The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

BRITISH stock in the Capital had declined so rapidly in the twelve months before the Korean crisis that those who think of Britain as an indispensable ally in the struggle for world order were visibly distressed. The low point was the manifesto on European unity by the Executive Committee of Britain’s Labor Party.

The British seemed to be surprised over the consternation that the document caused in the American Capital. But our reaction was explicable both against the background of British non-coöperation and in the context of existing circumstances.

Released on the eve of the appropriations hearings on the third year of Marshall Aid, it came as a serious embarrassment to ECA Administrator Paul Hoffman. Mr. Hoffman took the blow philosophically. Some time ago, in fact, he forecast “something" from Britain that would toughen his task of getting the ECA authorization through the Appropriations Committees.

“Remember last year,” he said, in effect, “when Mayhew said that Britain was doing very well, thank you, and had quite recovered, and when MacNeill followed him up by saying that all that was wrong with the Mayhew speech was that he should not have said it at that time. What I had to do then, and doubtless what I shall have to do again, is to tell the Appropriations Committees that I can speak more candidly about Britain than British spokesmen.”

However the Labor Party document, generally ascribed to Dr. Hugh Dalton, may have affected Britain’s appropriations prospects in Washington, Prime Minister Attlee held his support at home. He was able to defeat a motion put by the opposition calling on the Government to reconsider its decision not to take part in the discussions of the Schuman Plan for the pooling of the heavy industries of Western Europe.

The free-enterprisers in Congress, who argue that capitalism and socialism cannot combine, wanted to withhold ECA funds going into nationalized industries. They were beaten. But no sooner had that battle been won than Dr. Dalton came out and demonstrated the validity of the free-enterprisers’ argument. He was referring particularly to the Schuman Plan, which in Washington’s eyes is the first tangible step taken in Europe to develop a unity on the only possible basis of partial surrender of national sovereignty.

The Laborites acknowledge that “international planning of iron and steel is the key to economic unity,” but “nothing less than public ownership can ensure this fully,” and planning will be “worse than useless” if it is inspired by private profit. Officialdom in Washington almost felt the cold water over its head.

By the same token the isolationists were full of glee. “Who’s isolationist now?” they cried, and those who had severely berated the British as a bunch of economic planners began to praise them for the logic of their planning. Of course, they said, Britain had to be Britain-first, just as America has to be America-first.

The chagrin in internationalist ranks was extreme. Even European capitals, where socialists are that in name only, used to josh Washington for its blind faith in the copartnership of economic planning and free enterprise in supranational undertakings. It was their jest that British socialists had more friends in Washington than anywhere in Continental Europe. The reaction in official Washington, therefore, was one of being turned upon by a friend.

The machine inside the party

The excuse has been made that the manifesto was merely a party document. Until the advent of Labor in office, the ministry was always supreme. You could never have imagined Lord Salisbury, for instance, taking any back talk from the Conservative Association. The revolution occurred when the Labor Party came to office in 1924. Though Ramsay MacDonald was allowed to choose his own Cabinet, the Labor executive dictated policy, and brought minister after minister on the mat whenever there was any deviation. The same system seems to prevail under Clement Attlee.

The relation between Labor Parly and Labor Government in England is by no means unique. All over the free world the party machine is increasing in influence. The result is felt in the hampering of leaders, except when there are national or coalition governments.

A Lloyd George or a Poincaré really led. Their successors are hemmed in, and seldom can take an initiative. This accounts for the frustration of, in particular, the British, who have not since the war taken the kind of initiative that amounts to a departure in policy.

The Alliance was in jeopardy

Public opinion forced the United States to approach the issues of the post-war world in global rather than particular terms. In Britain, on the contrary, the world organization got only lip service, and true foreign policy was centered on the region. For America the North Atlantic Alliance was a revolutionary departure, the dimensions of which were not comprehended in Europe.

When Dean Acheson was in Europe, he built up this edifice. There were two improvements. One was a “balanced collective force,” or a single North Atlantic military organization to which each participant would contribute according to its ability. The other was a committee of deputies to sit continuously with a view to the dovetailing of military and economic outlays.

These developments seemed to be jeopardized by the Labor Party’s manifesto. It hit America so hard that the New York Herald Tribune, a leading internationalist newspaper, felt obliged to warn that the document will “compel re-examination of the whole basis on which the Western alliance rests.”

This led to Senator Taft’s proposal of an alternative foreign policy. Taft would renounce the Alliance, replacing it with a sort of Monroe Doctrine which would extend America’s protective arm over Europe. He felt this would restrain Soviet Russia. But Senator Taft’s argument was effectively rebutted by the counterargument that the Europeans would make a deal with Soviet Russia if all they could expect from America was “liberation.”

The British were certainly providing ammunition for Taft. He could have said not only that he never felt we could live together with British socialism, but that we cannot fight together. But Britain’s prompt support in the Korean crisis put the whole relationship in a new light.

The new weapons

The pledge of a balanced collective force did not quite assure the European mind that the Europeans would be protected rather than liberated. They doubted the ability of the United States to produce the protection. What is of more satisfaction to them is the report of the progress made in developing new weapons.

The weapons are antitank and antiaircraft guns, air-borne delivery mechanisms, and atomic projectiles. Tanks can be air-borne; they dispense with seaway crossings. The proximity fuse and radar can now be fitted into guns and planes, so that low-flying craft and high-flying jets can both be picked off automatically. “Bugs" still exist in all these weapons, but they are rapidly being ironed out, and in two years some of the weapons will be in mass production.

It has been said that the news on the new weapons partook of propaganda. Actually the announcement was due to the expressed desire of the Armed Services Committees to devote funds to Air and Navy at the expense of the Army because Air and Navy were “the services of the future.” This view brought from General J. Lawton Collins an account of the relation of the Army to new weapons. It then had to be expanded because of the stir that the Collins statement created.

The problem now is how to use the information wisely for propaganda purposes. To some the news may cause disquiet. If, it is argued, the weapons won’t be ready for two years, surely the Russians might incite further aggression. This possibility and the actual outbreak in Korea are what make Western Europe uneasy.

The answer to that is that the Western world still has a considerable edge on Russia in atom bombs. This stockpile, in other words, will be the Western cushion till the new weapons start to come out of the factories. It would be folly, of course, to say that offense will remain static, but it is comforting, at any rate, to know that defense isn’t.

Acheson is cross-examined

In the past, Cabinet members were restricted to testimony before committees of Congress, appearing before Congress as a whole only on more or less ceremonial occasions, and then very rarely. Secretary Hull, for instance, spoke to Congress when he came back from Moscow in 1943 with the first agreement on the United Nations. When Secretary Acheson returned from London, however, he was allowed by the President to subject himself to questioning in front of the whole Congress. It was an innovation, and the legislature moved to the Library of Congress for the occasion.

The question period was not particularly successful, partly because of the poverty of the questioning, partly because of the scarcely concealed irritation of Mr. Acheson. The Economist observer said it sounded like a shareholders’ annual meeting of a company that had had a bad year. This was an exact description. Secretary Acheson was reporting on a successful meeting in Europe of the company, but the shareholders were obsessed with “the misfortunes which had befallen the company’s Chinese branch.”

Their questions under this head irked the Secretary visibly. The whole passage-at-arms illustrated once again the rift between the Secretary and Congress. The President is said to have observed that the experiment bore out his own feeling that no good would come of it. He has the natural feeling of a President that this sort of thing negates the constitutional division of powers.

Nevertheless an innovation, no matter how unfortunately started, is apt to catch on, and there were plenty of legislators who thought that the question period in Congress should become a permanent feature of our institutions. No wonder. Most of the backers think of such meetings as a method of putting administrators on the spot.

They want to use the technique to smoke out information on the matters that are being aired by Senator McCarthy and the Republican isolationists. The next person they chose for a colloquy was not even a department head, but the subordinate of one—Mr. J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI. One can imagine the scene if his chief had allowed him to appear.

Mood of the Capital

The mood of the Capital is strongly back of Truman’s firm stand on Korea. It was felt that there was a limit to being pushed around, and the support given to the President’s decision to oppose the aggressor has given a new fillip to his leadership.

On the domestic front, however, the President will not be able to make any headway with the Fair Deal this session. There is no hope for the Brannan Plan in agriculture. Socialized medicine is out the window. Taft-Hartley repeal has faded into the background. Civil rights legislation is shelved. More social security there will be, but the Republicans have title to most of the credit.

What had a real grip on the Capital before the supervention of the crisis on Korea was McCarthyism and the real and phony scandals created by it. The real scandals were made to look phony and the phony scandals were made to look real. In former times Senator McCarthy’s relation with the Lustron Corporation might have made the Senator more discreet and the people more critical. But just the opposite effect seems to have been produced.

The Lustron revelation was made to appear the evil work of Mr. McCarthy’s traducers—they were trying to hide the dirty work that is held to have gone on in the executive departments. Look, cried the McCarthyites, at Amerasia, at Remington, at Lee. The expulsion of the two last from government service was held up as a demonstration not only of the Communist-ridden executive branch, but also of the ineffectiveness of the Loyalty Review Board.

This latter charge is a reflection on men who give hours of their week to conscientious service. It is headed by an eminent lawyer who is a dyedin-the-wool Republican, Seth W. Richardson. He has a rule about employees who have been Communists in their youth. He treats the afi liation as intellectual wild oats, and does not hold it against them if their adult career has been without blemish. If they have strayed from the orthodox path when they have grown up, then what they did in college days that is of a questionable nature counts against them.

It seems a sane and sensible rule. But Congress thinks otherwise. It laid down a rule for ECA employment that membership at any time in any group on the Attorney General’s list is a disqualification.

As to Amerasia, two grand juries and two Congressional investigations have gone into this case, yet the hue and cry will certainly be maintained till November. In the meantime the public business has suffered, and Congress presented, under McCarthy’s domination, the spectacle of what the Louisville Courier-Journal called an “oafs’ carnival.”The only relief during this interval was the conscience declaration of the handful of Republicans under the leadership of Senators Margaret. Smith and Tobey, and the later statements of Governor Warren and Governor Duff.