The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

ON THE WORLD TODAY

IF THE advocates of world government would aid in prosecuting the case in favor of the loan to Britain they would be serving their own cause. For the loan to Britain is the entering wedge of “one world” in economic relations. It is thought of simply as a financial transaction or as a political loan. The loan agreement, however, goes much beyond finance.

Ratification of the loan would break up the sterling bloc. This bloc includes all of the British Empire except Canada and Newfoundland; the Middle East, except Syria and Lebanon; British-mandated territories; and British protectorates. During the war the British Treasury administered all dollar exchange originating in the sterling area, allotting to each country a quota of dollars to be spent for essential goods.

Under the terms of the loan, the British would demobilize this bloc, which discriminates against us by restricting dollar purchases, and would trust to open competition with the United States for the capture of export markets.

The gamble is tremendous, and it is no wonder that the British imperialists and the extreme socialists still shrink from it. To the one, the gamble is not worth the sacrifice of the Imperial preference system; to the other, the gamble means a curb on extreme socialism. Some idea of the gamble may be obtained from the fact that the deficit in Britain’s foreign trade transactions is running at a rate that would gobble up the loan in two years. The only thing that can save economic Britain is, to use the word of Sir William Beveridge, a “dramatic” increase in manhour output.

When Senator Vandenber came back from the first United Nations meeting in London, he spoke of the number of Tories in London who opposed the loan.

This was no news. The Tories have a habit of buttonholing American visitors to London to tell them America ought to keep her money. While the negotiations were under way in Washington, some of these Tories came to America and actually lobbied against the loan. Another contingent is reported to have arrived here to lobby against American ratification.

The Senate’s problem is not whether to side with the anti-Government forces in Britain, but whether it is to the advantage of America to end the blocs operating in the name of economic defense and by the same token making economic war. As we saw between wars, that is a way to promote war, not peace.

Many Senators, not thinking of the larger issues, have gone on record against the loan. Senator Wheeler, the most vocal and effective anti, talks in terms of finance, but his opposition is political. He is the apostle of the new isolationism. The State Department is frankly alarmed over ratification prospects.

The Administration is somewhat to blame for the uncertain outlook. Until lately, little effort has been made to educate the people in the meaning of the loan. It is considered too late to remedy the failure to inform the public, and Secretary of the Treasury Fred M. Vinson and Assistant Secretary of State William L. Clayton are courting individual Senators.

The United Nations on trial

The cause of the United Nations has less support among Americans than ever before. One reason for the drop in its prestige is the foolishness of the site delegation; another is the obvious isolationism of Russia.

The choice of the 42-square-mile site in New York and Connecticut is much deplored. This site and the temporary headquarters in crowded New York City will leave a smell of Manhattan on the United Nations, and Middle Westerners don’t like that smell. The site, moreover, is the most expensive in the entire world. It is much too big, and the choice has created the impression among all the delegates and correspondents that the site delegation was intent upon finding a Utopia for the secretariat. Before the United Nations settles in its permanent center, a lot of headaches, legal and otherwise, are bound to arise.

Why the United States remained neutral in the selection is a mystery. We had no policy on the site, either as to country or as to locality. “Hands off” was the motto. At least there should have been guidance for the site delegation. It could have been offered in such a way as not to give offense to the states involved.

This country should do everything it can to further the work and the purposes of the United Nations. One of the first essentials of a more vigorous United Nations policy on our part is an improvement in our representation. The bipartisan delegation does not work very well. Misunderstandings abound — often in public. In theory the idea of bipartisanship is sound. But when there is no harmony as to our policy, when there is no understanding, even within the Administration, of the implications of our policy, bipartisan disagreements weaken our position.

Successor to lckes

The President helped to offset the criticism of three of his appointments — Pauley, Allen, and Vardaman — when he chose Julius A. Krug for the Department of the Interior. It is generally felt that, of all the candidates considered, he is the most likely to fill the doughty Ickes’s shoes.

Krug made his name as power manager of TVA. He will supervise Grand Coulee and Bonneville, though not, of course, TVA, which, to Ickes’s disgust, is independent of the Department of the Interior. When he was running WPB during the war, Krug was favorably known as a man who could give a straight answer based on the facts and on a deep and expert knowledge of the way our system ticks.

That Justice William O. Douglas, who was Mr. Truman’s first choice as Ickes’s successor, did not get the Interior post was welcome to Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone. Stone hates passionately the severance of justices from the Supreme Court for special jobs. He feels that it is undignified and makes for delay in public business. With Robert H. Jackson at Nuremberg, there are eight on the court, and four-to-four decisions have started to appear. Tie votes are unsatisfactory from everybody’s point of view. Jackson, who does not expect to be back till May, would return if there were a stalemate on an important case. But he feels that his present assignment is more important than anything else in the world. At any rate, the Chief Justice put his foot down when it was proposed that Douglas take over Ickes’s post.

Food con win the peace

Mr. Truman’s present preoccupation is with the world famine, which may upset all the best-laid plans of men and produce chaos and revolution where we least expect it. To no problem does the President give more time, but the hour is very, very late. Mr. Truman feels that it is impossible to restore rationing, and that, except for the measures he has taken under his war powers, the best way for Americans to help is by voluntary reductions in consumption of food.

Certainly a lot can be done by individual saving and the elimination of waste. This country is now eating 30 per cent more than it ate last year, 15 per cent more than it ate in pre-war years. But the real waste in this country lies in the diversion of grain to livestock. Here the farmers can help. Grain, for want of which millions of human beings are dying, is being turned to too many and too big hogs and cattle.

The food crisis is not the fault of the farmer. There is, of course, the price incentive — it is more profitable to turn grain into meat. And the wartime request to the farmers was to do precisely that. The wartime shortage of shipping made it more economical of space to send abroad meat in concentrated form rather than grain. A switch is overdue. There is no excuse to fatten hogs beyond 220 pounds; and since it takes about seven pounds of cereal grain to produce one pound of meat, plenty of saving is possible there.

The chagrin that is felt over the way our government has fallen down on its food commitments abroad is real enough. Why there were no reserves when rationing came to an end is one of those mysteries for which the explanations are legion. Lack of foresight about the winning of the peace is, of course, not limited to Mr. Truman’s administration. Under Roosevelt there was little or no stockpiling against the day of liberation. War Food Administrator Marvin Jones, indeed, wanted to wind up the war with no surpluses. Our past neglect is now likened to our military neglect at Pearl Harbor.

The campaign now under way will do more than provide aid for a starving world. It will, the President hopes, rally the country against the black market, which no amount of policing could correct in peacetime. The President is seeking to rally the public conscience as well as public aid.

The President and the press

President Truman pines for the happy days when he had no halo to tend. One of his worst trials is the press conference. F.D.R. made it into a veritable arm of government, and no future President could drop it. But no man could avoid an occasional pitfall in a give-and-take in which every Presidential word is freighted with truly awe-inspiring significance for the world.

The President has made a lot of mistakes at his press conferences, and the trick questioning of reporters anxious for good, even sensational, stories has not helped him. They have profited from the President’s tendency to answer too quickly. But now the President is becoming more circumspect, and seems rather proud that he can refuse to be drawn out on delicate matters.

How long the new reconversion team can get along is a doubtful question. The team is composed of businessman John Snyder and New Dealers Chester Bowles and Paul Porter. Porter was called in as Price Administrator from the chairmanship of the Federal Communications Commission, where he performed exceedingly well. He is a vigorous administrator.

Another dynamo among the recruits to the Administration’s insiders is Wilson W. Wyatt, Housing Expediter. Wyatt, who inherited all the troubles of a late start, has completely swung the Administration over to his housing program. If it goes through, veterans’ housing will constitute virtually all building activity for the next two years. If it does not, Congress will have to answer to the veterans and their families.

The premium payments to the builders stuck in the Congressional craw. “Premium payment” is, of course, a euphemism for “subsidy.” But a third of the money would be paid for an incentive for development to plants that are experimenting with building substitutes. Wyatt wants to transform building and also to get rid of feather-bedding.

THE MOOD OF THE CAPITAL

The mood of the Capital is highly disturbed about relations with Russia, and Senator Vandenberg’s call for firmness was widely applauded. Mr. Byrnes backed him up. Exactly what firmness means is not stated. Saying no to constructive solutions would be stubbornness, not statesmanship. But the Senate objects to the crisis diplomacy seemingly favored at the last meeting of the United Nations by the State Department — the application of poultices as crises occur, on the theory that crises are a hang-over of war.

The big question in Washington is whether Russia will make an overt move in aggression. This dangerous situation in our international relations is not improved by our atomic-bomb diplomacy. Senator McMahon is fighting to keep atomic development out of military hands. He has Mr. Truman’s support for making the commission he proposes all-civilian. But the military, recovering their breath after their resounding defeat on the May-Johnson bill, are rallying their forces, and McMahon may have to accept some concession to military security in his bill.