Polish Premier and U.S. Ambassador Confer on Sending Food to Poland

The campaign to send “mercy food shipments” to starving Poles and Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland received new impetus today following a conference here last night between the Polish Premier Gen. Sikorski and the American Ambassador to Poland, Anthony Drexel Biddle, Jr.

The conference followed a similar meeting on Thursday between Premier Sikorski and high officials of the British Government in charge of studying the problem of permitting the shipment of food from the Allied countries to the starving population in Poland in the same manner as this is being done for the population in Axis-occupied Greece.

Recent reports reaching the Polish Government here from occupied Poland all emphasize that the shortage of food there, especially in the Jewish ghettos, has reached a point where people are dying in the street of hunger. The situation is especially aggravated by the fact that the fact that the harvest this summer promises to be worse than last year’s. It is admitted here that the problem of sending “mercy food” to Poland is more complicated than the shipping of food to Greece, since the transports to Poland must cross Germany or Nazi-held territories by railway. The Polish Government, however, is hopeful that an arrangement will eventually be reached whereby the food will not fall into the hands of the Nazis but will reach the starving population in Poland.

While negotiations for sending food to Poland seem to be making headway in London, a report from Jerusalem today stated that another neutral steamer sailed from Haifa this week-end to Greece carrying a cargo of 1,000 tons of flour donated as relief for the starving population of Greece. This is the second transport of flour sent from Palestine to the people of Greece.