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By A. Powell Davies D.D.
November 25, 1945
A week ago yesterday, very
early in the morning, I flew from Pittsburgh to Detroit on my way to
Toronto. From my seat in the airliner I looked down through the
darkness and saw the twinkling lights of hundreds of streets in city
after city in the industrial heart of America. Then in the slow,
misty daybreak I saw the smoke rising from farms and factories, the
yellow sun melting away the grayness of numberless roofs, the long
shadows from the spires and towers of tall buildings. I saw America,
with the dawn on its hills and valleys, its lakes and plains;
America, young in the light of morning; America, bright with its
golden promise...and all of it unharmed. At the end of the cruelest,
most savage war in history, physically unharmed.
Something that welled up in my heart made me bow my head. I bowed my
head, but I could not pray. I wanted to be grateful, but I could not
be grateful. If I had been a citizen of some other nation, perhaps I
could at least have rejoiced that this one land was untouched,
unscathed, unscarred. But I am an American. And my guilt is
poisoning my gratitude. My guilt that as an American I must share
responsibility for what is daily becoming one of the most shameful
betrayals of humanity know to history. A betrayal of my own and
every other country. A betrayal of American ideals, American
standards, American humanity. A betrayal of our national heritage. A
betrayal of overseas millions upon whose roofless homes the sun
never rises except to reveal a scene of utter desolation. A betrayal
of multitudes--men, women and little children--who are wandering
homeless and starving across the continent of Europe. These people,
God pity them, still look to the United States with desperate
clinging--the only source that earth affords for the alleviation of
their suffering. They are the people--many of them--who helped to
keep the war away from America; who helped to give us time to
prepare; whose courage wore down the triumph of the tyrant; and
whose countries bore the brunt of the battle. They are waiting--in
vain. Millions of them will die, from disease and famine. For
America is looking the other way; the people are chasing the shining
bubble of prosperity, and in the halls of Congress, conscience
sleeps: untroubled even by nightmare, conscience sleeps.
We kept our annual festival of Thanksgiving in this country last
week. There were turkeys by the carload. We knew that in a few days
rationing would be almost completely over. We thanked God for
safety, for a land unscathed, for copiousness and bounty. The
Department of Agriculture had told us that in 1946 we shall eat
better than ever before in our history. Let me read you a part of
the report: "Plentiful supplies of most foods are in
prospect....More ice cream, cheese, condensed and evaporated milk,
fluid cream, canned vegetables, and fresh and frozen fish....Eggs
and fluid milk will continue plentiful. Chicken, turkey, fresh
fruits and vegetables, frozen and dried fruits, potatoes and sweet
potatoes and cereal products will continue substantially the
same....Supplies of some meats and fats (other than butter) will be
larger than before the war. Sugar supplies should improve..." Yes,
in the year 1944, in spite of rationing, Americans on the average
ate a record eleven per cent more than the highest level of prewar
years. The average consumption of meat in 1946 will be 145-155
pounds; equaling and probably surpassing the record for the last
thirty years--150 pounds.
Gluttony--unbridled and unlimited, while millions starve.
Greed--greed of profits, greed of wages, stark ugly evil greed,
while the children of the homeless waste and wither, and forsaken
multitudes pine and die.
Why do we not admit openly that Christianity has departed from this
land? That the great American ideals are all forsaken? That we have
joined the ruthless and the pitiless? That all mercy, all
compassion, all tenderness are gone?
Even our promises are half-abandoned. We pledged long ago
$1,350,000,000 (one per cent of our 1943 income--much less by
percentage than we gave to overseas relief after the First World
War). We pledged it. Other nations have redeemed their
pledges--nations which could not afford to do so. Some of their
citizens are now voluntarily giving up still further portions of
their meager food allowance. But our Congress postpones and delays
the final part of its first pledge. It does so for a score of
reasons; but not one of them is worth a moment's thought beside the
fact that while Congress talks and tarries, the starving die.
Starvation does not wait for politicians. It just happens--promptly.
While the well-fed dawdle and trifle, the hungry perish.
The delay in Congress down to now--the delay, that is, in
appropriating money already pledged to UNRRA--has forced that
organization to cancel orders for $50,000,000 worth of medical
supplies--critically needed medical supplies--so that money might be
spent on food--which is even more critically needed. What does this
mean in human terms? It means that half-starved people who are sick
will get no medicine; it means that thousands of them will die. We
shall not have killed them. No, of course not. We shall merely have
let them die. If I had a neighbor who was at the point of death, and
if I had the medicines that would bring him back to health, if I and
only I had them, and if I failed to take them to him, I would not
have killed my neighbor. No. I would just have let him die. That's
all. I would just be the kind of person, the sort of human being who
could do a thing like that. As a citizen of the strongest, fattest,
richest country in the world, that is what I am now doing to
millions of my neighbors. I am letting it be done. So are you.
Have you, dear friends of this congregation, any idea of what is
really happening? Do you think you are listening to something
dramatized, something exaggerated? Then read Director Lehman's
report. Or read the story in the quiet sedate New York Times. "More
than 20,000,000 people", says that grave and restrained journal,
"more than 20,000,000 desperate and homeless people are now milling
east and west, north and south, across the Continent [of
Europe]...800,000 Poles are now living in holes in the ground and
dugouts...Rumania is suffering from the worst drought in fifty
years..." And so on and so on from country to
country..."Tuberculosis is rife. The very young and the very old
especially are beginning to die in droves as the autumn leaves
fall."
The very old, the very young. Picture it. The old and helpless. The
young: babies. Do you have the courage to let yourself imagine a
baby starving to death? Then close your eves and imagine it; imagine
it multiplied by thousands. Or if you do not have the courage, admit
yourself a coward. Then remember that we could save those babies. We
could have saved them--we could still save some.
Yes, but not until we have attached conditions to our
appropriations, apparently. Not until we have made sure that the
American farmer makes a profit on it--all the profit on it. Not
until the politicians who want American farmers' votes have got all
possible political benefit from it. Why, you have to make a profit
on saving the lives of babies! You have to make political capital
out of famine. You have to climb back into Congress, even if it has
to be over a mountain of corpses.
I suppose it will not be long before some of the gentlemen we have
elected to rule over us will be wondering how it happens that all
Europe has gone Communist. I suppose they will be wondering how it
is that these terrible Europeans are moving once again toward
war--against us, this time. Against us! Maybe those valiant
protectors of the nation's safety, those exalted statesmen and
sublime and lofty sages, the members of the Committee on un-American
Activities, will investigate it. They will discover how despicable
and dastardly these starving Europeans are, so spitefully
withholding their cooperation from the American way of life, the
American standard of living! Disloyally allowing themselves to be
penniless and thus unprofitable as American customers! Allowing
themselves to get desperate because they watch their children die,
and therefore, for some obscure reason, unfriendly to the American
policy of keeping this a land of plenty, no matter who starves in
other places. I suppose they will want to investigate whoever would
have befriended these dreadful people.
Well, if that Committee wants to investigate something really
un-American, it has its greatest opportunity right now. For the most
un-American thing this nation has ever done is to delay assistance
to these desolate, famine-ridden millions. These lost and forsaken
people, who are hoping against hope that we shall come to them
before it is too late. Yes, the greatest heritage any nation ever
had is being betrayed. The most un-American thing in its history is
being perpetrated right now. In these very weeks we are closing the
gates on our own future, we are condemning ourselves before the
world.
I am afraid to think of the judgment of history. I am afraid to
remember the providence of God. For no matter what may be your
theology, this remains true: in that dread providence, no sin,
whether of commission or omission, goes unpunished. Will it always
be possible to look down from an airplane on an unscarred land, a
land of plenty? I am afraid of the answer. I am afraid of what my
knowledge of history is telling me. I am afraid of what my own
conscience foresees.
Jesus once told a parable, the words of which go like this:
"The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: and he
reasoned within himself saying, What shall I do, because I have not
where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This I will do: I will pull
down my barns and build greater; and there will I bestow all my corn
and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul thou hast much goods
laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, be merry. But
God said unto him, Thou fool! This night shall thy soul be required
of thee!"
Does there come a night like that for nations, too?
There is another parable of Jesus'. At a time of judgment, he says,
many will claim the privileges of good people, pious people,
faithful believers--but it will do them no good. For, he goes on, "I
was an hungered and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty and ye gave me
no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked and ye
clothed me not; sick and in prison and ye visited me not. Then shall
they answer saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst,
a stranger or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister
unto thee? Then shall he answer them saying, Verily, I say unto you,
Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not
unto me."
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