Inching

For the first time in months, the U.S. could find an encouraging note in reports from embattled Europe. The extent of Europe's turn for the better could be measured only in inches. But last week Europe was perceptibly inching toward recovery.

In the lean and hungry economy of Britain, coal and steel production was climbing. In the Ruhr, coal production reached a daily rate of 300,000 tons--up 40% since last summer. These were signs of Europe's efforts to help itself--as it should and must under ERP. They were also indications that the U.S. could make progress in its colossal gamble abroad.

There were other straws in the wind. The effect of the U.S. diplomatic offensive against Russian Communism was nowhere more evident than in France. Russia had accepted the U.S. political challenge by ordering its French followers to revolutionary violence. The violence had failed of its purpose. Once forced into the open as a tool of Moscow, Communism had lost much of its appeal to Frenchmen (see FOREIGN NEWS).

But for Americans, who like to think of themselves as the kindest and most generous people in the world, these gains were tempered by fresh evidence of the deep-rooted suspicion of the U.S. which many a European still nourishes. In the week that the first shipload of Friendship Train supplies left for Italy, and the last U.S. troops departed from Leghorn, a striking Italian worker grumbled: "American workers are capitalists compared to us. They eat the fruit and we eat the peel."

This attitude was only one of many obstacles the U.S. had yet to overcome. It could not overcome them all at once. But last week the U.S. Congress also inched ahead by agreeing to the grant-in-aid which would help see Europe through the winter (see The Congress).

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