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PAGE 4 GEORGIA BULLETIN BOOK SUPPLEMENT The World’s Implacable Enemy-Hunger THE GREAT HUNGER BY Cecil Woodham-Smith Harper and Row: $6.95 THE RICH NATIONS AND THE POOR NATIONS by Barbars Ward Norton: $3.75 BY ALICE ELLEN MAYHEW Hunger has always been one of man’s most implacable ene mies. Today, after the scienti fic and technological revolution of the last century, still, more than half the people of the world go hungry. Most of these people live in the underdeveloped, ex colonies, primitive societies I of Asia and Africa, and Latin America; (there are more kinds than one of “hunger,” of course, as Mr. Michael Harr ington pointed out in, The Other America, and one quarter of our own population is seriously substandard). We are, in fact, just starting to attack hunger and poverty with any kind of organization and yet, in spite of the massive aid of the last two decades, the gap between the rich and the poor nations is actually increasing. ONE OF the most horrifying hungers in history occurred in Ireland in the 1840's; suc cessive famines and plagues were precipitated by a blight on the potato, in a land where the tenant farmers grew grain to pay their rents, and lived ex clusively on potatoes and a little milk. Before 1845, Ireland was a hostile, backward, incredi bly wretched country, exploited by absentee landlords — two and a half millions starved "more or less” every year. By 1851, she had lost over a third of her population — a million and a half dead of hun ger, fever, cholera and another million emmigrated across the Atlantic and the Channel in tran sports known in Irish tradition as, "coffin ships,” so many died on the way. MRS. WOODHAM-SMITH’s scholarly account of these years of horror is a grim master piece, so vivid that the Irish author Sean O'Faolain spoke of, how, reading it, bitter memories awakened that had long been quiet. “Than, to one's horror, it all comes welling up again, atavistically, in such gushes of black rage and hot tears that one has to lay down the book at every third orfour- th page to control oneself.” And, an Irish Famine Song, of the times, goes: How long has it been since your mind was stretched by a new idea? a challenging question from Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote: ‘A man’s mind stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimensions.’ The truth of this statement cannot, of course, be denied. A child who suddenlyTealizes that the letters in the alphabet are not just isolated sounds and shapes, but meaningful symbols that form words, has grasped an idea that will lead to a continuing expansion of his mind. 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Owwley I lac. “Oh, we’re down Into the dust, over here, over here, Oh, we’re down into the dust but the Lord in Whom we trust Will repay us crumb for crust, over here, over here.” And another, ’’....the day will come when vengeance loud will caU.” But vengeance against whom? Ireland had been joined to Eng land in 1801 by the Act of Union. She had not the freedom nor the means to help herself and, when the blight struck in 1845, she depended on England to survive. One author accused England of genocide (deliberate mass murder). England, how ever, behaved at first with remarkable generosity (espe cially for those times) —— though with little understanding of the scope and dangers of the catastrophe. Later, she threw up her hands and let things run their murderous course. It’s hard to find anything good to say about the landlords, with a very few exceptions; they continued to draw their rents and used, in some cases, re lief money to pack starving, sick, naked peasants onto boats .for exportation. (There were some cases of remarkable ge nerosity: the Quakers of England, many private English and American persons.) THE REAL villain was 19th- century laissez-faire (hands- off) economics. Mr. Trevelyan, the Englishman in charge of the Irish situation, and Secretary of Treasury Wood, were more concerned with the rights of merchants to make profits and more frightened of spoiling the Irish people with government hand-outs, then they were with saving lives. Mrs. Woodham- Smith sums upthe government’s policy: “In the otficial view, the famine in Ireland offered traders an opportunity to make profits, of which it would be unjust to deprive them...” This is why all the government's measures were half-hearted and doomed to failure. England initiated public works, then dropped them. She called upon local tax payers to support their townspeople, but instituted no land reforms. Provision of food was left to private enterprise. Food was allowed out of Ire land while a million Irish corp ses lay strewn over the hills and hovels where they dropped. When food was finally brought in , nobody had the few pence left to pay for it. And at the height of it, Mr. Trevelyan went so far as to say that, “the great evils with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse, turbulent character of the people.” MRS. WOODHAM- SMITH quotes an English scholar of those times who said that, “I have always felt a certain hor ror of political economists since I heard one of them say that he feared the famine of 1848 would not kill more than a million people, and that would scarcely be enough to do much good.” I wish he could have read, as I did, after hearing that statement, another English economist, Barbara Ward. In The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations, in simple layman's language, she has provided a cogent, practical, Christian ex planation of why the world is divided into haves and have- nots, and how we can help poor nations to help themselves. We do have the resources. And Miss Ward, echoing the great encyclicals of Pope John XXIII, asks, "Do we not betray our faith when we see men in servi tude to poverty, ill health, sta rvation when we have the means to help?’* We live in a revolutionary age: revolutions of equality of men and nations; of progress and the possibility of material change; of biology — longer lives ami rampaging birth rates; and of science and the appli cation of capital to all the eco nomic processes of life. These revolutions started in the West and were carried to other parts of the globe by Western colon izers, traders, exploiters, edu cators. Another Western re volution, Communism, pretends to have the synthesis of all these revolutions: it promises short cuts and immediate results to nations desperate to catch up and to relieve their people. It would also deprive them of their freedom. THE QUESTION is, can the West, with its tradition of de mocracy compete with com munism, in offering help and possible solutions to these nat ions? Miss Ward thinks yes, but only by a sustained and imaginative effort, by a daring strategy which will enable them to achieve the initial economic thrust (achieved centuries ago in the West while it was still relatively underpopulated), and only if the scale of aid is the West whole it was still relat- only if the scale of aid is adequate. India and Pakistan, just to cite two instances, have made huge progress by cour age, sacrifice, and determin ation. If we succeed in help ing this subcontinent, we save Southeastern Asia from sure Communist domination, and we will see half the people in the undeveloped world on their way to the modern world. She sug gests a revival of the Marshall Plan spirit; and that other Wes tern nations, now recovered from the war, match America's generosity by relegating 1 per cent of their national incomes to foreign assistance programs. TO THOSE of us who gripe about our taxes, and who does not?, Miss Ward proposes the rewards, both spiritual and material (increased markets, for instance), that we may ex pect from a more balanced di stir bution of wealth. As Christians, again follow ing Pope John, we wish for open societies in an open world. The great Catholic philosopher, Jacques Martain, stated the principle: “An organization of liberties is unthinkable apart from the moral realities of justice and civil amity, which, on the natural and temporal pla- nce, correspond to what the Gospel calls brotherly love on the spiritual and supernatural plane.” CONSUELA BRIGHT Moving CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3 rist in his life and dying left behind a secret I pamphlets, “Christ the Messiah”; “Ch ristianity: Judaism Fulfilled.” The writing is all so good, the people so alive and warm that it is a moving experience to read this novel. They speak, think and act in a way so right, so revealing of themselves that the reader is genuinely in their midst, no outsider, but partic ipating with them in their lives. It is, however, more than a good tale well told, it is an account ing of the search, an assert ion that life's deepest meaning is spiritual. Consuela’s own search ended in a convent. Her dying mother’s blessing to her was, “When we were children (her mother) murmured after a while, 'a- lways the seats in the syna- Novel gogue by the eastern wall went to the high people, those with Rabbis for sons, for instance. So you no what I think Sulie? I think maybe papa and me will get seats by the eastern wall in Heaven. Why not? After all, lots of Jews there will be with a Rabbi a son, but how many with a daughter a nun?" This beautifully written novel will have wide readership and perhaps will send the readers off to catch up with three other Cornelia Jessey novels as well. EVELYN KINGSLEY McCOY, JOSEPH A. Advice From The Field. (Helicon. $4.95). A volume on the theory of missions with a preface by Father Frederick A. McGuire, C. M., executive secretary, Mission Secretariat.