Blood As Well As Treasure

While the Senate debated ERP (see above), New Jersey's old Charley Eaton and his House Foreign Affairs Committee set to work on a monumental project: to combine all U.S. aid programs in one omnibus bill. The committee worked in a mood of impatience--an impatience directed chiefly toward the State Department.

George Marshall appeared before the committee to plead for another $275 million in military aid to Greece* and Turkey. These new funds, he said, are urgently needed to "discourage more overt [Communist] aggression," particularly against Greece. Added Marshall: "The situation is serious, but not without hope."

Committee members had little quarrel with this request. But they were disturbed by the rigidity of George Marshall's thinking. In executive session with the committee, the Secretary of State continued to insist that the main battle against Communism would have to be fought in Western Europe. Because the U.S. could not now, any more than in World War II, fight with equal vigor everywhere, it must consider the eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Far East as theaters of containment only. Marshall stubbornly refused to think of China in any other terms. So far as he was concerned, meager economic assistance had to suffice for the Chinese.

Blindness & Apathy. The committee was not convinced. It thought that China needed military as well as economic assistance. Last week it got plenty of support for this opinion. William C. Bullitt, onetime Ambassador to Russia, came forward to testify that the Nanking government was in immediate need of at least $100 million in outright military aid. To boot, the U.S. should dispatch to China "the best man that can be found"--say, General Douglas MacArthur (see below) or General Mark Clark.

Too Late. Telling testimony came from Lieut. General Albert C. Wedemeyer, whose report on his visit to China last summer is still under lock & key at the State Department. Two years ago, said Wedemeyer, economic help might have been enough for China. "Today, it's too late. ... I wouldn't send $200 million to China unless I sent military aid to protect it. ... We must think in terms of blood as well as treasure. ... If we don't take appropriate steps, we are going to pay in blood. I don't think dollars alone will stop the spread of Communism anywhere in the world."

When Wedemeyer was done, no doubt remained among Foreign Affairs committeemen that their omnibus bill would contain I) a broad and bristling statement of U.S. global intentions, and 2) a commitment of $570 million to China, with at least $100 million earmarked for arms.

*Along with more aid, Greece would soon get a new U.S. Ambassador. President Truman last week relieved scholarly, ailing Lincoln MacVeagh from the post he had held for eleven years, appointed him to the less demanding job of Ambassador to Portugal. MacVeagh's successor in Greece had not yet been chosen.

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