Free Trade in Scholars?

Like Omar Khayyam's vintner, the U.S. is asking itself: what can it buy abroad one half so precious as the stuff it has to sell? The particular stuff the U.S. wants to sell is some $6 billion worth of surplus war goods overseas. The countries that could use it can't pay for it; the best they have to offer is credit.

In the Senate ex-Rhodes Scholar James William Fulbright of Arkansas suggested a two-way traffic in education. Said he last week :"I just started to thinking one day . . . [how] friendship between China and ourselves was greatly influenced by the Boxer Rebellion." The indemnity China paid to the U.S. supported a similar plan, sent many Chinese on scholarships to the U.S. "The result," says Fulbright, ". . . was to make them actually feel that we were civilized . . . and interested in their welfare. That kind of feeling is fundamental to not having war every 20 years."

Fulbright proposed that the $6 billion be turned over to the State Department, which would give about $20 million a year to U.S. students for studying abroad and for foreign students to study in the U.S.

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