ABSTRACT

During the trying years in which efforts to resettle DP’s taxed the resources of voluntary agencies, increasing emphasis was put on helping disadvantaged peoples and attacking the causes of mass misery. The needs of the peoples in southern Asia, the Near East, Africa, and Latin America were not based on the temporary though dramatically horrible ravages of war. These needs issued rather from an inheritance of the past which condemned local populations to a life incomparably more insecure and harsh than that of the least privileged in the more fortunate nations. The heritage related in part to colonial status, in part to the lack of sound native leadership. But in even greater part the plight of these peoples was related to the lethargy imposed by ancient customs. These included gross in­ equality in the ownership and use of land, overworked and eroded soil, dearth of capital, and absence of the knowledge and skill to meet these and other problems. Victims of a continuous “environ mental war” against nature and, in the minds of a growing number, of outside domination as well, these peoples were ill prepared to cope with either one.