Mr. LANHAM. Most of them are not, Mr. Chairman. The newspapers get them before we do. Mr. SANDERS. May I say in that connection that both myself and National Master Newsom have been connected with the Mutual Security Administration work. Both Mr. Newsom and I were cleared for security purposes, and simply asked for some information and the MSA authorities pointed out quite clearly that certain parts were classified and that no use either directly or indirectly could be made. of any of the classified data. This has been in nobody's hands and certainly will not be in the hands of anyone else until I return it to the MSA authorities. Mr. SMITH. We will take that up with the authorities. Mr. SANDERS. Thank you very much. Mr. SMITH. Dr. Kittrell. STATEMENT OF FLEMMIE P. KITTRELL, WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR PEACE AND FREEDOM Mr. SMITH. Will you please give your name and the organization you represent. Miss KITTRELL. I want to say first I thank you for this opportunity to testify for UNICEF. I represent the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. I am Flemmie P. Kittrell of Washington, D. C. I was a Fulbright professor of home economics at Baroda University, Baroda, India, 1950-51, and traveled extensively in Asia. In 1947-48 I made a survey for Liberian Government, West Africa, and in 1949 I visited several European countries. I was a member of the executive committee of the Midcentury White House Conference on Children and Youth which dealt with the problems of our own children and with concerns for children around the world. I am a member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, founded in 1915 by Jane Addams. Miss Addams and Emily Greene Balch, the present honorary international chairman of the league, are the only two American women to have been given the Nobel peace prize. My own special field of study is human nutrition and child development, and I know the significance and the importance of the early years in terms of total development and their importance in shaping the adult years. While in Asia in 1950-51, I was heartsick as I observed the great plight of the children. Millions of them were subjected to dire poverty, malnutrition, lack of shelter, disease, and high infant mortality. I was confronted with these facts daily while in India, and also in Kashmir where I spent a month. I asked myself this question over and over again: "Do the people of the United States know about these awful conditions?" Then I asked myself another question: "What kind of a world will these young children help to direct when they become adults?" These children are surely our future world citizens. We have a stake in their welfare and development even as in our own children. I think we all know the answer if we do not continue to help the helpless children and mothers in these much-needed areas of the world. As I traveled in Europe in 1949, I saw many malnourished children and as I traveled and worked in West Africa a year before, I saw children in need of help and security. The nutrition problem is especially serious in West Africa. FAO has just made public the special study on Kwashiorkor in Africa. This is a type of malignant nutrition which is due to protein deficiency. Its treatment is primarily skimmed lactic acid milk. I made a preliminary nutrition survey in Liberia, West Africa, and found additional malnutrition. over a wide range of the country. In addition there was great suffering among the children caused by yaws, tuberculosis, malaria, and leprosy. The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund was established in 1946 for the purpose of meeting and relieving such conditions as I have just described. By necessity because of the conditions caused or aggravated by the war, its work was of an emergency nature, limited to mass feeding in the war-devastated areas of Europe. While UNICEF still provides quick relief in emergencies, such as earthquakes, floods, and droughts, its present emphasis is on longrange projects in the underdeveloped countries of Africa, Asia, the eastern Mediterranean area and Latin America. These projects include milk-conservation programs, nutrition demonstrations, setting up maternal and child health centers, campaigns against children's diseases. UNICEF aid is now going to children and mothers in over 70 countries and territories. In 1952 alone, UNICEF aid reached over 19 million children and mothers. More than 60 million have been aided in all. But mere numbers alone is neither the goal nor the test of the significance of UNICEF. The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom has supported UNICEF from its beginning not primarily because of its humanitarian work, though it recognizes and appreciates that aspect. The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom believes that to work for peace and freedom implies working to remove the causes of war and encouraging the constructive and creative forces that make both peace and freedom possible. It sees UNICEF as one of these forces, both because of its goal and the manner and method which it uses to achieve it. 1. Sixty-one governments have contributed, many on a continuing basis, year after year. 2. UNICEF requires assisted countries "match" the value of UNICEF aid locally. Four hundred million dollars has been invested in child-care programs in the past 6 years by UNICEF and the aided countries. 3. This basic policy encourages self-help, and means approved programs are adapted to the administrative and financial capacity of the assisted country, and that programs can eventually be continued by the country without international aid. 4. Close-working relationships are maintained with the specialized agencies and departments in the United Nations: U. N. Department of Social Affairs, Technical Assistance Administration, World Health Organization, and Food and Agricultural Organization. Our appeal therefore to you today is not in the nature of a charity appeal. In our appropriation to this fund we join forces in a cooperative endeavor to translate those all too abstract ideals of peace, freedom, and security into practical terms that all nations, their people and especially their children may understand. In times of tension, strife, and suffering these terms have to be very simple: sometimes, gentlemen, as simple as a cup of milk or an inoculation against a dread disease. Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Mr. Richards, do you have any questions? Mr. RICHARDS. I have no questions. I do want to say that I have been very glad to hear Dr. Kittrell on this very important, humane subject. That is all. Mr. SMITH. Mr. LeCompte. Mr. LECOMPTE. What do the letters "UNICEF" stand for? Miss KITTRELL. United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund. Mr. LECOMPTE. And what is FAO? Miss KITTRELL. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Mr. LECOMPTE. Thank you. Mr. BENTLEY. I have just one question, Mr. Chairman. I think this is a very splendid statement, Dr. Kittrell. Of this $400 million figure, have you any idea how much the United States is contributing to that amount? Miss KITTRELL. I do not know how much. I understand, however, that we have contributed in proportion more than the other countries. Mr. BENTLEY. Of the $9 million requested in the 1954 authorization for UNICEF, you would not know how much that $9 million represents of the total UNICEF budget? Miss KITTRELL. No: I do not know. Mr. SMITH. Under this program, the United States contributes to the United Nations fund and the administrative responsibility is in the U. N.; is it not? Miss KITTRELL. Yes; that is true. Mr. SMITH. Do you know the costs of the administration of the program? Miss KITTRELL. I do not know the total cost. Mr. SMITH. That is all. Thank you very much. Mr. James Finucane. STATEMENT OF JAMES FINUCANE, ASSOCIATE SECRETARY, NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR PREVENTION OF WAR Mr. SMITH. Will you give your full name and the organization you represent, Mr. Funicane. Mr. FINUCANE. My name is James Finucane, National Council for the Prevention of War. I am associate secretary. Mr. SMITH. Would you like to read your statement? Mr. FINUCANE. Yes. Mr. SMITH. You may proceed. Mr. FINUCANE. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, you are all experts on the MSA bill. You have had the benefit of many excellent witnesses, and made your own observations here and abroad. It almost seems presumptuous to add another word of advice or another bit of information to what you have received already. Here, however, are some angles you may not have considered: "Every time I leave the kids my heart breaks a little." This is a French mother speaking. She rises between half past 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning and goes out with her children in rain or fair weather. She pushes one child in the baby carriage before her and tugs another along by hand. They go to the city nursery where she leaves them for the day. This is the case for many women in French textile mills. Their shifts are from 5 in the morning until 1 in the afternoon, and from 1 to 10 p.m. What does this have to do with MSA? This woman's way of life is MSA translated to an individual human being in Europe. Or at least this would seem to be a reasonable supposition. The Economic Commission for Europe in its 400-page Study of the Economic Situation of Europe Since the War reported March 6, 1950: The economy of Western Europe has been in a State of stagnation for the last year and a half. Demand has fallen, profits have decreased. This halt to economic progress in Europe coincides with a year and a half of high-volume MSA "aid" to Europe. The study pointed out that this stagnation follows on the 5-year period of expanding production immediately following the war. Further, it predicts that this economic stagnation may well deal a mortal blow to efforts for European economic integration. Whether MSA brought about this "stabilization of misery," as it was referred to in a recent UN report, is of course debatable. It is clear, however, that deplorable social and economic conditions do exist and MSA has not helped to remove them. In fact, the most recent Report on the World Economic Situation of the International Monetary Fund, discussed in ECOSOC April 13, notes that the "stockpiling and rearmament" beginning in June 1950 started the world economy on an economic jag. Since then the situation has leveled off a little, but, the fund reports, international payments are still badly unbalanced, reserves have decreased, and the "trend toward freer international trade which was setting in has been, to a certain extent, reversed." To go back to the woman in France: Her plight was described in the weekly edition of Le Monde, April 17 to 23, 1953. She is one of that large proportion of French women who must work. In France as a whole, among single women and women with 1 child 41 percent must work; among women with 2 children, 35 percent must work; and even among women with 3 children, 28 percent must work. France has fewer houses than it had before the war. Sixty percent of the young couples who marry in France must live doubled up with other families at the start of their married lives. A recent sampling of couples married 4 years ago shows 40 percent of them are still living doubled up. Many of them just make-do in furnished rooms in rooming houses. All these familial statistics are from a recent series of articles in Le Monde, which is, incidentally, often referred to as "the voice of the Quai d-Orsay." Le Monde estimates that French women have 400,000 to 600,000 intentional abortions a year. Most of the women involved are married; 53 percent of the wives in a survey of 3,000 of the above explain their abortion on grounds of proverty. A rising divorce rate is also attributable to the housing shortage. Let's look at Germany. Approximately 1 million workers are unemployed. Germany is almost 5 million houses short of what it needs to house its population with minimum standards of decency. The Federal Government at Bonn is spending 40 percent of its budget for occupation costs, 40 percent for social charges, including the support of expellees, refugees, orphans, widows, and war cripples. Many of Germany's cities are still largely in ruins. When Bishop Dibelius was in Washington recently, he told an audience at the Thomas Circle Lutheran Church, "You have heard about the miracle of German recovery; it will take 20 years to complete it." The average German income is $338 a year. These people want food, shoes, and homes, and through MSA we are promising them barracks. Great Britain has 880,000 men under arms and 850,000 workers producing for the armed forces. This is in a country short of manpower for vital export industries. British production for MSA-stimulated defense absorbs just that industrial capacity which is vital for necessary civilian investments in Britain and for producton for export. The metal-goods industry, largely involved in war production, also produced about 40 percent of Britain's exports. There is thus a serious conflict of demand. As we all know, Great Britain lives, or withers, by its foreign sales. We see, from consulting the little manual of Basic Data on MSA, supplied to your committee by the executive branch, that the following jumps in the cost of living occurred after military assistance on an enlarged scale began. To be precise, between June 1950 and February 1953 the cost of living went up 8 percent in Western Germany, 16 percent in Italy, and 36 percent in France. By way of comparison, the corresponding figure for the United States was 12 percent during the same period. Consider again the poor Frenchman or French woman, who has gone through inflation three times worse than ours since military assistance began. Lest anyone think we are not getting burned by MSA and its big brother, the United States military budget, it would be well to note at this point a statement of the United States Department of Commerce, April 21, this year, that the general United States public was in debt about $82 billion at the end of 1952. This is more than three times the mortgage on American family futures at the end of World War II. Approximately 14 percent of the debt has been accumulated during 1952. This report was carried in the New York Herald Tribune, April 22, 1953. The first draft of this bill provides in section 605 (d) for a continuation of the MSA program in full or partial effect until June 1961. This could be a powder train of future inflation. We should not overlook the fact that the MSA proposal you have before you would authorize almost $6 billion. This means it is the second largest appropriation in the entire United States Federal budget. All the hardships we have described cannot of course be fully attributable to MSA but, on the other hand, we must not underestimate the "sterilizing" characteristics of MSA munitions dollars. Gun money produces nothing except guns, which are a complete economic loss. |