U.S. Aid and the Pendulum
Progress towards American aid for Europe has recently been so outstanding that a check was bound to come. So far it is not very serious. The Emergency Aid Bill has been passed, but the authorised maximum expenditure of $597,000,000 was supposed to cover China besides France, Italy and Austria. Since the amounts for each are not fixed, political obstruction has begun with arguments as to the proportions in which the money is to be allocated. These arguments, at the all-important appropriations stage, will subject the patience of Europeans to yet another test. The first cuts were made before the President's signature was on the Bill. At the same time, storm-clouds was gathering round the President's proposals for long-term aid to Europe. The main debates cannot take place until the New Year, by which time the still bigger cloud of the Presidential election will be rising and spreading. But the most dangerous issue of all, affecting as it does both foreign aid and the domestic political situation, is the control of inflation. The Republicans have already fired a shot across the bows of the Adminis- • tration by trying, unsuccessfully, to rush a very limited anti-inflation measure through the House of Representatives on Monday. The President's own much more formidable programme, announced a month ago, has yet to be embodied in a Bill ; but a letter signed by three of his assistants has been delivered to the House banking and Currency Committee, and it does not promise concessions. It makes it clear that prices will be controlled at the wholesale level, and that .the Department of Labour must set up a new committee to fix wages in industries in which prices are to be controlled, but that no new agency will be formed to administer the whole corpus of measures. All this will produce strong Republican reactions, and not all of them will be unreasonable. American Governments have never shown much conviction in the application of domestic controls. There is plenty of trouble to come, but there is no sign of a slackening in the determination of the Administration to -get aid to Europe.
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