Another Slice

The first steps had been taken quietly, not to say timidly, but last week it was plain that U.S. foreign policy had taken on a new responsibility. The Administration had at last decided to go to the defense of another big slice of the world against the assaults of Communism.

That area was Southeast Asia; the prescription for it would be like the military and economic aid program which had saved Greece and Turkey. The State Department, though it still refused to take any interest in saving strategically vital Formosa (see FOREIGN NEWS), had finally reached a key decision as to other threatened lands: if the Communists were to be kept from Burma, Siam, Malaya and even Indonesia, they must be stopped now in Indo-China.

In Paris, Secretary of State Dean Acheson came to quick agreement with France's Foreign Minister Robert Schuman on deeding additional grants of power to the young French-blessed Emperor Bao Dai. Then Acheson flashed Washington to speed a $15 million program for military aid to the 180,000 French and native troops already locked in battle with the Indo-Chinese Communists. (The money had long been available in the $75 million that Congress had pressed on the Administration seven months ago for containment of Communism in Asia.) Within a few weeks the first shipment of tactical aircraft should be on its way for close support of anti-Communist troops.

But military aid was, at the moment, the lesser part of the battle, reported ruddy California Publisher Robert Allen Griffin of the Monterey Peninsula Herald last week, after a two months' survey of Southeast Asia for the State Department. Griffin and his six-man team thought the wobbly non-Communist governments could be well buttressed within 15 months. The cost: $60 million in economic help--to be administered by a small crew of U.S. engineers and technicians. Indo-China should get $23 million for agricultural and public-health improvements, he said. About $11 million apiece should go to Indonesia, Burma and Siam, and $5,000,000 to Malaya. There were no legislative problems about the money: it could come out of the $100 million EGA appropriation for the "general area of China" which Congress was expected to send to the President this week.

Dollarwise, these sums were small when compared to the billions already invested in Europe and Asia. But in terms of responsibility and challenge--finally seen and finally accepted--they represented a crucial commitment by the U.S.

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