A few weeks ago, I told you about Charles Joy, the director of the Unitarian Service Committee, and his Committee on Special Refugee Problems, which submitted proposals for WRB activities. The proposals pretty much were either completely obvious (the WRB should send warnings and drop leaflets over Europe) or completely far-fetched (the WRB should bring 5,000 children from Yugoslavia and educate them in the US to build a democratic post-war Yugoslavia).
The WRB provided the group with about $500, but by the end of May, the Committee had proven somewhat useless. The proposals weren’t helpful. The WRB funding and left-leaning members of the organization opened the Board up to criticism. So after the WRB decided not to make any more contributions, Joy decided to disband the group. Privately, he was pretty mad about it, and he complained to Pehle basically in a “you can’t treat people like this” sort of complaint. But it’s hard to know what Joy expected. (It probably doesn’t help that Joy wanted to be a WRB rep in Egypt, but the State Department refused the appointment since Joy was considered too politically controversial. Adolf Berle met with Joy to explain this to him only a few days before this.) It was a bad few weeks for Charles Joy.
