WAR & PEACE: Food and Morality

Since World War II began, the U. S. has tried to evade one of the great moral problems of the modern world. Like all evasions, this one gained a momentary forgetfulness at the expense of a deep disquiet. The U. S. tried to evade the problem of supplying or not supplying food and medicine to the people in the conquered areas of Europe.

They needed both. There was no question about that. Even before the war, Europe* imported 15% of its foodstuff. A late spring, heavy rains and a poor harvest in 1940, the mobilization of armies, the gigantic and...