American Foreign Policy
Inured as British people have become to the hitches incidental to the American democratic process, there must have been some who felt an unpleasant shock when Senator Taft—an honest man and no fool—announced that he could not vote for the ratification of the Atlantic Pact. It could be conceded at once that this would not be enough in itself to justify serious doubts about American inten- tions. By comparison with the opposition to most of the earlier measures for co-operation with Europe, opposition to the Atlantic Pact has been slight. What is more, such argument as has arisen is primarily based on a technicality. Senator Taft, and others, think the new American arms programme, on which $1,400 million will be spent in the first year alone, will increase rather than decrease the possibility of war with Russia. They therefore tried to insert a clause into legislation on the Pact to the effect that, in voting for it, they did not accept an automatic commitment to vote for the arms programme. They made this attempt in the debate on the Pact, and not in the debate on the arms programme itself, because the Pact requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate, whereas the arms programme—a money measure—only requires a simple majority. Consequently it is easier for a minority to hold up the Pact itself than to hold up the arms programme. In itself this manoeuvre was an admission of the weakness of the opposition. Then, while the debate was still on, President Truman came out with a striking new statement of the need to maintain aid to Europe and to forestall any possible decline in European faith in American inten- tions. It should have been enough. And yet who would say that all doubts have been killed? How can they be killed without assuming that men like Senator Taft and Senator Flanders are completely unrepresentative? There is only one way, and President Truman pointed it out. He said that each American must be con- vinced, on a basis of full knowledge and careful reflection, that the present policy of the Government is right. There is every reason to hope that that conviction will come in due course. But that requires European faith in America as well as American faith in Europe. The consciences of men like Taft arc a barrier to both.
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