Wallace's Answer

Ever since Vice President Henry Agard Wallace made his first major speech on post-war problems last May, critics have tried to make him sound like a starry-eyed global godfather whose only interest was a quart of milk for every Hottentot. Last week gentle Henry Wallace, using harsher language than he likes, struck back with some telling blows--and managed to bring out some of the simple elements of national self-interest in his program.

Said Henry Wallace, in a radio broadcast: "Among the self-styled 'realists' who are trying to scare the American people by spreading worry about 'misguided idealists' giving away United States products are some whose policies caused us to give away billions of dollars of stuff in the decade of the '20s. Their high tariff prevented exchange of our surplus goods. And so we exchanged our surplus for bonds of very doubtful value.

"Our surplus will be far greater than ever within a few years after this war comes to an end. We can be decently human and really hardheaded if we exchange our post-war surplus for goods, for peace and for improving the standards of living of so-called backward peoples. We can get more for our surplus production in this way than by any high-tariff, penny-pinching, isolationist policies which hide under the cloak of 100% Americanism.

"Self-interest alone should be enough to make the United States deeply concerned with the contentment and well-being of other peoples of the world. For . . . a world family of nations cannot be really healthy unless the various nations in that family are getting along well in their own internal affairs."

The Specifics. To keep the world family healthy, Wallace suggested a far sharper program than he presented in May: >For the international unity that is a requisite of peace, the United Nations will need 1) machinery to keep aggressor nations disarmed, 2) machinery to prevent economic warfare, 3) "probably" an international court to settle disputes, 4) a world council, "so that whatever world system evolves will have enough flexibility to meet changing circumstances as they arise." >To achieve international liberty, regional problems should be left in regional hands. "The aim would be the maximum of home rule that can be maintained along with the minimum of centralized authority that must come into existence to give the necessary protection." > "The United Nations must back up military disarmament with psychological disarmament--supervision, or at least inspection, of the school systems of Germany and Japan...." >"The first concern of each nation must be the well-being of its own people. That is as true of the United States as of any other nation. Maintenance of full employment and the highest possible level of national income should be the joint responsibility of private business and of government. . . . When the war is over, the more quickly private enterprise gets back into peacetime production and sells its goods to peacetime markets here and abroad, the more quickly will the level of government wartime expenditures be reduced. ..."

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