The _Evening News_ is the paper, by the way, whose wrath became violent when it learned that some Quakers and others were attempting to make some provision for the children of interned Austrians and Germans. Those guilty of such 'un-English' conduct as a little mercy and pity extended to helpless children, were hounded in headlines day after day as 'Hun-coddlers,' traitors 'attempting to placate the Hun tiger by bits of cake to its cubs'; and when the War is all over--a year after all the fighting is stopped--a vicar of the English Church opposes, with indignation, the suggestion that his parish should be contaminated by 'enemy' children brought from the famine area to save them from death.[66] On March 3, 1919, Mr Winston Churchill stated in the House of Commons, speaking of the blockade:-- ' ... This weapon of starvation falls mainly upon the women and children, upon the old and the weak and the poor, after all the fighting has stopped.' One might take this as a prelude to a change of policy. Not at all: he added that we were 'enforcing the blockade with rigour' and would continue to do so. Mr Churchill's indication as to how the blockade acts is important. We spoke of it as 'punishment' for Germany's crimes, or Bolshevist infamies, as the case may be. But it did not punish 'Germany' or the Bolshevists.[67] Its penalties are in a peculiar degree unevenly distributed. The country districts escape almost entirely, the peasants can feed themselves. It falls on the cities. But even in the cities the very wealthy and the official classes can as a rule escape. Virtually its whole weight--as Mr Churchill implies--falls upon the urban poor, and particularly the urban child population, the old, the invalids, the sick. Whoever may be the parties responsible for the War, these are guiltless. But it is these we punish. Very soon after the Armistice there was ample evidence available as to the effect of the blockade, both in Russia and in Central Europe. Officers of our Army of Occupation reported that their men 'could not stand' the spectacle of the suffering around them. Organisations like the 'Save the Children Fund' devoted huge advertisements to familiarising the public with the facts. Considerable sums for relief were raised--but the blockade was maintained. There was no connection between the two things--our foreign policy and the famine in Europe--in the public mind. It developed a sort of moral shock absorber. Facts did not reach it or disturb its serenity.