American Overseas Ald-t'nlted Nations Appeal Ap-peal for Children. is short that farms can't be worked until they are furnished. Later they will be manufactured. But that means machinery for the factories comes first. Crusade for Children Is a well-ergmlicd well-ergmlicd private effort which has the backlnj and cooperation of the United Nations, and the sponsor-ah'p sponsor-ah'p and approval of the government govern-ment from the President down. It provides direct citizen-to-citizen aid which is administered carefully with experienced personnel on the scene personnel which cuts red tape and is free from many of the rules, regulations and restrictions which a government necessarily must employ. As a matter of fact, when the European recovery plan was first drawn up, It was contemplated contem-plated that voluntary private aid would supplement it. As an example of the type of thing Crusade for Children Is designed to further: In Europe at present, there are sotne 50,000 distributing points, such as schools, child clinics and hospitals serviced by the International Interna-tional Children's Emergency Fund of the United Nations. At schools and child centers, particularly par-ticularly through dried milk, ICEF makes a supplementary contribution contribu-tion to the noon meal, which costs the fund about three and a half cents per child. The entire meal '! JH ;V- . ! 1 An Austrian orphan walls on snsw-covcrcd steps for the. daily mcil provided for him by the United Nations' International Children's Chil-dren's Emergency Fund. Ho Is one of millions who would starve without with-out this vital service. costs only seven cents per child. One hundred dollars provides 7.500 hungry, hun-gry, undernourished children one glass of milk each at every meal. But because of limited funds, ICEF is feeding only four million of Europe's Eu-rope's 30 million hungry children. Here are somo of the sickening facts, carefully collected and checked by United Nations authorities: authori-ties: Infant mortality In Europe and Asia has jumped from 40 deaths per 1,000 live births to as high as 330 deaths per 1.00O compared with the United States rate of 38.3 per 1,000. Tuberculosis has doubted In many areas, especially among children. chil-dren. Lack of food has vastly Increased In-creased such diseases as rickets, scurvy and pellagra. Physical examinations In one sone (of Europe) showed that boys 14 years of age are three Inches shorter than boys of the same age four years ago. This Is the direct result of malnutrition. In some areas half the physicians were killed; teachers, nurses and those trained in child care are lacking. X have sat in the office of a German Ger-man physician one room left livable liv-able in a bombed house, windows boarded up to replace the smashed glass, operating room, consultation office, bedroom, living room, all together to-gether with an endless line of patients pa-tients with nothing to pay for the doctor's services which would buy anything for the doctor. That doctor doc-tor told me that because of the hopeless hope-less fate of children, abortions were the rule rather than the exception, with sickness and death as the result. re-sult. Not the government, but private, voluntary agencies can alleviate these conditions. One may feci that Europe has brought much of its anguish upon itself, but it is not the children who are to blame. As Secretary of State Marshall said: "Voluntary aid supplements the general relief which only governments govern-ments can provide. It affords the things and services, Including spiritual spir-itual comfort, needed by 4he weakest weak-est of the war victims. . . ." Secretary of State Marshall has warned South American countries that there will be no Marshall Dan for them. It appears that they cither must go out and obtain private financing or work up a good Communist Com-munist threat to share in Uncle Sam's largcrso. A modern president spends more effort trying to get what he wants into llio papers and on the air than In finding out what's there already. |