THE NATION: The Rustle of History

The incidents caused little if any stir across the nation. History in the making, like the wind of a distant storm, at first barely ruffled the leaves of the nation’s newspapers.

A group of Senators and Representatives, summoned by the President, left Capitol Hill one morning last week and went to the White House. The winter chill hung damp over Pennsylvania Avenue. Harry Truman met them in the Executive Office, where he was flanked by Secretary of State George Marshall, Under Secretary Dean Acheson and Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy. This was the first stirring of the wind.

The Congressmen had left the White House elaborately sworn to secrecy. But the next day’s morning newspapers carried a hint of the news. Evening papers carried a little more: a ”leak” from London. The Foreign Office had informed Washington that Great Britain, her economy nearly wrecked, could no longer maintain the security of Greece. That had been the subject of the White House conference. The story unfolded with no warning thunderclap, but in an atmosphere of such calm that the nation scarcely realized that a crisis had been reached.

Message from London. The story from London was correct. Secretary Marshall, preparing to leave for Moscow (see INTERNATIONAL) had told the White House conferees Britain had served notice that she could no longer support her occupation forces in Greece, could no longer maintain her position in Turkey. Britain was too poor, financially, to go on.

Marshall had told the Congressmen that the U.S. would have to step in immediately with a loan of $250 million for the rehabilitation of Greece’s ports, railways, bridges, for the purchase of industrial and raw materials to bolster Greece’s economy, and for the support of a British garrison already there. The U.S. would not send soldiers. But the U.S., besides financial aid, must supply economic and military advice and full moral support. The Congressmen knew the alternative: expanding Russia would take over.

It would be a kind of “imperialism” for which many in the U.S. had long criticized Britain, not realizing that a strong Britain was the great world stabilizing force and that the U.S. had profited by it through most of its history. Now the shoe was to be on the other foot.

The Congressmen listened gravely. They asked few questions. “Nobody knows where this will lead us,” Harry Truman said thoughtfully as the conference broke up.

Cost of Stability. Congress was already groaning about the estimated cost of foreign relief in fiscal 1948. The Truman budget contemplated a $350 million expenditure for food and clothing for Austria, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland and

China. This was a life-saving fund, and Under Secretary of State William Clayton pledged that it would only be used to fill the gap left by an expiring UNRRA. A War Department item included another $725 million for rehabilitation of occupied countries. The two items totaled $1 billion plus—a figure which Herbert Hoover, back from Europe, estimated would be closer to $1.5 billion if all foreign relief programs are to be anywhere near adequate. On top of that would come the $250 million for Greece.

Congressman Albert Engel of Michigan, taking one look at this onslaught on the U.S. Treasury, another look at the economically bankrupt, politically epileptic country of Greece, and another look at Britain, uttered the first angry yelp. Why, Engel demanded, should the U.S. pull “Britain’s fat out of the fire?”

Georgia’s Senator Richard Russell, with the air of a man who is fed up, suggested that the U.S. admit England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland as member states of the U.S. “It would cost this country far less than the commitments now proposed as our obligations. . . . The King could run for the Senate, as could Winston Churchill.”

It would require a little time for some Congressmen to realize that it was not Britain’s “fat” but the security of the U.S. which was at stake.

Blowing Up. At week’s end a State Department note went to the British. State agreed, in principle, that the U.S. should assume the commitments in Greece. The final decision would be Congress’, which must appropriate the funds. But there seemed to be little doubt that Congress would vote them in the end. Senate Republican Boss Bob Taft, for one, did not think $250 million was really very much in a budget of many billions.

Harry Truman prepared to lay the whole problem of foreign relations before the U.S. people this week in a speech at Waco, Tex. The winds of history were blowing up. Not even the most economy-minded Congressman or the most isolationist plain citizen could escape their breath.