22 AUGUST 1947, Page 4

Senator Styles Bridges is Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee

in the United States and as such deals with all financial proposals. When he went to his local New Hampshire railway station recently to buy a ticket for Washington the booking-clerk observed in that companionable way so much more common on the other side of the Atlantic: " I don't know what the hell yOu think about this Marshall plan, but I don't understand it, and by God I don't think you understand it." The Senator stalled diplomatically, and the ticket-seller (he was rather a strong-mouthed ticket-seller) went on: " Well I think we've done about enough for the rest of the world and Europe. I see we've spent twenty billion dollars on them since the war ended and they're not a damned bit better off than when we started. It's about time we used our money to do things in this country." If you want the average American, there, no doubt, he is. The story is told by Time, the well-known and widely circulated American weekly, which uses it as the start of an article showing why America should still do more for the world and Europe. Happily it is a forcible and very convincing article.

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