Yet something had to be done, for practical if not for moral reasons. A total breakdown in Germany and Japan would put an intolerable strain on the Allied governments and make any kind of orderly, let alone democratic, reconstruction of the postwar order impossible. The British Daily Mirror, a pro–Labour Party newspaper widely read by soldiers, put the case for relief under the succinct headline: “Feed the Brutes?” The paper made it clear that it was not necessary to act out of sympathy for the German people, or even for the destitute German refugees driven out of their homelands. No, it “was not any feeling of compassion which prompts us to emphasize the necessity of dealing with the situation.”