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Show It is all rig-ht to talk about lifting- one's self up by one's bootstraps ... if one lias the bootstraps. In Europe, China and the Philippines the victims of this war haven't. UNiUtA representatives and other relief workers re-! port that the tired, teriorizcd people of the bomb-gutted, i rnine-strewn, fire-scai led, lc jted lands are trying oesper-' ately to help themselves, ve can give them the where-! withal for this self-help. J We've all got a world to build. Lut the war suf fersrt have first got to build a ro .f to shelter their families, a place of refuge for their sick and their old and their dying, a small place of peace and satety in which tr.e heirs to thii brave new world may be born. They must be clothed against the bitter world they now inhabit. They must lie clothed with more than courage to meet the challenge of the l.ettei world they mean to build. For us to part with a used coat or a pair of outgrown shoes doesn't seem like a great deed of sacrifice nor is it much of a deprivation. But to the destitute man or woman overseas that used coat or second-hand pair of shoes may be a passport to the future. In a hundred thousand cases it may be the difference between hope and despair, between r life of usefulness and one of dragging misery between life and death itself. Twenty-five million people in Europe, China and the Philippines were clothed as a result of America's search of its attics, closets and chests last spring. Total victory and the consequent opening up of the liberated territories have revealed misery to tax our imagination. Twenty-five million mil-lion is only a small percentage of the homeless, ragged millions mil-lions of the world. President Truman says a second clothing appeal ii America is imperative. The Victory Clothing Collectioi from January 7 to 31 is a nationwide effort to collect 100 million serviceable garments with additional shoes (tied se-curey se-curey in pairs) and bedding for the relief of war victims overseas. We are invited to enclose messages of good wii, with our contributions. These millions of war victims don't expect a sudden Utopia any more than you do. They only hope you will heir tide them over a period of direst emergency. What can you spare that th ey can wear? |