Of that trip to the London conference, I later wrote, in part:
"Over Belgium we see thrifty Belgian farmers toiling in the fields which are like so many strips of Belgian tapestry. Brussels sits like a clay-roofed island in a sea of green grass and budding groves. Down from Brussels we skirt North France, and below is Dunkirk of 1939 fame. Lazy waves roll up to the sandy beach and linger a little before breaking and retreating to the sea. Not long ago, they were red with blood and caressed the dying bodies of those who engaged in the struggle of yesterday. Today they beckon children to come and romp on the sands. Such are the contrasts of a few short years -- and such are the diabolical contradictions of mankind.
With but minutes over the channel one sees ahead the White Cliffs of Dover and if one's imagination had not brought the realization of just how narrow the thin ribbon of sea is between France and England at the Dover straits, this flight in a comparatively slow C-47 is enough to jar one into full realization.
"Driving up from the airport through winding country lanes one is impressed with the extreme beauty of the English countryside and the energy and will with which English villagers and farmers are clearing away the rubbish of war. Tractors were chugging in the fields where a maximum area of land is going under the plow as English farmers, in peace, strive to continue the food program holding down imports. English used to import 60 percent of her food. Under the present program carried on after the war she will produce 60 percent of her needs.
"It was a thrill to see a real village filling station again with tire patches, oil in cans, gasoline pumps, and a uniformed young lady to 'fill 'er up' when the driver of the car chooses to fill up. It was more of a thrill to come into London through its famed West End and see taxis and buses and subways again; to see windows filled with goods, and modern hotels geared to civilian trade and not run by an army.
"The boys who work over ledgers and figures in the counting-houses of the world may consider England bankrupt but England is never bankrupt so long as she has the spirit and will and drive which she now has -- don't count England out -- her heart beats strong."
Here in London, of course, there is no language barrier for an American. Probably the only real point of difference between British and Americans is the tendency of the Britisher to insist on doing things his way -- and conclude without any argument that his is the RIGHT way. A Britisher explained this characteristic in this way -- pointing to a church, he said "See that church? Well it was standing there when William the Conqueror invaded England about 1067. People are going to that church today whose forefathers went there and said and did about the same things as these people are saying and doing now. Save for the 'American Invasion' (he was referring to the numerous troops from America stationed in England during this war) -- we have not been invaded by any power to shake us up into doing things, or reminding us that any other way except the British way is the only way."
"The average Britisher never stops to think of there being any other approach to a problem than the British approach. But with all of the twisting of the Lion's tail that we all do at times -- our experience in this war has convinced most of us that the Britisher is a pretty good fellow to team up with and modern-day England we think feels very much that way about America."
A conference of the scope of this International Conference, which I was here to attend, was a new experience for me. I was no little impressed when the Prime Minister of England, Mr. Bevan, greeted us in the most cordial fashion. Sitting in the rather important entourage was a lonely, aloof figure, the Duke of Windsor, the former King of England, who had given up his throne for his marriage to Wallace Simpson, the American lady from Baltimore. I learned later that he was anxious to play a part in the reconstruction of Europe and had offered his services in any way that might be used. However, it seems that for high political reasons his services and prestige was never used.
My notes on the opening session described Bevan as a "crusty, blunt-talking fellow, but with lots of steam. His talk made sense." Previous notes reflected, "this conference, like almost any other conference, starts with a tone of high idealism but seems to boil down finally to a point where each individual country expects the other fellow to do the sacrificing. Somehow, emissaries from 18 nations gathered here surely can agree on such a fundamental issue as food; but it seems about the only agreement up to this point is that "People somehow must eat."
After Bevan's stirring opening, Herbert Hoover, who had just flown in with his staff on the first stop of his world food tour, took the stage. As I saw it that day, "It was the Herbert Hoover of Food and Famine fame of World War I, not the disenchanted and bitter ex-President of the United States. Hoover still packs a punch when he talks to groups like this. As always, this cold-mannered man becomes emotional when he talks of human beings and their needs." My account of the three-day London visit ended: "This three-day meeting has been a tonic. Don't count Britain out. Britain may be broke and on the slide, as the world seems to think, but if any Englishman knows or senses it he is not about to admit it."
One small after-thought on the London conference which I didn't put down in my notes: It came at a time when the currencies in most of the countries attending that conference were practically worthless except in their own countries and foreign exchange was virtually non-existent in Austria, Poland, Spain, Ireland, Denmark and so on. In order to be sure that representatives of these countries had exchange to buy air or train tickets to the conference, the United States and Great Britain went to extra-ordinary lengths to see that air tickets and spending money were provided in London.
The U.S. agricultural attaches, through the American embassies in several countries, were authorized to provide the delegates with the necessary foreign exchange to get to London. One country which needed help was Austria. Their representative had his air ticket, hotel accomodations, taxi fares and other out-of-pocket expenses to the London Conference paid by the American government. Six years later the Austrian delegate to the London Conference became the Ambassador of Austria to England and I met him under completely different circumstances.
At that time I was in London heading the U.S. delegation negotiating the International Wheat Agreement (in which 18 nations were taking part including Austria). In those days, though I was actually a representative of our government and the State Department, I was in a category other than Foreign Service officer, and as such was not entitled to the prerogatives of a State Department official. This meant that I had to look after getting my own taxis, and run about on my own as I would have to do as a USDA employee in Washington.
One noon I was standing outside the Cumberland Hotel frantically waving for a taxi when a Cadillac limousine driven by a uniformed chauffeur stopped before me. Sitting in the back seat alone was my Austrian friend of former days -- now Ambassador. He gave me a lift in his chauffeured limousine to the afternoon negotiating session.
On the morning of April 6th I was off from London. It was a rare occasion for a low-level military officer. I had been invited to join the official Hoover party for a short hop to Brussels and wrote of the experience:
"The scene is a giant four-motored C-54 skyliner upholstered and equipped with all of the gadgets most modern in air travel afforded by the Air Transport Command. In a seat slightly to the rear and silhouetted against the plane window sits a heavy-bodied, gray-haired solemn man -- very much like an old family doctor. As the plane drones along, staff members settle down in their seats, gossip about the latest stop, some pull down tables and work. The gray-haired man reads the London papers, puffs a pipe and contemplates the landscape rolling back in the wash of our plane. When he gets up and walks forward, his aides stop the "Chief," as the call him, to bring up a point, or to introduce a new member of the party. The gray-haired man wanders forward, sits down at a table, and pulls out huge sheets of paper and charts and statistics, bites hard on his pipe stem and begins work -- the man is Mr. Herbert Hoover in a setting and on a mission for which he is best know -- trying to point some way out of the tangle and the tragedies of the hungry in Europe.
"Yesterday, in London, Hoover addressed a meeting of Ministers of Food and Agriculture for eighteen nations of Europe, and the allied representatives of defeated Germany. Hoover is a gray 71-year-old, but an amazingly erect and vigorous man. Those who listened and applauded him were not listening to or applauding Hoover, the former President of the United States, who was so unpopular as a president and defeated for a second term. They were listening to the Hoover of 27 years ago, the Hoover of World War I fame -- the old family doctor called in on the case to prescribe a remedy; to give advice based on the storms and stresses of yesterday, and to arouse people all over the world to new efforts to cover up some bad planning on the part of those in high places who would have known what was coming if they had but heeded the danger signals. That was the Hoover who spoke yesterday.
"Even the expressionless drone which is typical of a Hoover public speech could not drown out the drama of the situation he was describing. Millions from the Russian border to the English Channel are heading toward starvation -- there is no real starvation in the dramatic sense yet -- but a slow slide into disaster and despair for at least 170,000,000 people of the lower classes of Europe unless wheat continues to come and the present low rations are held.
"It was the Hoover of old with the glint of a humanitarian in his eye and emotion in his voice as he told of Poland's homeless and underfed children -- of little folks from the dingy cellars and soup lines in Italy, and of the distress and disorder generally experienced across Europe which only quick united action and food will help."
Mr. Hoover's visits after Brussels to Denmark, Holland, and Sweden gave us a little time in Berlin to get ready for the Hoover party which contained a varied group of specialists, and some old hands of the Hoover Belgium Relief days of World War I. As in most VIP affairs, about the first order of business for a visiting group is the proper dinner hosted by the Supreme Commander, then General McNary, who had succeeded General Eisenhower. One member of the party remarked that he had never eaten better food in his life than what he had been served on this "Famine Tour."
The press party followed on the second day of the official visit and it was now General Clay's turn to give a dinner. It was held at a swank Lakeside club, formerly a hideout of Hitler's gang. Of the fourteen journalists in the press party, Luce of the Time-Life publications represented the largest group; Adler of the New York Times, Gannett of the Gannett papers in the East, Wall Street Journal, wire services, photographers and specialists, made up the party. To me they seemed bewildered and a little ignorant of what it was all about here, as well as what was printed in their own publications about the food situation in Germany.
Mr. Hoover, in his after-dinner remarks, was at his best. He talked off the cuff and off the record. It was a harrowing experience for some of the editors who had viewed the war, hunger, and misery as a sort of an academic problem from their plush and comfortable offices. Hoover harked back to World War I when in the pursuit of food and the staving-off of starvation in Europe, the Hoover mission controlled almost the entire production, transportation and distribution systems from the Russian border to France. Hunger, said Mr. Hoover, was real then. It is no less real now, but we are in a new age of cynics, centralized government and international power plays which requires new methods and new approaches. Our ration was still 1280 calories per person per day.
While an occasional grain ship was arriving at Bremen for the civilian sector it was not sufficient to dare boost the calorie level above the sparse 1280 which was available in mid-April 1946.
Absenteeism from the important rail shops and a few industries allowed to operate was running as high as 60 percent as workers took off to scrounge for food or simply try to build up energy for the next day. The dramatic fainting of some 50 communications workers in the important Frankfurt communications center served to dramatize the tragic seriousness of the developing crisis. Health advisors to General Clay hastily urged that the 200,000 tons of reserve grain stocks in Mannheim be released immediately as "people were actually falling out from inadequate nutrition." General Clay promptly ordered the last reserve stocks in Military Government control released.
As grain ships began to arrive in Bremen we were beset with the same problems which caused trouble in Italy. There was the usual pilferage at the docks, lost cars, and the siphoning-off of wheat to the black market. Since U.S. took German marks or credits for only that which arrived at the interior warehouses, the shortfall was quite steep.
It fell to a Lieutenant-Colonel Gynn, former member of the Maryland Extension staff, to be the Food and Agriculture representative at the port and to receive incoming grain and see that it was put on cars and headed to the American zone. Handling civilian cargo, designed for Germans through military transport was a complicated problem and just as we were getting ready to take off with a group of specialists and a couple of newspaper men -- Wall Street Journal and Chicago Tribune -- for a survey of the U.S. zone, Colonel Gynn called to say that he was stymied with the port situation. He was unable to get the necessary clearances to get the grain unloaded and put onto trains. Recalling our problem in Italy, I told Colonel Gynn to call in the Germans, take IOUs for the cargoes and let the Germans get the grain out and into our zone.
This was a little extra-legal and against regulation, but Colonel Gynn said, "Okay, if you get hung don't blame me." He did just as I suggested and, as in Italy, in no time our grain for the German civilian economy was moving smoothly. If there were any losses in transit, the Germans were paying for it, not the U.S.A.
The maneuver to expedite matters did not come to the attention of the higher authorities until after I had left Germany later in the year. Then it was picked up by the General Accounting Office which kicked up some fuss about it. But since the IOUs were cashable for German marks on presentation to the German authorities, and the food was moving into channels, little more was done or said about it.
The system prevailed over the next years until the famed Berlin airlift when, in order to supply the airlift to Berlin the army stepped in and seized train loads of wheat and flour destined for the American zone to be lifted from Rhein-Main airport to Templehof.
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