The American Case Develops
One thing was always clear about President Truman's historic message to Congress on the subject of Greece and Turkey and that was that this ,tep was not tightly taken. Developments in the past fortnight confirm that impression. Mr. Dean Acheson and Mr. Will Clayton have testified before the respective Foreign Relations Com- mittees of the Senate and the House of Representatives with the confidence engendered by a cast-iron brief. The documents pre- pared by the State Department and based on observations on the spot have clearly given the members of Congress an impressive account of the activities of the Greek rebels and of the aid they are receiving from outside Greece. They have also given details of . the various types of outside pressure exerted on Turkey. If there were any unbelievers who still could not swallow the unpleasant truths which these documents revealed, •they seem to have changed their minds after being addressed in private by the American Ambassador in Athens. In fact there is no doubt of the ordinary American's realisation of the gravity of the situation or of the Administration's determination to improve it. What is in considerable doubt still is the determination and ability of both to sustain through many years the burden which the United States has now so unwillingly taken up. On this side too the evidence is piling up. Mr. Acheson pro- tested—even overprotested—that American troops would never be sent to Greece or Turkey, thus demonstrating that there are lengths to which conviction will not be pressed. And outside the State Department there is every kind of qualification from the proposals of Senators Pepper and Taylor that aid should be confined to Greece and be of a non-military nature, to dark suspicions of the influence of "British oil" in Turkey, accusations that the State Department is hiding something, uneasiness about the effect on the United Nations, and the stunned disgust of Colonel McCormick. Much still depends on American ability to learn and remember all the essential lessons of world responsibility.
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