Washington

on the World Today

THE unsuccessful House effort to gut the Marshall Plan left a picture of the instability of our government machinery in the minds of foreigners. There was a shock in Europe when the House Appropriations Committee, acting within the letter but outside the spirit of its powers, tried to upset the considered judgment of Congress. The United States, in Mr. Churchill’s words, is situated on the very summit of the world. If responsibility goes with power, stability has become a desideratum in America, in the world’s as well as America’s interest. In no department is this truer than in government.

The irresponsible assault on the Marshall Plan has revived interest in changes in our governmental system. Some go to the extent of advocating a parliamentary system for America, or something close to it. Representative Herter has come up with the suggestion, formerly associated with Representative Kefauver, that Cabinet officers should be authorized to appear before Congress. This in itself would not fix responsibility, but it would promote responsibility if, as Mr. Herter adds, Congress, after hearing the Cabinet member, should be empowered to give advisory opinions.

But less drastic changes could make a repetition of Representative Taber’s action impossible. The La Follelte-Monroney Committee, which was responsible for the reorganization of Congress at the Seventy-ninth Congress, proposed majority policy committees in both the House and the Senate. The Senate created such a committee. But in the House, where Speaker Rayburn then held the reins, the members would have none of it. Rayburn did not want control wrested out of his hands.

Joe Martin succeeded Sam Rayburn as the czar of the House. He exercises the same iron hand through his own power and the power of his lieutenants: Majority Leader Charles Halleck, Leo Allen of the Rules Committee, and John Taber of the Appropriations Committee. If a majority policy committee had been on the job, it is inconceivable that the slash would have occurred. General policy on the Marshall Plan would have been ironed out in advance, and the committees would have conformed to it. In these circumstances it was ironical to find Rayburn pleading with his colleagues to save the Marshall Plan.

New chairmen needed

A change in the chairmanships of the committees is also desirable. There the seniority rule prevails, so that the men best qualified are often prevented from coming to the top, and seniors have an undue influence. Senator Arthur Capper, at eighty-three, was in the habit of napping through the sessions of the important Agriculture and Forestry Committee which he headed. He will not run for re-election, though the decision was due only to plain talking from his fellow Kansans.

In the House, Harold Knutson of Ways and Means and Clare Hoffman of Expenditures owe their positions to seniority. Certainly Senator Wiley would not be next in line to Senator Vandenberg on the Foreign Affairs Committee if authority in international affairs were our first criterion. If John Taber had not taken the chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee as his right, it is doubtful whether the Committee would have sought to hamstring the Marshall Plan. It has been suggested that the Committee on Committees should select the chairmen as well as the members of the standing committees.

Some said it was a good thing that the lines were drawn between nationalist and internationalist before the Republican Convention. It was said — but not till after the cuts had been restored and the crippling amendments abandoned — that the warning that America is not a miraculous pitcher was salutary in Europe. For the Taber revolt was in part due to resentment against European noncoöperation.

Europe’s bumper crop

One of the objections of the Taber group to appropriating the full sum of the Marshall Plan was that food prospects are excellent. The fact is that the prospects are only 1 per cent higher than the estimate of last December on which the Marshall budget was based. But, aside from that, Europe has to make up the huge deficits of the last two years. Even with the gains and with the food allotments under the Marshall Plan, the per capita amount of grain available to Europeans will be only 89 per cent of the pre-war amount, taking into account the interim increase in population.

Good crops are the hope of Europe. Europeans will put to productive use the time that they used to spend in hunting for food for their families. It may be that this year Russia will compete in supplying Europe. At any rate, she has had bumper harvests, and will probably make up the deficiency in satellite areas. She still has to do something for the countries which stayed out of the Marshall Plan at her behest, notably Finland and Czechoslovakia.

The food picture has certainly changed radically. However, there is no possibility of a world wheat surplus, though, with normal conditions returning, the Administration ought to be considering the marginal lands that should be retired from cultivation. The profligacy in our use of land and mineral and forest resources is alarming the conservationists. Those who think the United States escaped devastation during the war should ponder the depletion of soil and mines that the effort entailed.

Reciprocal trade treaties

Is the one-year extension of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act out of line with the new world policy based on the Economic Coöperation Administration? The question is producing much argument. Those who feel that it is inconsistent with ECA assume that the Tariff Commission has been given the dominant position in agreement-making as in tariff-making. That, they argue, would clearly be retrogressive, in view of the traditional operation of the Tariff Commission.

Under the present arrangement the President, on announcing the intention of negotiating an agreement, transmits a list of the tariff items to be considered to the Tariff Commission. Hearings are then held and a time limit is given. Recommendations must be based on the effect of the contemplated tariff on the entire industry, not on a producer. The State Department may now negotiate only within an area marked out in advance by the Tariff Commission. Under the old system the Committee for Reciprocity Information, composed of representatives of interested executive departments (including the Tariff Commission), made the study and held the hearings, preparatory to negotiations by the State Department.

Whether the new system is a real handicap will clearly depend upon the Tariff Commission. In any event Congress will next year have to reconsider the whole matter in connection with the new International Trade Organization. And for the next twelve months, tariff-making will be academic while Europe is struggling with shortages and recovery.

Controls for inflation

The Eightieth Congress has done nothing about inflation. On the contrary, the fires have been stoked, and some of the indexes are causing misgivings, for they continue to show an upward trend in the cost of living at the rate of 8 per cent a year. In the last six months, after controls on installment buying lapsed, nearly a billion and a half dollars more of installment credit has been pumped into the system. This kind of credit is now at an all-time high. Savings are being increasingly tapped, also, for necessary expenditures.

Whether the tax remission provided by this Congress was inflationary or the reverse is an argument that still goes on among the pundits. But the ayes, looking at the stock market, seem to have it. And the Federal Reserve authorities are numbered among them, for they have ordered an increase in the reserve requirements of the member banks, though they cannot counter the Treasury’s easy money policy. If goods were keeping pace with money output, there would be no inflation, but the rising cost of living shows they are not.

Defense: our readiness potential

The debate on national defense has left the layman confused. Unification has been proved to be bogus. The quest for a “balance” among air, sea, and land forces is a struggle among conflicting interests. Success under the present arrangement will go to the arm with the most powerful lobby.

The rivalry of the armed services should not fool the general public. The atomic bomb is even more dreadful than it was at Hiroshima. A new weapon which may be just as effective is bacteriological. Outside the inner circle nobody can make any comparison. This much can be said: bacteriological warfare and the atom bomb combine to make the offensive so triumphant that the defensive can probably never catch up. This situation puts the United States in the status of a frontier nation. Till peace reigns in the hearts of men, the country must be prepared for war, and emphasis must be on what the military call readiness potential.

Vinson and the Supreme Court

It is clear that Chief Justice Vinson has not assuaged the testiness with which justices of the Supreme Court treat each other in private and public. The Jackson versus Black quarrel persists. Their spleen is not disguised from the public. One of the sharpest castigations to be heard from a justice came from Justice Jackson’s lips on the majority’s “farfetched" stand in behalf of an “abuse” of the right of habeas corpus. The justice who is generally in Jackson’s company is Justice Frankfurter. He is perhaps the most learned in the law, but expresses himself with the same vehemence.

They were both caustic at the expense of the Black wing of the Court, which succeeded, in the fair name of free speech, in upholding loud-speakers in public parks. “Only a few weeks ago,” Justice Jackson said, “we held that the Constitution prohibits a state or municipality from using tax-supported property to aid religious groups to spread their faith. Today we say it compels them to let it be used for that purpose.”

At a quasi-public meeting Justice Frankfurter went so far as to comment pointedly on the impropriety of justices entertaining political ambitions. This was a reference to the Douglas “boom.” Justice Frankfurter, of course, was right, for the Supreme Court is constantly on the most delicate ground, as, for instance, in the race covenant case, in which the justices must be above the reproach of politiking. Perhaps the most glaring difficulty came into the open when Justice Frankfurter rebuked government counsel from the bench and had to be silenced by the Chief Justice.

The Mood of the Capital

The mood of the Capital as delegates trooped back from the Republican Convention in Philadelphia was that the Dewey-Warren team put up the strongest bid for the nomination. The Dewey of 1948 is a vast improvement upon the Dewey of 1944. He is forward-looking and mature, and is no longer the thin-skinned hopeful who writhed under the taunts of F.D.R. and the ribbings of newspapermen.

It is taken for granted that the White House, if the Republican ticket wins, will be the hub of an efficient Executive and a smooth-running party machine. Reorganization of the Executive branch can be expected if Dewey and Warren are elected. The New Yorker has already promised to replace spoilsmen with men fitted for executive jobs.

Little is known about appointments. In Washington one man is regarded as a sure choice—John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State. But Mr. Dewey seems to have ideas of his own on foreign affairs. On the morrow of the nomination he spoke critically of the niggardly aid that the Truman administration has given to China, as if he intended to reorient foreign-aid policy towards the Pacific. It is a question whether Dulles would agree with such an orientation. He favorsa Western Union in Europe, and is hand in glove with Senator Vandenberg in seeking to perpetuate a bipartisan foreign policy based on European reconstruction under the Marshall Plan.