A Fee for Franco?

Most Americans don't like Francisco Franco, never have and probably never will. They didn't like the way he got to power with the help of Hitler and Mussolini, or the dictatorial way he stayed in power. In his favor it could only be said that, along with his fulminations against democracy, he had also been antiCommunist. There was one other thing to be said for Franco's Spain: its location.

Many a U.S. militaryman has privately argued the case for Spain as a potential naval base and a possible beachhead for the Army in case of a Russian blitz on Western Europe. Last week this argument was enough to win Franco a fat $100 million loan from the U.S. Senate. When Nevada's white-haired Pat McCarran, who had once enjoyed Franco's hospitality, brought up his perennial resolution to give Spain a big slice of Marshall Plan money, he found the Senate surprisingly receptive. Administration leaders managed to keep the money from coming out of ECA's pockets, but could not stop the bill itself. The Senate voted 65 to 15 to give Franco the $100 million.

The State Department was first stunned, then furious. Nobody had told it that McCarran would bring up his bill, or that it stood a good chance of passing. State wasn't against lending Spain the money out of the Export-Import Bank, as a straight business proposition. But, like ECA, it was flatly opposed to handing Franco $100 million to do with as he pleased. Even nations like Britain, who were wartime allies, got no such favored treatment. ECA nations had been required to sign tough bilateral treaties with the U.S., to subject their spending plans to U.S. scrutiny and to post counterpart funds of their own currencies against U.S. dollars. Dean Acheson denounced the Senate's action at his press conference, and Harry Truman backed him up. McCarran's amendment, said the President, was entirely out of place in the ECA bill and he hoped they would take it out.

Four hours later, the Senate kept it in by the same lopsided vote, and Pat McCarran confidently predicted that the House would do the same.

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