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Show Allied Food Conference Envisions World Council 'Z ( International Group Would Be Empowered to $ t f Oversee Production, Distribution of 'Bread f j f j And Beef to Feed Society of Nations. I j - By BAUKHAGE News Analyst and Commentator. WNU Service, Union Trust Building Washington, D. C. Back in the summer of 1940, I sat In a chair under a whispering tree and looked out over a wide and harbored har-bored lawn. The mountains were about us. We were resting in a nest carved out of the wilderness and equipped with all the luxuries that a pampered human could demand. Lovely, indolent women in sports dresses sat at tables under colored umbrellas. Handsome, indolent youths in blazers lolled beside them. Negro servants padded about with tall, cooling and expensive drinks. I call it a "nest." I belonged there just like a cuckoo but I enjoyed it. It was all right. It helped circulate circu-late the money (I was a guest at a bankers' convention). But I thought back. Six months before I had ridden rid-den in an army transport plane over shuddering Europe. I looked about and saw the easy, harmless but useless life about me, made possible by the easy harvesting of America's riches. I sighed (a little enviously) and said to myself: "This can't last." It is a strange coincidence that today, at this very same spot, representatives repre-sentatives of the United Nations are gathering to try to write the prescription pre-scription for the third freedom freedom from want. This gathering isn't concerned with summer resorts de luxe although al-though it meets at one. It is concerned con-cerned with the proposition: We must raise the standard of living all over the globe so that the underfed can produce enough of their handiwork handi-work to exchange it for enough to eat something they just never had before. It is just too big for me to grasp, but what's a heaven for, asks Browning, Brown-ing, if our reach doesn't exceed our grasp? World Council This plan envisions an international internation-al council at the head of a system of administrative bodies among which would be an agricultural council, coun-cil, supported by an agricultural bank (all this international) which ) would direct groups studying and applying nutrition standards, directing direct-ing the supply of products, storing surpluses, shifting crops to balance supply and demand, maintaining ever-normal storehouses of non-perishable crops, adjusting processing of perishable crops, developing new markets, taking care of relief in devastated or stricken areas, advising advis-ing and assisting the poorer population popula-tion groups to increase their efficiency effi-ciency and consumption. In other words, these people who have spent hours and months and devoted arduous labor to working out this idea are trying to furnish the plan for economic machinery to hold up the hands of the political effort of a league of nations, new style the bone and sinew, the bread and beef to feed a society of nations joined together under one political umbrella of world co-operation. Such an idea is laughed out of court in advance by the folk who talk of crazy dreamers, impractical long-hairs and the like. Maybe it is impossible. But a lot of people are saying: "Well, for heaven's sake, let's try it, let's try anything nothing can cost more in blood, sweat and dollars than war." The United States proved a lot of things were possible under the sharp lash of war which would have been sneered into oblivion if they had been blueprinted before Pearl Harbor. Har-bor. Take an egg, for example. Nothing Noth-ing up our sleeves. Just an egg. "Before the war," says Frank Wilson Wil-son of the department of commerce, "when Biddy, the hen, laid an egg in Cole county, Missouri, her subsequent subse-quent cackle of satisfaction was based on the anticipation that that egg might get as far as Sedalia, St. Louis or, on rare occasions, New York." Then Hitler dreamed up a world war and somebody dreamed up a thing called lend-lease. Today, Biddy's Bid-dy's product goes around the world. Dehydration Scientists invented dehydration and the process, as far as eggs are concerned, con-cerned, is only a year and a half old. Before the war, only 10 firms dried eggs to any extent and most of those dried albumen only. Today, according accord-ing to Mr. Wilson, 130 egg-drying plants, big ones, mostly scattered through the Middle West, are drying eggs. Wilson predicts that before the war is over, 35 per cent of America's Amer-ica's three billion dozens of eggs will be treated for processing annually. And so the fragile egg1, formerly shipped only short distances, can travel anywhere. How great the American market for dehydrated eggs will be depends on to what extent ex-tent the consumer takes to the idea, undoubtedly world consumption will increase because of the excellent lend-lease sampling and the ease of shipment. You may not be able to deliver your quart of milk from the Wisconsin Wiscon-sin milk shed to the Hottentot's front porch but you can get your dried milk or dehydrated eggs there if you can adjust things so the Hottentot Hotten-tot can produce enough to trade for what you have to sell. This applies to many other products. At present, if everybody could buy them, all the shirts made in peacetime wouldn't produce a shirt and a half per back. It's the old story right down the line we can invent the machinery to make anything. We are away behind be-hind in our inventions to improve the human lot. It's no harder but it takes more imagination. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink, they say. The problem prob-lem with humans is different. You've got the hungry man and the table and the food, but so far you haven't been able to fix things so you can lead him to it. . Russ-Jap Friendship And American Ships On May 7, Washington had the first official explanation of the many bombings of the Jap-held Aleutian island of Kiska. It said: "United States air forces have established military positions, including an airfield air-field on Amchitka and have been in occupation of this island since January." Janu-ary." The same day, the Associated Press sent out a dispatch dated "February 16 (delayed)." I might say, "I'll say it was delayed." It began this way: "Despite a series of eight Japanese bombing raids, this American airbase, only a few minutes flight from Kiska island went into operation today." I quote all this to show what a highly confidential war we. are running. run-ning. By the time this sees print perhaps while I'm writing these lines Kiska may be in American hands after a land invasion which it is admitted is the only way we can oust the enemy from this spot. If the Japs have gone by the time you read this, there will be a sigh of at least partial regret in some quarters. The reason is this. As long as the Japs are on an island like Kiska (or Guadalcanal) more Japs have to try to reach them, to bring them supplies and keep them alive. And while that goes on, the Americans have a chance to keep enemy wounds open. Japs themselves are expendable. They are cheap, the sun god has a lot of them and he's generous in spending them. But he hasn't so many ships or so many supplies. So killing Japs doesn't bother the Mikado nearly as much as sinking his ships. That is one reason the upturning of the last Jap toes on any of their stolen, far-flung bases will be a source of at least partial regret. There is another reason. Day in and day out, from Vancouver and Seattle, secret ships, loaded with supplies for our Russian ally have been calmly sailing away past the Jap-held Kiska and Attu, under the Japanese guns in the narrow waters that lead to Vladivostok. Now that was a little matter approved ap-proved by Russia and Japan who hate and fear each other privately but officially are "friendly nations." The question arises now: When and if we trounce the little men out of the stronghold they have dug with their fingernails in the rocky Attu and Kiska, will they be as willing to let us keep on shipping supplies to Russia? Perhaps it doesn't matter. By that time, which may be now, the situation may have changed. The interesting thing is that the situation does change and thanks to the censorship, cen-sorship, nobody knows it until the knowledge ceases to be aid and comfort com-fort to the enemy. But it's tough on a newsman. |