Sights Cleared

In two policy pronouncements last week the U.S. clarified 'what it stands for & against in Germany and China.

Hard Winter. Before he left for Moscow, Secretary of State James F. Byrnes gave the Army the first detailed interpretation of the Potsdam Declaration as it applies to the economic future of Germany. The U.S. formula was both hard & soft. It aims to put Germany back on its self-sustaining feet and able to raise its standard of living in two years. But to get Germany to that point, the Allies will have to finance (against Germany's exports to come) hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of imports to keep Germany going.

It will be a hard winter for Germans. Food shipments will be tied to a level to prevent mass starvation, disease and unrest. Food priority goes to liberated areas. Germany, desperately in need of coal to get its factories going, must continue to export coal until the fuel crisis in the rest of Europe has passed.

By spring, as fuel and raw materials become available, those German industries permitted to remain will be gradually brought into operation. But those industries would be selected by the Allies after elimination of Germany's industrial war potential and the transfer of plants as reparations.

In sum, the U.S. does not want to make Germany a nation of foresters and goatherds, as envisaged by former Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. It wants Germany to be able to sustain itself, but only after the neighbors its armies overran have been given a head start toward recovery.

High Aims. After seven days as a witness in the Pearl Harbor inquiry, General of the Army George C. Marshall got off by plane to Chungking and his new mission: to bring an end to China's civil strife, to seek unity of her dissident factions. President Truman put on official record the new, clear policy which Lieut. General Albert C. Wedemeyer, U.S. commander in China, has wanted, and which Special Envoy George Marshall had helped frame (TIME, Dec. 10). Two major points were made even more explicit: 1) U.S. forces will remain in China to help Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's Government take over control of North China and Manchuria from the Japanese--but not to intervene in China's internal strife; 2) after an end of the civil war, unification should be arranged by a national conference of all major Chinese political elements. Implied, but none the less explicit: if internal peace is not achieved, China cannot expect to get U.S. loans and other assistance.

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