The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

Now that the Federal government is absorbing 20 cents of every dollar of the national income, general concern about the national budget is not surprising. A visiting Minister of Finance the other day said that the American budget was quixotically honest. Most countries go in for dual budgets: capital expenditures and current operating costs. In America exchanges of assets for assets — stockpiling, or the purchase of another government agency’s obligations by the RFC, or appropriations for the building of a big dam—are all listed on the current spending side of our national budget, instead of as capital expenditures.

This practice does not clearly disclose the government’s contribution to inflation or deflation. What counts is the transactions between government and people. It is the additions to or subtractions from purchasing power on the part of the government that show the impact of government upon the national economy.

The Committee for Economic Development started its campaign for a “consolidated cash budget “ in place of an administrative budget. A cash budget would certainly make the picture look better. For this reason some hair-shirt experts object to it; they feel that profligacy would be encouraged, and that it is better to put the worst face on the national accounts, thereby forcing restraint.

Whether the yardstick is the administrative or the cash budget, 25 billion of the 42-billion-dollar budget, comprising defense, veterans’ programs, and interest on the public debt, is untouchable. Foreign aid is down 1.3 billions, and any further cut may endanger world recovery and even American business. The Republicans, if this were not election year, might chip at the 600 millions for civil public works — an expense which neither the cold war nor the nations prosperity, in the opinion of many, justifies. But there is no assurance of an attack upon it.

Acheson on Asia

The political year opened with a battle royal between the Administration and the G.O.P. on China. The starting gun was the President’s handsoff statement on Formosa. He then left to Secretary Acheson the campaign to make the policy stick, and Mr. Acheson has done right nobly, as even the critics of the policy acknowledge. Hitherto he has kept in the background — out of deference to the President, a dislike for controversy, and a natural aloofness. But the exchanges between the Administration and the G.O.P. are giving the public a measure of the man.

Secretary Acheson does not read a speech well: he stumbles and drones. But this is no indication of his intellect; he has a mind with a knife edge, a perfect instrument for his purposes. Those who watched his performance at the National Press Club on January 12, where he made his first policy statement on Asia, agreed that they had witnessed a tour de force. There, in spite of the fact that he knew that people would weigh every word he uttered, he spoke extemporaneously, pausing every now and then to insert a rapier into the vitals of one or another of his critics, notably Senator Taft.

His relations with the press have left a good deal to be desired. Whenever he has some declaration to make for foreign government listeners, he uses the newspapermen merely as a sounding board. They are, in consequence, resentful. They believe they have a right to be informed. The tight-lipped policy of the Secretary is reinforced by I lie seal he seems to have put upon the lips of subordinates. He feels lie cannot trust them to expound policy. If any leaks occur, the State Department immediately seeks the culprit, and woe bet ide him if he is found.

Aeheson has in James E. Webb an Under Secretary who is less interested in foreign affairs than in “organization” and “security.” Thus the State Department lias become more and more aloof. The situation was summed up in an official’s wisecrack to a reporter: “You are in an extractive business, we are in a retentive industry.”

Waiting for China

Longheaded students of the China problem agree with Secretary Acheson that Chinese disillusionment with Russia is in the cards and that hasty action on our part would “deflect" it. They recall 1927. In that year the Russians had taken charge of the Nationalist revolution, and Borodin was virtually a dictator. A reaction then set in, and under Chiang Kai-shek the Russians were put to flight overland to Moscow.

The Russians, who have good memories, are not unaware of the possible wrath to come, as Secretary Acheson puts it. In China proper they are reported to be very prudent. What they would like to see is American intervention in China — America caught in the morass of China, wasting its strength and frittering away its resources. This would “deflect ” Chinese anger and enable the Russians to Russianize the huge territory known as extramural Chinn. — namely, Manchuria, Mongolia, and Sinkiang.

But this is not the only reason the Russians would like to see America bogged down in China: American adventurism in China would leave Western Germany open for a Russian walk-in.

Republican adventurism

Republican interventionists are nowadays using the old catchwords. The decision not to shore up the bankrupt and inept Chiang Kai-shek in Formosa is called “appeasement.” It is dubbed a “Munich.” Neither word applies; both really mean that the Administration is giving away something that does not belong to America. Such Republican name-calling is the penalty of inaction on the part of the Administration.

The indictment of the Administration for inaction goes further—it declares that President Truman is violating his own doctrine of “containment” of Communism and is tearing up bipartisanship in the conduct of foreign policy. Actually neither “containment” nor “Communism” appeared in the message launching the Truman Doctrine. They appeared in George Kennan’s famous article in Foreign Affairs, but that was Mr. Kennan’s idea of the policy underlying the Truman Doctrine, not the Doctrine itself. The Doctrine pledged this country to oppose aggression with economic aid as well as military help, according to circumstances.

No bipartisanship in China

Nor is bipartisanship affected by the Administration’s decision on China. There has never been any bipartisanship on China, perhaps because the Administration has never had a policy upon which to win Republican concurrence. This does not mean that it has not been sensitive to opinion in Congress, particularly in Republican quarters. It deferred to the Republicans in tacking on to the Marshall Plan appropriation the provision for military aid to Chiang Kai-shek. The rider was accepted much against the Administration’s will, but economic aid to Europe would not have been voted without military help to Chiang Kai-shek.

The China policy that blew up when Chiang Kai-shek withdrew was a policy dictated to both Congress and the Administration by Republican interventionists. In other words, bipartisanship has not been violated, because it never existed. The Republicans hitherto have called the interventionist plays in China. The hands-off statement on Formosa was an effort by the Administration to regain the initiative in the con duel of foreign affairs — its constitutional prerogative.

In turning his back on more adventurism in China, Secretary Acheson understressed many constructive possibilities such as the enormous but indireel benefits of Marshall aid to Asia. What he didn’t and couldn’t say is that there is one form of intervention which is desirable and which would relieve the Administraion of the charge of inaction. That is propaganda, exchange of students, educational assistance, even psychological assistance. It is not enough to wait for Chinese disillusionment with Russia to sink in. It must be encouraged.

Those who would intervene

The leading interventionists in Congress are inspired by different motives. In the House, Representative Walter Judd, an eloquent speaker and a forceful personality, has never got over Ins experience as a prisoner of the Chinese Communists. He used to be a medical missionary in China.

Thrown into jail, he was compelled to witness tort ures, and he sworn that, once released, he would never cease to campaign against the Chinese Communists. He has kept his word.

Many of the interventionists are motivated by strong sentiments, either tradional Sinophilia or all-embracing anti-Comnumism. Their leader in the Senate is H. Alexander Smith of New Jersey, a charming and well-intentioned man. Smith came back from the bar Fast last fall fulls convinced that all that the I nilod Stales had to do was to tell K. C. Wu, governor of Formosa, to move over to Hainan with the several hundreds of thousands of Nationalist troops and make way for an American occupation pending the peace treals with Japan. The mildest word to apply to this group is that they are unrealistic.

The Mood of the Capital

Both Republicans and Democrats got off to a bad start in trying to restore the power of the Rules Commillee to erect roadblocks against legislation. The Southern Democrats wanted to block civil-rights legislation; the Republicans wanled to block Fair Deal proposals that called for Federal spending.

The Rules Committee is the traffic director, clearing bills for consideration by the House which are reported out by the standing committees. This role carries ssdh it arbitrary powers which base been abused whenever objections to bills base been raised within the Rules Committee. If the coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats had succeeded, the Rules Committee could have kept any bill bottled up in terminably.

The G.0.P. now has to recognize that it must stop mixing bogeys with battle cries. The “welfare state” frightens very less people in a country that has always been concerned with the spread of welfare. Rig government is here to slay, and even the meanest intelligence regards it as inevitable in view of the growth of big business, not to mention the demands upon the modern state in a dangerous world.

Socialism likewise is dubious as a war cry without a bill of particulars. The people these days want the case spelled out so that they can know what they are voting for.