Senator Elbert Thomas of Utah today joined Senator Gillette of Iowa in the latter’s demand for immediate relief for the starving people of Europe.
Both members of the Senate pointed out that the arguments advanced by those opposing the sending of relief to starving people in occupied European territories are gradually losing their validity. Shipping is now available from neutral countries for the transportation of food supplies without detracting from our war shipping, they asserted, and the needed food supplies can be purchased in Latin America and elsewhere without imposing an extra burden on our own supplies.
These supplies, the senators pointed out, can be distributed through the International Red Cross under neutral supervision without any appreciable danger of the supplies reaching the Axis, or being diverted to their use. These neutral agencies can carefully check to see that the supplies made available are supplemental to the rations now being received by the needy ones so that other foods may not be shipped out to Germany in lieu of the supplies sent in.
“There is high military authority for the statement that there is little merit to the suggestion that the Axis would derive any military advantage from a broadening of the Greek experiment” Senator Gillette said. “There is every reason to say that a great psychological advantage would be secured in counteracting the sentiment which Germany has been carefully fostering among these suffering people, to the effect that Germany would be glad to help them get food, but cannot do so because the Allied Nations are deliberately starving them, through the food blockade.”
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