Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 310, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1920 — SHALL IT BE LIFE OR DEATH [ARTICLE]

SHALL IT BE LIFE OR DEATH

WILL YOU FEAST WHILE THOUSANDS OF CHILDREN STARVE? ’ An appalling emergency exists in Eastern and Central Europe. The hope that widely planted crops would yield an adequate harvest has not been realized. Hunger, privation, suffering and death still .march unchecked. Economically and politically, the ruined world must wait, but there is one cry that cannot be hushed, and there is one challenge that cannot be disregarded. A minimum of three and onehalf million children are face to face with disease and starvation, Unless aid is rendered at once, avast, unspeakable tragedy will folThings That Must Be Dons. It is merely proposed that as many as poteible be saved from actual starvafipn by receiving one meal a day,; and this to those only whose needris most imperative. . In many * parts of that desolated world one meal a day is all that stgnd* between these children and death. Just as soon as these children have reached a grade of improvement, they must step aside to make way for those mote miserable than themselves. Undernourishment produces diseases particularly its own. Starved and puny bodies make quick fuel for diseas#. Tuberculosis and typhus merely touch them and they are gone. ! Hundreds of thousands of children in Europe, have never tasted milk in tlßir lives. Mothers unnourished find ill-provided bring into the Wlrld babies doomed before they see the tight of day. Medical iid must be furnished, together with clothjng and food, if there is to be a tomorrow to _ follow the horror and the desolation of today. Hew It la .To Be Don*. * It will require *33,000,000 to carry this project of child-saing through until the next European harvest. Of this, $23,000,000 must’ be provided for faedingy children, and *10,000,000 for. medical service and aid. These amounts will only relieve the critical .cases. The distribotion of these funds will be under the direction es the European Relief Counril—made up of the co-operating organizations set forth on Page One, which have banded themselves together to meet the responsibility on behalf of the American people. This mass childfeeding work will be carried on in the future as in the past, largely through the agency of the people of the country where aid is rendered.

The American personnel of -the American Relief Administration in Erope consists of not more than fifty representatives, but associated with them are more than 100,000 field workers who dp the work, gather the children, establish the feeding-stations, and through their own efforts and organizations furnish two units of help to everyone provided by American aid. For every dollar raised in America, two dollars will be furnished in transportation, local food supplies and labor by the Government and local communities of the country receiving, aid. Thus it is that the American dollar, plus the two native dollars, will give a child one nourishing meal s day for a month. Mediqal aid, medical supplies and material must, of course, be an unqualified gift, for these are the things absolutely lacking. $33,000,000 is necessary at once or America must desert these helpless children in the very heart of winter. .. He Give* Twice Who Give* Quickly. Make checks to Judson J. Hunt, Treasurer, Rensselaer, Ind. ' SIO.OO will save the life of a child until the next harvest.