EMERGENCY AID IN EUROPE

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25304, 2 October 1947, Page 7

EMERGENCY AID IN EUROPE

| ACTION BY CONGRESS f COMMITTEES TO MEET NEXT MONTH WASHINGTON, September 30. !y Senator A. H. Vandenberg, chairman |of the Senate Foreign Relations Comgmittee, announced to-day that he had "summoned the committee to meet on November 10, to consider the proposals for emergency aid to France, Italy, and Austria. 1 “The immediate question is one of 'elemental human survival in a free said Senator Vandenberg. The House Foreign Affairs Committee would begin work about the same time. Senator Vandenberg explained that the committee would not meet until Si November 10 because the State De? partment’s concrete proposals would not be ready until November 1. It was learned authoritatively to-day that the State Department is dismayed at the prospect of a serious delay in obtaining approval for the emergency aid of 580.000,000 dollars proposed by Mr Truman. State Department officials fear that Congressional approval will not be ob? tained until mid-January at the earlL est, which would be two months after France, Italy, and Austria have reached complete dollar bankruptcy. They fear, too, that the final decision on the Marshall plan will be deferred long after March 31.

Four committees are concerned, and so far only one has actually been summoned. Moreover. Senator Vandenberg has made it clear that he*is not prepared to consider emergency aid separate from the full Marshall plan. The State Department view is that emergency aid should be dealt with urgently, but that the Marshall plan should be studied more ! carefully. The Washington correspondent of the Associated Press reports that the United States Government is considering a proposal by the Department of Agriculture to buy dried fruits, citrus juices, fats, oils, dried beans, jpeas, dried eggs, and canned vegetables rat market priees and to sell them to starved European countries at cut-rate prices.

A Cabinet food committee, he adds, reported to Mr Truman last week that -the United States could spare €50,000,000 dollars’ worth of these foods. iPrices would be fixed at tffos© which foreign countries could afford to pay. It is authoritatively said in London that Mr Truman’s decision not to in? elude Britain in the stopgap aid programme for Europe causes neither surprise nor disappointment. A Treasury spokesman said that Britain’s own recovery programme entirely discounted any United States : financial aid, and she was hot even L counting on help from the Marshall plan.

London financial experts said that whether Britain survived depended mainly on whether deflationary trends could be made to replace the present inflationary trend in both Britain and .the United States. Stop-gap aid would i merely tend to increase the inflationary trend in the United States. The latest forecast is that there will •he an autumn Budget, mainly confined ■to limiting dividends—based on the frlast three years’ average—to please the workers, and followed later by re? duced food subsidies and an increased T’ange of the purchase tax to reduce consumer spending power.