National Affairs: Goal-Line Stand

In Paris last week, members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, having doggedly toured the neat Norman farm country and held long conferences with Premier Paul Ramadier and Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, relaxed at a party given by U.S. Ambassador Jefferson Caffery. Over cocktails, one Senator’s wife asked an English-speaking Frenchman:

“Is it true that the French haven’t got any more dollars?”

“That is true.”

“No dollars at all?”

“Not a single one.”

“Gee,” said the Senator’s lady, “that makes you think, doesn’t it?”

Back in Washington, Administration officials were doing a little more than just thinking. They were trying frantically to scrape up some dollars. They had some success.

The Export-Import Bank authorized France to use $93 million (and Italy $32 million) in untapped reconstruction credits for emergency purchases of fuel. The Army bought $50 million worth of French francs to pay off the first installment on wartime debts for rent, transportation and food. The biggest lump sum was a preliminary divvy of $360 million in gold looted by the Germans: $104 million to France, $29.4 million to Austria, $4 million to Italy, $40 million to The Netherlands.

There were a few other possibilities. The Army still owed France some $30 million. France had a claim on $37 million worth of Indo-Chinese gold captured by the Japanese. There was a chance that $115 million worth of German assets might be kept out of the Treasury for use abroad. All told, it was probably enough to keep Europe going on a hand-to-mouth basis until the first of the year.

But it was only hand-to-mouth, and unless something like the Marshall Plan is soon put into operation, another crisis would arise early in 1948. Sighed one Washington administrator: “Boy, am I tired of these goal-line stands.”