Forebodings

To a sweltering Congress last week, it seemed as if the whole wide Western world was demanding: "Daddy, I'm tired, carry me."

The feeling was probably as unreasonable as the weather, but it was just as inescapable. For daddy too was tired. His back ached from the strain, he was feeling economic chills, and he was running into debt. Life was just one crisis after another, bearing ugly, stubby nicknames like ERP and MAP.

For a while, in the first hopeful months of Marshall Plan aid, Congress was able to congratulate itself for carrying out the largest and most generous effort in the world's history. But now it seemed that those five billions would not be enough. Great Britain had got the lion's share of ECA help; now she wanted at least an extra half billion this year. There were official hints that a stabilizing fund was necessary to save the pound. No sooner was the North Atlantic Treaty ratified than there was a demand for a billion and a half in arms aid. Where would it all end?

Congressional resentment showed in the horny-handed handling it gave the ECA appropriation, in the stony eye it cast on the arms program, despite an all-star presentation by Secretary of State Acheson, George Marshall and the Big Brass in summer tans. Internationalists of proven good will were as stern as hard-shelled isolationists.

There was obvious danger in Congress' mood. The danger was a readiness to believe that, because the Communists had not lately taken over another country, they might never do so again.

But the worry was deepseated. There was concern over America's own economy. There was a definite foreboding that the "minimum" arms program was a by-guess-and-by-God estimate wrapped in a dark warning and covered by a blank check. There was an uncomfortable suspicion that the U.S. was being suckered into a premature manning of battle stations, that U.S. weapons and money might be dissipated in driblets from Greenland to Greece. There was a nagging fear that ECA might help keep Europe convalescent but never put it back on its feet. There was also a petulant feeling that Europe should get off its hunkers. Elder Statesman Bernard Baruch seemed to share this mood. Back from a quick trip to Europe, he was asked whether Europe might help itself more if the U.S. helped it less. "There's a heap of sense in that," he said.

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