Washington

on the World Today

DAVID LILIENTHAL., head of the United Stairs Atomic Energy Commission, forecasts that in four and a half years there will be a prototype of a power reactor using atomic energy. For work in nuclear energy five hundred or so students have been granted science fellowships under the Atomic Energy Act. The students are named not by the Commission but by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences.

Among these five hundred or so there are a couple of Communists. There was no loyalty check, though the applicants’ affiliations, presumably, could have been easily discovered. For this lapse Congress blames the Atomic Energy Commission.

The AEC decided to dispense with a loyalty check of the nominees for fellowships because of the danger of establishing a precedent. Alter all, the students are not government employees, nor are they working in a field affected by security. If they ever become government employees, or if it should be decided to entrust them with secret data, then they would be subjected to a loyalty test.

The AEC showed its lack of dogmatism on this decision bv suggesting an inquiry before the Joint Congressional C ommittee on Atomic Energy. This was arranged, and only two out of the eighteen-man body showed up! it was only when one of the Communist students hit the headlines that the matter got a Congressional airing.

Another atomic scare was manufactured over the loss of a pinch of uranium 235. Headlines screamed the news all over the Union, and the first news stories carried the implication that spies had made off with the stuff. Anticlimax came when the FBI declared that the pinch could not possibly have been stolen.

This appeal to ignorance and hysteria is not without motive. A body of opinion is anxious to decivilianize the Atomic Energy Commission. The campaign against David Lilienthal is perennial, in spite of the fact that he is one of the few men equal to this complex job at modern America’s disposal. It has been necessary time after time to fight for civilian control. Some of the military want the atom bomb in their custody; they want to run the Commission, instead of being consultants. The scares on the fellowships and the uranium loss are intended by some of the publicists to make out a new case for military control.

Far from being evidence of the lack of security consciousness of the civilians, the loss of the minute pieces of uranium 235 was evidence of awareness of security. For it was the AEC which reported the facts to the FBI. As for the fellowships, clearly the AEC should be relieved of the responsibility, and the selection of students be put in the hands of a National Science Foundation.

Acheson in action

Secretary Acheson is measuring up to his great responsibility. The way he cleared the decks for the lifting of the blockade of Berlin was admirable. He grasped the two nettles in our foreign policy, China and Spain, with deftness, and his ringing statement on the eve of his departure for Paris is worth pasting in many hats:—

“There is perhaps nothing more important in the world today than the steadiness and consistency of the foreign policy of this Republic. Too much depends on the United States for us to indulge in the luxury of either undue pessimism or premature optimism. . . . We cannot allow [our foreign policy] to become subject to the fluctuations produced by a raising and lowering of the international temperature. To accept these fluctuations as a guide for our policy would be to put in foreign hands a large measure of control over the conduct of our foreign relations.”

Consider this counsel as background for a look at the agitations over Spain and China. Granted that it was unwise to remove the heads of missions from Spain at United Nations behest. But the agitation in behalf of Spain is not intended merely to correct this wrongheadedness. A triple combination of interests has been hard at work in the lobbies of Congress to bring Franco into the Atlantic Pact. The Roman Catholic Church, of course, always has been pro-Franco. The military want Spain as an ally in case of any irruption in Western Europe. Cotton interests want to sell their surplus to Franco.

The French chief of staff is quoted as saying that in the event of war, the Russians could easily take over Spain by landing a couple of parachute divisions. As to the cotton interests, Spain is looked upon as a heavy buyer of cotton, provided she can get an Export-Import Bank loan. Secretary Aeheson scattered all These advocates with his May 19 statement to the press, which had all the logic and smoothness of a state paper.

On China, Secretary Acheson has perhaps been a trille too negative. While “waiting for the dust to settle,”he contents himself with lambasting the cause of intervention in China which a sizable element in Congress has embraced. In off-the-record moments his comments on Chiang Kaishek are blistering. He gives chapter and verse of the way that Chiang has been an American arms carrier for the Communists.

But the pro-Chiang Senators refuse to accept any of the testimony they hear. This is explicable partly on the grounds of bewilderment and chagrin over the historical change in China, partly because China provides them with a stick with which to beat Mr. Roosevelt. One of the curiosities of the times is to see economizers such as Senator Bridges anxious to pour good American money, and billions of it, into the China sinkhole.

How do we meet the deficit?

The prospect of a larger than anticipated deficit in the administrative budget for the fiscal year 1949 worries both the President and Congress. But they have different prescriptions. The President still insists on higher taxes, Congress on lower expenditures. In the argument the wisdom of the President’s opposition to lower taxation last year is more and more apparent. But he is not on the same ground in seeking this year to remedy the mistake and add to taxes. Experts feel that the current economic readjustment might turn into a real recession if more money is taken away from the nation’s taxpayers. But the alternative of paring expenses is none too easy to realize.

There are a number of schools of Congressional thought on ways of economizing. One is the 5-per-centers. These would automatically cut 5 per cent off the dozen or so appropriation bills which still have to be enacted. This is rough justice. Rut the advocates of it, led by Senators Bridges and Ferguson, confess that selective pruning is an impossible task. Congress does not know enough about departmental operations to use the knife judiciously.

Next is Senator Russell’s idea of a slash of 3 billion dollars as an amendment to the final appropriation. In practice this might not prove to be as arbitrary as the 5 per cent method. Then there is the idea of Senator Byrd, the Senatorial watchdog of the budget, who has devoted his Congressional service to retrenchment in and out of season. He wants Congress to repeal the exemption of the military agencies, the Veterans Administration, and other bureaus from the current Federal personnel ceilings, and to fix new over-all ceilings.

The Administration defends the budget

There is no support for any of these moves from the Administration. It is the Adminisi ration’s contention that before the budgets go to the Hill the departmental requests already have been cut to the bone. In this respect the President was much more stern than is generally supposed. He cut the military budget, which for the fiscal year 1950 amounts to 34 per cent, from 30 billion dollars to 14.3 billion, resisting pressure from Congress as well as the military establishment. Another point is that about 75 per cent of the budget is more or less in the realm of the untouchable. This consists, in addition to the military budget, of interest on debt, international obligations, and veterans’ programs.

Nor is there much that can be done, the Administration says, with the remaining 25 per cent, or 10 billion dollars. The major items in this bracket include social welfare, health and security, natural resources, administrative expenses.

Truman’s appointments

Recent Presidential appointments have been bewilderingly varied. Mr. Truman could not have chosen a more capable man than John J. McCloy to succeed General Clay. The President showed a sense of statesmanship in this appointment, as he has done in other diplomatic appointments. On domestic appointments, however, Mr. Truman’s taste is strange, if not Pendergastian. His idea of what constitutes competence for the Federal judiciary is pretty low. And though he pilloried the Congressional quest for subversives in government as a red herring expedition, he has named as Secretary of the Navy one of the pioneers in launching it, Francis P. Matthews of Nebraska.

Perhaps he had nothing to do with the Matthews nomination. Perhaps this was the choice of the new Secretary of Defense, Louis Johnson, about whose vaulting ambitions much is nowadays whispered. “ Win with Lou in ‘52” is the slogan. The President, however, earns whatever discredit there may be in Federal appointments.

The of the Capital

The mood of the Capital is hardening into a fractiousness that is as difficult to melt as the President’s stubbornness. Compromise is supposed to be the breath of politics. In the Eighty-first Congress, however, there is little compromise. The result is that almost the only progress in a session half finished has been on international business.

What is badly needed in the Senate is passage of Senator Myers’s bill to set up a legislative timetable. The Senate drones on with little regard to the clock, and on one occasion spent a whole day listening to Senator Johnston’s filibuster against a bill to provide a sales tax for the District of Columbia. There are those who long for the return of the “reactionary” Eightieth — on the ground that, after all, it did legislate.

Still, in spite of the legislative-executive impasse, liaison is improving between individual Congressmen and committees and the departments. In this respect the State Department is unremittingly patient and informative. It has had to go to immense lengths in satisfying the quest for knowledge on pending legislation and pending conferences. And some of the curiosity is unsellable. Senator Watkins of Utah and Senator Donnell of Missouri never tire of asking questions in the form of windy orations.

Both of them got permission to attend the hearings of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Chairman Connally, who has a pettish disposition, bore with them for a while, then broke out in anger; whereupon Watkins retired in high dudgeon. He never came back, but he left this record: out of a total of 1234 pages devoted to hearings, Watkins and Donnell consumed 455 pages, or 36.8 per cent. Yet they are neither members of the committee nor witnesses. Congressmen are entitled to be kept in the know, but the action of Senators Watkins and Donnell lends point to the suggestion that there should be a more formal way to secure information — for instance, through periodical seminars.