The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

As Mr. Hoffman makes his annual pilgrimage to Capitol Mill for authorization and for funds for ECA, he has no glittering story of achievement in Europe to unfold. There are, to be sure, several successes to report on t he plus side of the ledger. Communism has been rebuffed, inflation fought to a standstill, production of both farm and factory restored. What is lacking is progress toward integration in Europe.

In a desperate effort to get results on integration Mr. Hoffman went to Europe ahead of the Congressional hearings. He gave the European nations a three-point program upon which he tried to enlist their coöperation. First was an end to dual pricing one price for the home market and another for the foreign market. Next was an increase in the import items to be taken off the quota list. The third requirement was the setting up of a clearing union for the facilitation of European payments on current business. The combination was intended to be a starter in the unfreezing of trade among the European nations.

There was little disposition in Europe, however, to consider these concessions. The great obstructionist in Mr. Hoffman’s path was Sir Stafford Cripps, who felt that a controlled economy does not comport with uncontrolled exchanges and who therefore opposed the return to the single-price system. There was a promise to speed up abolition of quotas, but the promise was hedged around with many reservations.

The clearing union encountered several obstacles. The British insist that it will be realized, and that what held up the plan was a series of technical differences which are bound to be ironed out. However, Mr. Hoffman is not pleased at the prospect.

Hoffman’s driving belief

This does not mean that Mr. Hoffman is gloomy over integration in Europe. He is not that kind of man. In him as in few public men in these disillusioning times there are the faith of a believer and the spark of a crusader. He is sure that with better living standards the Europeans will want to make their economic decisions themselves.

In the meantime Hoffman goes on with his preachments for the liberalization of trade. He has grown a great deal with experience. He has a buoyancy which ingratiates, a way of speaking which appeals, and, as somebody put it, his grip on the torch never slackens. Yet he is respected everywhere as a practical man of affairs. The combination is hard lo resist, especially when added to his own respect for Congress and the zeal and knowledge which he imparls to the presentation of his case. On this occasion, moreover, he is asking for 25 per cent less than last year, the principle being that if Europe is to become independent, a downward curve of appropriations is essential.

It is of course taken for granted that Europe will not be independent at the end of the final Marshall year, 1952. But this year the OEEC has not announced its estimate of the residual dollar gap as a problem for America. It has made a statesmanlike analysis in terms of what Europe and the United Stales could do together. Nor is this cooperation indicated as mutual aid, but as a common effort in developing the undeveloped areas. In 1953 the object is to put any assistance program in the selling of Point Four and whatever comes of the similar plan which experts of the Commonwealth nations are discussing at Canberra.

New talks with Russia?

Side by side with the impetus to constructive thinking which came from the H-bomb decision is the renewal of interest in a new approach to the Russians. This is what the State Department is afraid of. The policy always has been to eschew bilateral talks with Moscow. However, if the Russians have anything new to offer on bomb control, there will be no bar to consideration.

There remains the bleak fact that the Russians have made no new proposals since June, 1947, and those proposals fell far short of what the rest of the world, let alone the United States, regarded as adequate. The spread and intensifical ion of Russian aggression assure consideration nowadays only of a self-enforcing agreement. As Mr. Truman has said, the only agreement that the Russians have kept is the agreement to go to war with Japan.

At least a re-examination of our world policy is desirable. One wing of Congress would try to buy Russian agreement with a monster reconstruction program. Others are in favor of one or another resolution ranging from abolition of the veto in the United Nations to world government.

There is a proposal for a sort of Presidential commission to look into alternative programs. Even the least imaginative think that the Administration has disregarded domestic and foreign opinion.

The brusqueness of the H-bomb announcement left the impression that the President regarded the decision too lighlly. This does Mr. Truntan an injustice. He pondered the issue deeply and got the counsel of the wise and the experienced and the expert. The advice he got was various. There were some who wanted a statement of renunciation. Those who thought such a step would be quixotic felt that the announcement should be accompanied by at least a fireside chat.

That the President made his decision so curtly was due to a desire to put an end to the growing hubbub of public speculation. He now realizes that he left people unsatisfied, and the outbreak of neutralization-forEurope talk among the Europeans has proved the need to give a new direction to discussion.

Acheson our policy

To that end Secretary Acheson is giving periodical essays on American policy. It is a delicate task for a man who always seems to be addressing a judge rather than a jury. In destroying illusions, he has to be careful lest he leave a feeling of hopelessness. How the series will develop and what influence it will exert, only time will tell.

But Mr. Acheson, while he brings to the task one of the finest intellects in ihe country, has so far failed to offset the sense of frustration in the whole of the Atlantic Community. This may be due to his congenital desire, to use a phrase that he often puts into the mouth of Andrew Jackson, to “elevate them guns a little lower.”

This attitude perhaps explains the cold water that the Stale Department poured over the more or less world government proposals. It is said that about 20 per cent of the American people believe in one or another of these proposals. Yet the State Department gave them not the slightest recognition.

Perhaps the end is not feasible, yet the new direction they give to men’s thoughts is not undesirable as an adjunct to a constructive diplomacy. Take, for instance, the Atlantic Union resolution. All it provides for is the calling of a convention to discuss the idea of a union of the free nations. Such a convention would presumably dissolve into committees of discussion, but that process could conceivably be of service in fomenting integration in Europe and in developing liberal policies in America.

Too many councils

Organization of the government to cope with the problems of a cold war that is getting hotter is much better on paper than in operation. There are four great over-all agencies: the Cabinet, the National Security Council, the National Security Resources Board, and the National Advisory Council. Virtually the only link between them is the President, and, of course, the President has no time to make them dovetail in the hammering out of national policy. The result is compartmentalizetion rather than organization.

The Cabinet remains in its historic status as a loose association of heads of departments without a secretariat. Secretary Forrestal used to plead for the appointment of a Secretary of Cabinet to act as a sort of linchpin.

Senator Anderson once said that the innovation was stillborn when Mr. Wallace left the Cabinet and Mr. Harriman took his place as Secretary of Commerce. It was Mr. Harriman who had been slated for the secretarial appointment. The National Advisory Council oversees foreign financial policy, bul has become a Treasury instrumentality.

There is yet no chairman of the National Security Resources Board, where the industrial mobilization plan will he developed. Foreign as well as military policy making is the function ol the National Security Council, but this is dominanth military, though Secretary Acheson has scored some vietories, notably over Formosa, in its meetings.

In the absence of a Cabinet Secretary, the suggestion is made that the Vice President’s office should be shared by two persons. One would do the ornamental chores and be next in line, as at present, to the President. Mr. Barkley does this to perfection.

But the other should be a sort of operating Vice President for work similar to that done by “Assistant President ” Byrnes in wartime. As an example of the liaison that is required, officials often mention the gap between strategy and foreign economic policy. Clearly economic aid in these critical years should be subject to priorities determined by and dovetailed with strategy.

Secrecy spreads the dark

In view of the Fuchs case, nobody now dares to advocate the release of such vital information as the number of A-bombs we have in our stockpile, Yet without that information no person can come to the foggiest kind of judgment on our national defense.

The Fuchs case has likewise put a blanket on the atomic talks with Britain and Canada. Yet an atomic concert is a necessary concomitant to the all for one and one for all Atlantic Pact, and the best way to develop security of informal ion is surely to have uniform standards. The theory that secrecy makes for security has been confirmed in the minds of many people.

Another effect of the spy disclosures is to make J. Edgar Hoover and his Federal Bureau of Investigation the pampered agency of the government. Mr. Hoover can always be sure of an extended budget without any question. Whether or not he has done as much as he is credited with having done, nobody will give the facts, because most of the intelligence agents have to keep in the dark. Thus Mr. Hoover prospers. And what he says is regarded as gospel.

He has now given Congress the dimensions of the Communist organization in the U.S. There are only 54,000 “card-carrying” Communists, but the total fifth column is 540,000, or 1 out of every 300 of the population. In this fifth column Mr. Hoover enters the non-card-carriers, or cryptic Communists, and fellow travelers. There is no reason to disbelieve Mr. Hoover, but it is uncomfortable to see the stock of a police organization on such a rise in our society.

In addition to another going over for the scientists, another screening is in prospect for government employees. The Attorney General’s list of subversive organizations, with its implication of guilt by association, is getting more and more respectability.

What is really disturbing is the constant potshotting at the administrative departments from Capitol Hill. State is the greatest sufferer. The diplomats, who are presumably in the trenches of this cold war, find this barrage from the rear disconcerting, to say the least. Any Senator is likely to denounce the diplomats by name in blithe disregard not only for loyalty tests but also for the facts.

The latest broadside came from Senator McCarthy of Wisconsin, who, after saying he knew there were 205 Communists in the State Department and then charging that he could himself compile a list of fifty-seven, produced four names. One of these had been cleared in a loyalty hearing, two had not been in the Department since 1946, and the other had not been in the Department at all.

This below-the-belt troublemaking is draining the time of Secretary Acheson inordinately. In the first twentyone days of January, he had to spend twenty-nine hours in Congress, and most of those hours were spent upon such inconsequential matters as the McCarthy charges.

Mood of the Capital

Opinion in the Capital in the wake of the British election is divided. The Republicans on Capitol Hill are taking comfort from the evidence of a shift to the right in British sentiment. They hope it is a trend that will be registered in our own mid-term election as well.

Issues in Britain, to be sure, were blurred, but Mr. Churchill crusaded under the equivalent of a Republican banner, and inscribed upon it: Liberty versus Regimentation. That he failed to come to grips with specific items in the Labor Government’s planned economy is disregarded.

Official circles in Washington feel that in terms of foreign policy there was not much to choose between the two parties. They showed not the slightest party favoritism but simply prayed that the outcome would be decisive. The Capital wanted enough of a majority to encourage bold action. For months before the election the British Government trod water on almost every question involving Anglo-American relations: oil, sterling balances, organization in Europe. Washington was deeply disappointed that the election did not resolve the uncertainty.

Sometimes Britain is likened to a man desperately anxious to hide his straitened circumstances. This situation was not discussed during the campaign. Recognition of it could come, perhaps, through the medium of a royal commission, if the basic issue cannot be faced otherwise.

These issues are the dog-in-themanger altitude opposing unification in Europe with or without Britain, and the unwillingness to shake down the budget so that there might be a lifting of the controls maintained to suppress infiation.