Washington

on the World Today

IN a split government the relations between the Executive and Congress are hound to be bedeviled. Trouble is now the Democratic President’s portion because of a threat by the Republican Congress to hold up appointments. This, of course, is the way to let government run down. Another piece of obstruction is the hounding of personnel in Executive departments. Yet another is the constant call upon heads of departments to let Congressional committees have a peek at their confidential files.

As one harassed official put it, “In private life one’s board of directors was as anxious as you were that you did a good job, but in government the board seems constantly to be out to knife you.”Pity the poor bureaucrats! They are the victims of the great game of politics which is being waged against the White House.

The State Department is caught in the middle of this battle. Secretary Marshall is Secretary of State of a Democratic administration. According to some Republicans his subordinates cannot be “trusted,” and Paul G. Hoffman has been told by more than one Congressman that he must not get his personnel from the Slate Department. It is a pity that this source is more or less suspect. There are able men in the State Department who have lived with the Marshal! Plan from the very beginning.

The need to root out Communism is the justification for hounding the Executive departments. The word communism covers a multitude of offenders. Chief among them are New Dealers. Anybody who has worked on “Hopkins’s” WPA or “Wallace’s” wartime BEW is ipso facto dangerous. If he shows a shred of ambition, and seeks to get a transfer to one of the reconstruction posts, he will find himself singled out for slaughter.

The perennial issue of what to do with domestic Communists has now come to a head. Most of the more anti-libertarian bills have been discarded. What is left is a bill sponsored by the Committee on Un-American Activities which would attempt proscription by way of exposure. It would require registration and disclosure of membership and of contributors on the part of all named “Communist front ” organizations. To many persons the device would mean an extension of the un-American doctrine of guilt by association.

A better course is said to be under way to see by court test whether the existing act calling for registration of agents of foreign principals covers Communists. Such a test would at once clarify the act and doteimine whether the Supreme Court would uphold the theory that a Communist is an agent of the Soviet Union. What is also needed is regist rat ion of t he accounts of all agencies appealing for contributions from the people. Even the FBI does not favor the outlawing of the Communist Party, which would merely drive the Communists underground, as it did in Brazil and Canada.

Will Congress hobble Hoffman?

Representative Taber started the hearings in the Appropriations Committee on Marshall aid by expressing the fear that America intended to build up rival industries in Europe. The remark was indicative of the antediluvian thinking by the men holding the purse strings that is going to harass Paul Hoffman’s operations. They are not yet wedded to the Marshall theory that what is needed is “a cure instead of a palliative,” nor would they pray, in the self-interest back of David Hume’s prayer, “for the flourishing commerce” of all other countries.

Mr. Hoffman is a wide-awake businessman, one of the most successful in America. He has both a sense of the social implications of his economic activities and an awareness that America cannot isolate itself from Europe. In a word, he combines statesmanship with efficiency. As the spark plug in the businessman’s Committee for Economic Development he has helped to give the government the benefit of the expert study of economic scholars and private industrialists.

It is recognized that the Economic Cooperation Administration is destined to grow into a mighty organization requiring the best administrative talent in the country. So far Paul Hoffman has chosen his aides with discrimination. But the test will come in the selection of men for the subordinate posts. It is estimated that no fewer than a thousand will be required in the European offices of the roving ambassador Averell Harriman. Where are they coming from?

The urgent task is to get and train competent, young diplomats. The suggestion has been made that ECA should either start an overseas administration corps or comb the few existing foreign administration schools. So much hangs upon ECA, and the job will take such a long time, that whatever effort is necessary to get efficient personnel is worth considering. For ECA will have to serve as an intelligent gadfly to the sixteen participating countries plus Germany.

How far federation?

The Sixteen Nations now have an organization, but they are awaiting a lead from the American administrator on the way to handle American aid. Shall it be by one body, a sort of Peace Production Board, allocating Marshall imports according to a priority system? Or shall the countries handle their own import requirements? Mr. Hoffman wants to deal with an entity. That would simplify his task and enable him to focus responsibility as well as authority. The system likewise would make for mutual policing, spur the production which alone will put the Europeans on their feet, and supply a constant and self-generating impetus to economic cobperatton.

There are enthusiasts who see in such an allocating agency a germ of European federation. But the federationists are apt to lose themselves in illusions. The Sixteen include nations as far apart and as dissimilar as Iceland and Turkey. Between these nations all we can expect is a closer cooperation. Federation is not unlikely in Europe, but on a smaller scale, say between the Low Countries and Hrilain and France. However, the feeling is that it will not necessarily grow out of a common body for handling Marshall aid, but requires a separate stimulus, and by our diplomacy.

Unification still eludes us

The civilian-minded are the first to complain over the intraservice rivalry that has now exposed the lack of unification of the armed forces. Division is a sign of weakness much more pronounced than lack of enough arms. At the military powwow at Key West there was seeming agreement, but, in point of fact, a seventy-group air force was never mentioned there, and the program came into the open in a curious kind of play in Congress. A hat was done at Key West was to settle the allocations of “roles and missions,”or, in Secretary Forrest a I s word, “functions.” Time will show whether even this issue has been settled satisfactorily.

Senator Morse says that unification is “a flop.” The situation isn’t so bad as that, but the armed services are certainly not in step, and the fissures are harmful in the prosecution of cold warfare.

The feeling immediately after the seventy-group vote in Congress was that air power had been oversold. To be sure, as Secretary Forrestal says, “air power is likely to be the decisive element in our national strength.” But the conviction has been generated, partly as a result of military competition for publicity, that we are in the push-button stage of warfare. As Admiral Nimitz says, all we yet have is the button. Men in uniform are still required and, moreover, they are required proportionately to the increase in air strength.

The Mood of the Capital

The mood of the Capital is that President Truman’s chances are doomed, and that he knows it. The current pessimism in the White House has not made any difference in the President’s cheerful demeanor. He does not easily “depress, as he puts it.

The fortunes of Mr. Stassen have taken a leap forward which is preparing the Capital for some kind of Taft-Dewey understanding. Stassen has constantly baffled both the pollsters and the prognosticators. Neither of these appears to have examined the grass roots where Stassen s strength seems to lie.

A revelation of Stassen strength is available in a poll of Methodist ministers from forty-four states by the American University. The ministers, surely among the reliable bellwethers of public opinion, were asked to name their choice of a Presidential candidate. No less than 50 per cent named Stassen; 20 per cent, Wallace; with the rest trailing. A high, though not so high, vote for Wallace, incidentally, accords with Capital opinion, which gives a popular vote of 7 million and over —one sure reason, it is held, for Truman’s defeat.

A dark horse is still Senator Vandenberg, who is more and more regarded as that rara avis of politics, a disinterested man. He and Stassen are very close friends, and may yet team up together, despite the bosses. These highly speculative ventures represent Capital mood at the moment.