Gordon Gammack

Evening Tribune Des Moines, Iowa" Gordon Gammack Editor's note: Ill with the flu, Gordon Gommack has asked Rollo Bergeson, Iowa secretary of state and chairman of the Iowa committee on resettlement of the Displaced of Europe to write a column on the D.P. problem. . Bergeson's columnas follows IF YOU WAnt TO KNOW HOW Democracy is working in Iowa, just take hold of some political issue and try to do something about it. You niay get roughed up and dirtied up, but you will be wiser and you will know that you are living in a big state and a good state. Most important of all you will rediscover what you already should have known: Iowa is more than its land: Iowa really consists of its people. I wouldn't argue with the enthusiastic claim that Iowans are the best people on earth. Sometimes I do ROIXO wonder whether, considering BERGESON all the material advantages we enjoy, we are as much better than the average as we ought to be. I AM JUST ABOUT DONE WITH A JOB that has given me the best chance of my. life really to know the people and the proportions of Iowa. I have been working with the Iowa Committee on Resettlement of the Displaced Persons of Europe. We have been trying to find out how many of these homeless people would be welcomed in our state. We have felt that our motives for helping D.P.'s out of a pretty hopeless situation should be humanitarian. But even a humanitarian must be practical. We wanted the people to know what displaced persons are, how many there are, why we are obligated to take care of them, what the possible solutions to the problem are. YOU SHOULD KNOW THE ANSWERS to these questions, but I will set them out briefly. The war moved millions of civilians and noncombatants from their homes in Europe. About 850,000 remain in internment camps. The Americans are feeding about 500,000 of these. They come from countries now dominated by Russia, and they refuse to go back. Our government promised them that no one would be forced to go back to physical or political slavery. You remember those promises! don't you? They believed our promises. HIS LEAVES US FOUR Alternatives. We can force them to go back to the bondage of Russian oppression. We can turn them loose where they are in Germany. We can continue to support them in the internment camps. We can help them find new homes in other countries. CONGRESS IS CONSIDERING ADMIT ting some of them into this country.. We are going to report to Iowa's congressmen that we have found homes for more than Iowa's mathematical share. It was very j encouraging to see the generous response of most of our people to a situation about' which they had not much previous knowledge* It was also assuring to feel the good will which tempered the questions and objections of most of the people who were" opposed to the admission of any D.P.'s HERE IS A LESS PLEASANT SIDE JL to our story. There are in Iowa many people who deal in hatred, fear and prejudice. These are the people who send anonymous letters. These are the people who won't stand up in a meeting openly to -| say what they think. They are the candidates for the Black Shirts, the Brown Shirts and the Ku Klux Klan. Hate is their strength.! While we deplore it, we shouldn't discount its force. We got some amusing mail. One fellow wanted to know how we could be sure . that if we took this batch of people out of Europe the stork would not promptly supply I some more. { WE GOT SOME CRITICISM. SOME-one said that I would do better to spend my spare time finding housing i for the people of Iowa. All I can say to that is that I will be glad to help him on housing as soon as I get done with this. First, 11 want him to show me what he has been doing with HIS spare time. Quite a few people have told me that before we do anything about | Europeans we ought to do something for the Navajo Indians. So far not one of them has even written his congressman about the Navajos. There are plenty of work projects to go around if we are willing to make democracy in Iowa what it should be. You don't get anything done by throwing rocks ( at the guy with the shovel in his hands. And ;you won't find it quite as easy to throw rocks if you grab a hoe or a rake and work it with both hands.