Painful Prospects

Nobody relished the idea of a special session of Congress. But last week the U.S. had the word of Secretary of State Marshall that Congress alone could give Western Europe the stopgap help it needs "to meet the immediate threat of intolerable hunger and cold." The situation, said George Marshall, requires "urgent consideration." This was taken to mean: a special session some time in November, at the latest.

Another thing nobody relished was the idea of trying to slap controls, patterned on WPB and OPA, on some segments of the U.S. economy. Controls have a horrid sound in a free economy. Yet it became clear that the U.S. was going to have a painful time giving Europe long-haul help. Without controls, it might be impossible to extract adequate amounts of the things Europe needed most--e.g., grains and steel --from an economy in which these items were already none too plentiful.

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