Transmittal to Congress of the U.N.R.R.A.'s First Quarterly Report.

To the Congress:

I am transmitting herewith the first quarterly report on U.N.R.R.A. expenditures and operations in accordance with the Act of March 28, 1944, authorizing United States participation in the work of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.

The enemy has been driven out of all or virtually all of the Soviet Union, France, Greece, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Parts of The Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Norway, as well as the Philippines, New Guinea, New Britain, and Burma have been liberated by the armed forces of the United Nations. Those forces—more powerful each month than the month before-are now striking additional blows to complete the task of liberation and to achieve final victory over Germany and Japan.

U.N.R.R.A. was established by the United Nations to help meet those essential needs of the people of the liberated areas which they cannot provide for themselves. Necessary relief stocks are being acquired and the personnel recruited to assure efficient. and equitable administration of relief supplies and relief services. As rapidly as active military operations permit, U.N.R.R.A. is undertaking operations in the field. U.N.R.R.A. representatives are already in or on the way to liberated areas of Europe and are preparing to go to the Pacific and Far East. The colossal task of relieving the suffering of the victims of war is under way.

The conditions which prevail in many liberated territories have proven unfortunately to be fully as desperate as earlier reports have indicated. The enemy has been ruthless beyond measure. The Nazis instituted a deliberate policy of starvation, persecution, and plunder which has stripped millions of people of everything which could be destroyed or taken away.

The liberated peoples will be helped by U.N.R.R.A. so that they can help themselves; they will be helped to gain the strength to repair the destruction and devastation of the war and to meet the tremendous task of reconstruction which lies ahead.

All the world owes a debt to the heroic peoples who fought the Nazis from the beginning-fought them even after their homelands were occupied and against overwhelming odds—and who are continuing the fight once again as free peoples to assist in the task of crushing completely Nazi and Japanese tyranny and aggression.