EM EM : monthly magazine - 01.09.1941, Blaðsíða 6

EM EM : monthly magazine - 01.09.1941, Blaðsíða 6
Em Em 8 ’ Organizing Charity. íiy CHAlftLES P. STEWART Central Press Columnist - WHILE warmly commendatory Of charity to victims of overseas war conditions, State Secretary Cordell Hull wants it so systema*' tized as to make it 100 per cent ef- fective. Besides the Red Cross; it seems that the number of pri- vate relief agencies r u n s into the hun- dreds. Acting each on its own, Secretary Hull’s idea is that they tend to fall over one another, cluttering up the job at which they all mean so well. That’s why, upon Cordell’s recommendation, President Roosevelt recently named his three-man national com- mittee to give collective direction to the miscellaneous organizations’ eiforts. The chairman is Joseph E. Davies, American ambassadör to Belgium until the Germans over- ran the country. Assocíated with him are Charles-P. Taft of Cincin- nati and President Frederick P. Keppel of the Carnegie corpora- tion. Besides funneling foreign re- lief into -the right channels, the committee will have charge of the task of shaping the direction of contributions for the benefit of our selectees’ training centers here at home. This latter may not be re- lief, in its strict sense, but F. D. R. and Secretary Hull think it needs attending to, to make the gifts count up to a maximum. You don’t get far into a discus- sion of anything relating to to- day’s overseas situation and our own defensive prepsirations with- out running into the question of priorities. Who Comes First^ Who’s to be provided for first, if supply sources or transportation facilities are skimpy? It’s quite a problem in connec- tion with shipménts abroad. Emer- gency-stricken peoples across the oceans holler for many sorts of stuff faster than we can produce it, and if we can produce it suffi- ciently, there’s the, everlasting dif- ficulty of scaring up enough boats to deliver it in. _ «*______j______ It may ánpear thát this should not be much of a puzzle relative to deiiveries of presents to our do- mestio selectees’ encampments. Yet it may be, too, even a3 to them. We’ve got at least one doméstic priority already. Aluminum’s pri* ority-ized in military aviation’s fa- vor. Our flyers get the first crack at it, and pots-and-pans manufac- turers can liave only what little of it’s left over, if any, to supply our housewives with kitchen-ware. Of course, I don’t think that pri- ority will be so interpreted as to deny cooking utensils to our selec- tees’ camps, but it may be inter- preted in a fashion to limit ’em on various other things that relief so- cieties would like to send to them. Now, this is an extreme and im* possible illustration— But suppose that the priority- fixers were to say, “Here’s a char- ity outfit that seeks to give quanti- ties of cigarets to our selectees, Well, cigaret-making absorbs part of our productive capacity, all of which we need for defensive pur- poses. Therefore, we deny priority to would-be relief contributors’ cigaret offerings to our selectees’ concentrations.” No, I lcnow it cöuldn’t happen. Nevértheless, that’s the theöry of prioríties. Advisory Only ^ Of course, the new Davies-Taft- Keppel committee isn’t as dicta- torial a setup as the Knudsen- Hillman Office of Production Man- 'agement’s priorities division. An OPM division’s decision is a man- date. The Davies-Taft-Keppel out- fit is only advisory. I honestly can imagine an OPM mandate barring cigaret shipments abroad, on the ground that cig- arets aren’t a military necessity to the democracies, at war against the Axis powers, and that every square inch inside such boats as are available ought to be packed with. shooting-irons, explosives, et cetera. I certainly can’l imagine the Davies-Taft-Keppel committee as advising charity contributors not to send cigs to our selectees. But I can imagine ’em advising against gifts for anything but absolute ne- cessities to Britain, Greece and China. Their mission also is to dope out schemes of getting help into the Axis-conquered countries without indirectly aiding the Axis aggregation, It would be a fine note if we sent clgajets into occupied France, and Germans smoked ’em. Joseph E. Davies Tells of Norse Aid Crown Prince Olav of Norway puffs on a cigar after finishing dinner given by the Economic Club of New York. Making his first public ad- dress since arrival in the U. S., he revealed that 1,000 Norwegian ships are carrying goods to Brit- ain. The Prince called this the “greatest contribution that Nor- way is making to the allies.” Testífies on Defetise Secretary of Labor Frances Per- kins testifies before the House mili- tary affairs committee studying na- tional defense problems. She was' questioned at length by committee-| men in connection with strikes inl plants supplying defense material.J

x

EM EM : monthly magazine

Beinir tenglar

Ef þú vilt tengja á þennan titil, vinsamlegast notaðu þessa tengla:

Tengja á þennan titil: EM EM : monthly magazine
https://timarit.is/publication/1872

Tengja á þetta tölublað:

Tengja á þessa síðu:

Tengja á þessa grein:

Vinsamlegast ekki tengja beint á myndir eða PDF skjöl á Tímarit.is þar sem slíkar slóðir geta breyst án fyrirvara. Notið slóðirnar hér fyrir ofan til að tengja á vefinn.