To Save a Civilization

The U.S. fought the battle of peace with words and dollars. Last week, as President Truman signed the treaties with the satellite Axis countries, he lashed out at Soviet-dominated Hungary, Bulgaria, and Rumania: "I feel I must publicly express regret that the governments of those countries not only have disregarded the will of the majority of the people, but have resorted to measures of oppression against them." For Italy, he had words of encouragement: "Americans have the satisfaction of standing at the side of Italy while her people, through adversity, are rebuilding with their own labors a new democracy and restoring their lost freedoms."

Over in the State Department, Secretary of State George Marshall studied plans for deploying U.S. dollars. For the moment, the hasty barricades in Greece and Turkey held firm. Behind them, George Marshall was counting reserves, regrouping forces, working out strategy.

For a nation already groaning with the burden of feeding the world, there was shocking news. Western Europe is running a deficit of $5 billion a year in fuel, grain, oils and basic commodities. In a matter of months a crisis will come. Unless the U.S. goes to the rescue, Western Europe's civilization will collapse and revert to the country-village pattern of medieval times. The receiver in such a bankruptcy would be Communist Russia.

The Mobilization. George Marshall's plan to meet this situation would be costly beyond anything the world had ever known in peacetime. But if it were to be carried out, the facts had to be laid before the American people, and quickly. Last week the State Department loosed its campaign of explanation, persuasion.

Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson made the challenge clear in a speech at Wesleyan University (see box). In New York, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Willard Thorp pointedly reminded U.S. businessmen and farmers that their present prosperity largely depends on foreign exports (see BUSINESS). In California, State Department Counselor Ben Cohen stated the shocking price as the Department has reckoned it --$5 to $6 billion a year for the next three or four years. What had not yet been mentioned was State's conviction that loans would not be enough: the money would have to be granted outright.

Little Sympathy. Were Congress and the people in a mood to sanction such vast foreign expenditures? In the Senate. Arthur Vandenberg made a practical suggestion: a bipartisan advisory council of citizens to survey the American economy, determine how much could be drained from it for transfusions to the world's economy without impairing U.S. health. But many a Congressman showed little sympathy for expanding U.S. ventures in internationalism. House-Senate conferees agreed on an import fee on wool which, if it became law, might wreck Administration efforts at Geneva for freer world trade (TIME, June 2). Marshall and Under Secretary Will Clayton had to rush before a House committee to plead for extension of the Maritime Commission's power to operate the tankers and charter the cargo vessels which are currently keeping Europe alive. Certainly no program calling for a yearly expenditure of $5 billion had a chance in the present session.

Will Clayton was given the most delicate mission of all. He would leave within the next few days to find out just what the nations of Europe would do to help themselves, e.g., by forming an economic unit which the U.S. might be persuaded to support. But he was charged with making a suggestion that was not a suggestion because, in Marshall's words, "the initiative must come from Europe." And he carried an offer to help which was not an offer, since it depended on an attitude of the U.S. public that had not yet been taken. Before the U.S. people made up their minds on George Marshall's plan they would have to hear a lot more, for & against it.

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