America and Food for Europe
Overshadowed though it is by the greater satisfaction which the decision regarding the American destroyers provokes, there is a substantial, though a lesser, satisfaction to be derived from the firmly negative response given by the great majority of the American people to Mr. Hoover's proposal to send food- supplies to a Europe which he assumes will be starving, but will starve, if it does starve, solely through Hitler's action. A Gallup poll taken on the question showed that 62 per cent. of the people catechised opposed the project, 38 per cent. were in favour, and to non-committal. Mr. Raymond Gram Swing, who supported the proposal, subject to the Hoover safeguards, in an American broadcast, was assailed for the rest of the even- ing by telephone-callers, all but a single one condemning him for his approval of the scheme. The correspondence columns of papas like the New York Herald Tribune have been packed with vehement protests against the Hoover plan. The writers are fully alive to humanitarian considerations, but they know, as we know, that any food that gets through the British blockade will in one way or another benefit Germany first. Mr. Churchill has made it clear that when once Germany definitely evacuates a conquered country we will not only provide every facility for America to send food in, but send it in ourselves. There could be no fairer offer than that.
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