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As our first line of defense in the Pacific, China deserves our help purely from the viewpoint of our own self-interest. As a potential customer after the wars of the world are over, we need her friendship. But from the humanitarian viewpoint the people of China ... the defenders of democracy ... deserve the help of the people of America.

The war has uprooted 50,000,000 people in China, crea[[strikethrough]][[/strikethrough]]ans, laid waste thousands of acres of farm lands, destroyed factories, hospitals and schools.

As mentioned earlier, the industrial cooperative movement has absorbed some refugees, but shifting battle-lines constantly create new ones. Existing orphanages can shelter only 30,000 children, although 300,000 have been registered, and could be placed immediately if funds to establish new homes were available.

In occupied territory, where the enemy has wantonly destroyed crops and farm tools, thousands of the peasantry face starvation as winter approaches.

In guerilla areas, the suffering is particularly acute, because medical supplies cannot get through, the ill and wounded must be cared for in cave hospitals or makeshift first aid stations set up in peasant huts. Food supplies are scanty and uncertain.

Thanks to the heroic work of the National Health Administration and the Medical Relief Corps, no epidemic of serious proportions has broken out in two years, but cholera, bubonic plague, typhus and typhoid are constantly present and only vigilance keeps them in check.

Relapsing fever and dysentery are prevalent among the armed forces, and the spread of tuberculosis is alarming among China's ill-fed and badly housed students, who, driven by the enemy from their own campuses, have been taken in by universities already crowded, or have set up temporary quarters in caves or huts.