The Unorganized

A Scottish nutrition expert with the longest white eyebrows in public life last week took the center of the world food stage. Sir John Boyd Orr (65), Director General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, convened his group in emergency session in Washington. "This is no '90day' crisis," Sir John warned. An organization must be established to see "that the people of the world will never again suffer from famine."

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Clinton Anderson (who was elected chairman of the meeting) and the delegates faced a confusing wealth of suggestions. Herbert Hoover wanted a temporary U.N. Food Administration to coordinate the world effort after Sept. 1, but "only during the period of food scarcity and agricultural reconstruction from the war." "The world," he said, "must quit charity as a basis for widespread food distribution" after Sept. 1. Fiorello LaGuardia snapped: "It is impossible to take a stop watch and say at a given hour on a given day, 'We are not going to give you any more food.' "

Sir John Boyd Orr proposed a permanent international food council with powers to execute the recommendations of FAO, which now has only advisory functions. But the old bogey of national sovereignty immediately rose to plague the delegates. Any international food board with real power would tend inevitably to equalize food consumption; nations that can get more food by their own devices are likely to oppose genuine world food control. The U.S. would not want to accept the British calorie level, and the British would not want India's.

Dr. Edith Summerskill, chief delegate for the United Kingdom, summed up the difficulty: "There is no pressure group for the hungry--they are unorganized." Organized or not, the hungry were a potent political factor. "Famine," said Sir John, "is the greatest politician of all." Ernest Bevin put it more bluntly in London: "Naziism cannot exist, Communism cannot exist, if you remove from the world want and starvation."

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