Washington

on the World ‘Today

SLOWLY but surely Administrator Hoffman is building up a staff for the Economic Coöperation Administration. The officers so far chosen for Europe ensure excellent liaison with the European beneficiaries. The easiest problem will be with Italy, the hardest with Britain.

The new Italian Cabinet shows the way the Italians intend to coöperate under the Marshall Plan. Two Cabinet posts have been created to execute Marshall planning. Another portfolio which shows that Italy means business is a vice-premiership reserved for Signor Porzio. Porzio is to handle affairs in Southern Italy, where a dissatisfied peasantry has been suffering under conditions which were breeding Communism.

The appointment of Signor Lombardo as Minister of Industry and Commerce is the final demonstration of Italian determination. Lombardo, who is a right-wing Socialist, is well known in Washington as a reconstructionist of merit. The news that the Italians are all set to get the maximum advantage out of the Marshall Plan has been received with great satisfaction at ECA headquarters.

Washington would be better satisfied if the British would revamp their economic approach similarly. It is felt in the Capital that Sir Stafford Cripps is the only member of the Cabinet imbued with the spirit of the Marshall Plan. He has assured the Western finance ministers of Britain’s willingness to “adapt its economy to this coöperation.” But when he told this to the House of Commons and warned the members of the “considerable readjustment” involved, the reaction, in the words of the London Economist, was “cold and startled.”

The fact appears to ECA that doctrinairism and nationalism seem still to be in the British saddle. For instance, the discussions at the Labor Party conference at Scarborough dealt with the nationalization of the steel industry, not its continentalization. Yet it is emphasis on continentalization that underlies the Marshall Plan. Instead of all-inclusive steel industries for every country, there should be one steel industry divided among the Europeans. Signor Lombardo and the Italians are waiting for this kind of continental planning. On his last visit to Washington Lombardo said, “We don’t want to set up a steel industry. It would be uneconomic. We should like to see it, say, in France, so that we could be supplied by France. In return we should like to make artificial fibers for France.”

The political side of ERP has been broached by Senator Vandenberg. Of late the Europeans have been assiduously feeling out Washington for military aid. It had been hoped that the VandenbergLovett “working paper” would provide for shipment of arms and munitions. But the resolution before the Senate which is based upon the working paper stops short of such help, in spite of Secretary Marshall’s recent hint of a resumption of military Lend-Lease.

The feeling is that the house which the United States is expected to roof is still incomplete. Washington still needs to be shown evidence of self-help. To be sure, a five-power military alliance is already in effect in Europe. But until action is suited to words, say in the continentalization of the arms industry, the United States can give only a promise of “association” with a West European union.

Abolish the veto?

There is an important section of the Senate which would further improve the association of the free world by abolishing the UN veto on police action. But neither Secretary Marshall nor Senator Vandenberg agrees. They feel that this would cut the last link with Moscow, and that the idea is more provocative than constructive. It may be doubted, indeed, whether the suggestion has been thought through. Would the United States be content with the same voting power as Honduras — the nation that Molotov always uses to illustrate the point?

What is needed in the absence of a veto is weighted representation so as to recognize the realities of power. But for the moment the State Department and Senator Vandenberg would content themselves with a revision of the veto power. They would restrict the veto to police action, so that a single vote would not, as now, be sufficient to kill UN membership applications or moves aimed at the pacific settlement of disputes.

Who makes our foreign policy?

Secretary Marshall suffers desperately — as Secretary Hull did — from Presidential interference. The most recent example is President Truman’s action on Palestine. Secretary Marshall did not know in advance about the President’s appointment of General Hilldring as Special Assistant Secretary of State for Palestine Affairs. And the American delegation at the UN was not told ahead of time about the recognition of Israel. The omission put Warren Austin in such dudgeon that on being handed the announcement he left the hall at Lake Success and forgot to pass on the information to his deputy.

At the same time both President Truman and Secretary Marshall have been ill served by their Palestine advisers. These latter are mainly philoArabs. And they made no bones about their determination to defeat the United States policy in favor of partition and the General Assembly recommendation to that effect. Nor were the defense officials helpful. They egged on the dissidents in the State Department by insisting that partition would endanger access to Middle Eastern oil.

On oil there has been a revision of opinion which makes the Defense Department’s argument on Palestine look a trifle silly. The Defense Department’s negative attitude on partition derived from the project for building a pipeline from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. But this has now been abandoned as uneconomic. It has been decided that the United States would benefit more by investing steel in tankers, in domestic oil developments, and in exploration of South America than by building pipelines. The Middle East, moreover, is too vulnerable to attack, partition or no partition. A recalcitrant Jew or Arab could easily put a pipeline out of commission.

Senator Vandenberg applauded recognition of Israel as an inevitable filling of “what otherwise would be a cruel and dangerous vacuum.” He left unmentioned the “cruel and dangerous vacuum” of Arab Palestine, though he doubtless had had many harsh words to say about the somersaults and do-nothingness that created it.

Communism in government

A reductio ad absurd inn of the witch-hunting in the Capital was Representative Crawford’s effort to pin on a government official the responsibility for his daughter’s joining the Tass News Agency. Perhaps this is the high-water mark of the hysteria about Communism in government. As for the country at large, a seminar on the subject was provided by the Dewey-Stassen debate, and the Oregon election proved that the Oregonians at any rate were more susceptible to argument than emotion.

Mr. Stassen said that the Mundt bill would outlaw the Communist Party. This is denied by the sponsors, but unconvincingly. To be sure, the bill does not say flatly that the Communist Party is illegal, but it comes to the same meaning when the rigmarole is disentangled. The Mundt bill is a hot potato which few Senators want to touch.

The Mood of the Capital

The mood of the Capital as members of Congress entered the home stretch of the Eightieth Congress was to ride along noncontentiously. Even Senator Vandenberg refused to intervene in the tussle over the Atomic Energy Commission appointments. He wanted no brush with Senator Taft before the battle in Philadelphia.

In the House the overriding fear is to be bracketed with Marcantonio and Isaeson. No matter what the issue, the object is to keep out of their company. On the Hill you will hear it said, “I think we are cock-eyed about the seventy-group air force bill, but I can’t afford to vote with those guys.” A GOP tactic is to bring the relation to voters’ attention back home. It is done with a variant of the following: “Did you know that in electing Mr. So-and-so you were electing Mr. Marcantonio’s pal?”

Prudence was likewise reflected in buck-passing. The Mundt bill got a great deal of support in the House out of the foreknowledge that the measure would not go very far in the Senate. “Of course, the thing is infamous,” said one member, “and would undoubtedly be found unconstitutional.” Yet he voted for the measure because he felt sure of Senatorial cold water.

Caution has been mixed with GOP confidence that when the next Congress meets, the Capital will be wholly in Republican hands. The Republicans have been preparing the ground for the take-over by delaying action on appointments, by holding hearings in secret on such significant subjects as the extension of the reciprocal trade agreements, and by putting a time limit on [lowers delegated to the Executive.