Tárogató, 1945-1946 (8. évfolyam, 1-7. szám)
1945-09-01 / 3. szám
TÁROGATÓ 13 “I WAS HUNGRY” President Roosevelt suggested on March 16th that though America would not go hungry it might be necessary to “tighten our belt” if we were to fulfil our obligations to a starving Europe. On the same day, a group of British Christians petitioned their government to establish an even mere rigorous rationing system for the sake of offering greater aid to the hungry people of Europe. The President was tentative in his suggestion because he is conscious of an increasing tendency in certain sections of our population to discourage aid to the poorer nations. We are afraid of being “Santa Claus”. The very ease of American life in wartime tends to make us more, rather than less, complacent toward the claims of other nations. We were the only nation engaged in the war which did not seriously decrease its living standards. We merely added a wartime production of 8G billion dollars to the péacetime production of 100 billions. We have had food rationing, of course, of a very mild sort. But that was necessary, not to make food available to other nations, but to insure an equitable distribution among our own citizens who were capable of buying more than ever before. Despite meat rationing, for instance, we consumed 147 pounds of meat per person last year in comparison with 136 pounds in the best prewar year. We are consuming 3,367 calories of food per person per day in comparison with the 1,900 calories which French urban dwellers receive and the 700 caloriees which constitute the daily ration of Greeks. We are very rich in a poor world and very fat in a lean world. The contrast between our living standards and those of the rest of the world presents us with one of the great challenges of the hour. As the war draws to a conclusion and the veil is lifted we will see devastation, hunger and desperation on a wider scale than the world has ever witnessed. Something more than relief will of course be required to set the world on the path to sanity and health. But relief will be the first pressing requirement. The Christian churches of the nation must do all they can ot support and to press the government in its politically difficult task of requiring further and even more stringent rationing for the sake of fulfilling even the most minimal obligations to a starving world. If the sense of brotherhood should not prompt us we might well consider that a hungry world will look with jaundiced eyes upon our feasts. We are in a difficult moral position in regards to this problem because our comparative distance from the scene of suffering and destruction is responsible both for the comforts which we enjoy and for the tendency toward complacency in our response to the claims of a suffering world. Only a very sensitive conscience and a vivid imagination can bridge the chasm between our abundance and the world’s needs. We can never bridge this chasm completely, but we must try. It would be terrible if our nation should come under the judgment: “I was hungry and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me no drink; I was sick and in prison and ye visited me not.” — (Reinhdd Niebuhr in Christianity and Crisis) —Canadian Churches and the War. RE-ESTABLISHING CHURCH LIFE IN EUROPE An Editorial in The United Church Observer During the Nazi reign of terror in Europe, a conscious, cleverly devised plan of destruction has been carried out with ruthless and scientific thoroughness. Human life has counted for little or nothing if it stood in the way of Nazi aggression: property, even priceless heritages from the past, have been freely sacrificed to the whims and the ambitions of the reckless German leaders. Nor is this all. Destruction of life and property is not the last word in Nazi fiendishness; the whole social and religious organization of Europe has been uprooted. The Church has come under the special condemnation by the Nazis because of her faith, her idealism, and her philosophy of life. Ministers who would not conform to the Nazi standard were cast into concentration camps, while it became an offence in law to train or ordain men to the ministry. At a time of unprecedented death, broken homes, disillusionment and despair, the people have been deprived of the comfort, consolation and guidance of religion. OUR ENGLISH SECTION.
