The Evening Star (May 3, 1946)
ON THE RECORD —
The realities of peace
By Dorothy Thompson
Whatever democracy is, or is not, its goal is the perfection of the human person, his opportunity, freedom, character, security and personal and social welfare. All forms of society can only ultimately be judged by the kind of persons they create, as upon them as individuals and as types depends the survival power of a civilization and culture.
There are minimum physical conditions necessary for democracy. These suppose neither wealth nor luxury, which are, in fact, likely to be degenerative of democracy. But physical conditions can reduce human beings to jungle types, in which case democracy, a cooperative form of society, is quite impossible. All theories can be broken down by adverse realities of human existence.
Plagues and famine have often, in the past, been decisive for the developments of societies. They have, that is to say, political effects. Diseased bodies produce diseased minds. The fever of tuberculosis, for instance, produces a tuberculotic type, usually marked by periods of exaltation and depression – by extremes of feeling. The secondary characteristics of venereal diseases produce symptoms of extremism sometimes associated with genius. Lenin is an example. He died of paresis, his brain in an almost complete state of decomposition, and no one will ever be able to ascertain to what extent his politics, so full of genius and yet so sinister, were influenced by his corrosive illness.
A Greek physician has testified to UNRRA that a great majority of political extremists in Greece are tubercular. He estimated that two thirds of Greek Communists suffer from the disease. Shakespeare made Julius Caesar fear “the lean and hungry look” of Cassius.
Historians attribute the fall of the Roman Empire in part to the plague in the third century and the collapse of the medieval social order directly to the Black Death of the 14th century.
Famine and diseases of famine breed mobs and mobs find mob leaders. But democracy is the antithesis of mob rule. The appearance of the mob as a phenomenon of democracy marks not the beginning, but the end, of democracy. Mobs are creators of tyrants. The mob appears when the differences between men and classes become, not quantitative, but qualitative. Men with three meals a day, decent clothing and adequate shelter are unlikely to combine to assassinate those who have six rooms and a dozen suits to their one, nor hate those who eat partridges, caviar and champagne instead of pot roast and beer. But in the black market economies of Europe, where some have meat while others starve for a crust of bread, political hatreds and unreason eventually pass out of all control.
Every one of the occupying powers stands in danger of a chaos that will be hard to guide into any constructive channels whatever. When we read, as we did last week, that American correspondents at the Nuernberg trials are having set before them 7,000 calories a day, we must wonder whether we have taken leave of our senses.
U.N. discusses Iran and Spain, and in Paris peace treaties are being negotiated. But the primary problem that confronts the victorious nations is mass hunger, and that can confound all political plans. In this country a report of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture, forecasts, “Civilian food consumption per capita is expected to be larger in 1946 than in 1945 or 1944… It is expected to exceed any previous year… The consumption of wheat cereal products will be higher than before the war though somewhat below 1945. The average of 3,360 calories per person per day is expected for 1946, compared with 3,250 in the period 1935-1939.”
This is a shocking report. An average of 3,360 calories per person, including small children and the old, means that many persons are being gluttonous to the detriment, even, of their health.
Food requirements vary, as to age, height, body weight and occupation. Growing children especially require a daily gram or gram and a half of protein per pound of weight for perfect nutrition. Heavy manual workers require more than sedentary workers, etc. But an average of 3,000 calories per day if systematically rationed, the rest being diverted to famine areas at the source, would be an entirely adequate standard, and would save nearly 47,000,000,000 calories of food per day. That is enough to feed 23,500,000 persons 2,000 calories per day, half the population of the United Kingdom or France.
I have not the slightest doubt that the American people would do this, if the rationing was as fair as it has been in England, and if an American relief organization, absolutely free of political shenanigans, distributed the food. To call on individuals to solve a mass problem will not work. The selfish and hoggish, not the starving, will get the food that the sensitive and sacrificial give up. “Voluntary” sacrifices penalize the generous and never touch the callous.