WORLD’S MOST AMBITIOUS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 14516, 10 November 1947, Page 3

WORLD’S MOST AMBITIOUS

NEEDS AND RESOURCES OF TWO CONTINENTS UNITED REACTIONS OF EUROPEAN COUNTRIES VARY CONSIDERABLY - U.S. FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE TO HEAR DETAILED STATEMENT London, Nov. 9. There is to be a joint meeting- in Washington tomorrow of the Foreign Affairs Committees of both Houses of Congress to hear a detailed statement from Mr Marshall on his aid to Europe programme. He was hard at work today* putting the final touches to the short-term as well as the long-term aspect of his proposals. The American Ambassador to London, Mr Lewis Douglas, has arrived by air in New York to help in preparing the aid programme. Mr Douglas will be staying in Washington at least until after the special session of Congress tomorrow week. The special session will have before it the Harriman Committee’s report recommending how the United States should implement the Marshall offer. First reactions to the report are now coming in. The New York Herald-Tribune calls it “a blueprint for the most ambitious undertaking the world has ever seen in peacetime, uniting the needs and resources of two continents. ’ ’ There has so far been no official comment in London, but today’s London newspapers give the report great prominence. French Government circles received the report favourably, but the leading Communist newspaper in Paris repeated the argument that the Marshall offer was the instrument for subjecting European countries to United States capitalism. Many of the Rome newspapers underlined the report’s recommendation that no political pressure should accompany American aid. The Deputy-Prime Minister of Greece, M. Tsaidaris, expressed the wish that help would come quickly so as to prevent an economic collapse. The Dutch Prime Minister, it is reported, said he welcomed the Harriman Committee’s suggestion that half the amount to be advanced by the United States next year should be a gift rather than a loan. Danish political circles are reported in Copenhagen newspapers to have expressed surprise* that the committee should have scaled down the estimates by the Paris economic conference on the help that would be needed in the next four years. The Paris estimate was nearly £5,000,000,000. The report recommends that it should be nearer £4,000,000,000.