WHY IS MARSHALL NOT MORE FRANK

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25309, 8 October 1947, Page 6

WHY IS MARSHALL NOT MORE FRANK

US. FOREIGN POLICY

[By WTUuIAM L. SHSUBB in the New York "Herald-Tribune- September (Reprinted by arrangement.)

Americans as a whole and a lot of other people around this troubled globe must nave rejoiced last week- at the wonderful news that the United States at last had decided to embark on a great diplomatic offensive to establish a just and decent peace. It was, as so many good folk said, about time. For nearly two years during which our foreign policy was directed by Mr Byrnes the world’s most powerful, wealthiest and best-fed land had seemed to many to be staggering around on the defensive, leaving the initiative to Russia. Now, if the headlines were true, and as Secretary Marshall’s pronouncements indicated, the United States was going to strike boldly out on its own. We wanted peace and security and prosperity for every one, everywhere. And rallying arotind the United Nations, we were going to try to win over all the other nations of good will to our righteous cause. It was certainly good news, and one fervently hoped that our new diplomatic offensive had been well thought out in advance, its aims carefully defined and its strategy and tactics wisely determined. This had not been the case with the so-called Truman Doctrine, which was • sprung, on the country and indeed-on the Congress without warning because it had been concocted in such haste and consequently with so little thought.

Questions About the Plan There were, to be sure, many questions which sprang to an American’s mind about his country’s new “dynamic plan,” as one headline put it, and its effect upon our foreign policy. Secretary Marshall answered some of them last week and more answers would be forthcoming as the session of the U.N. Assembly progressed. Moreover, the Secretary of State, m his broadcast last Sunday, emphasised that the Government would “try in every possible, way” to keep its citizens informed of the great issues and what it thinks and does about them. His sincerity on this point can not be questioned. Yet one can be pardoned for assuming that it will take a minor revolution in the State Department before it can be depended upon to inform the public frankly and continuously on what it is up. to—and why—in carrying out American foreign policy. General Marshall, for instance, solemnly declared last week that support of the United Nations was the “cornerstone” of our foreign policy and indicated that it always had been. If that is so, some citizens must still wonder why the Truman Doctrine bypassed the U.N. and, indeed, why the Marshall plan took no notice of the world organisation. I had heard it ably argued at Lake Success that the Marshall plan for helping Europe might have been more effective and been Tess a potential burden to the United States had we availed ourselves of the U.N. and its already established agencies. At the very least, the U.N. might have succeeded in bringing in the satellite States of Eastern Europe, so that more of their resources and less of ours could have been utilised for Western Europe. On the other hand, a Marshall plan within the U.N. could have been torpedoed by a Soviet veto. Another Contradiction?

Puzzled Americans, of whom this observer is one, will also seek clarification from General Marshall and the State Department about the apparent contradiction between his forthright assurance of last Sunday that the United States would continue to work for peqce within the structure and the charter of the United Nations and the suggestion advanced last Sunday by Hamilton Fish Armstrong, the eminent

editor of “Foreign Affairs,” . might be advantageous it of the UN- agreed 'anong thenisrijr in more explicit terms than those'iS in the Charter, to carry out the nS 1 nisation’s principles and purnow. more efficient methftds than - L1 the Charter itself provides.” This proposal, which is said to to, the support of Senator VandeiS and other influential figures in AnS l can foreign affairs, would seen, many to circumvent the U.N ana ■ deed render it utterly useless. 7-®' vainly it is in stark General Marshall’s frank utterance uS week that, in the view of the Ame-i Government, “There is no need t* major revisions of the Charter o. t a change in the general characto. . the United Nations.” „ Finally, at the risk of being mi. understood in these rather mtoierT, times, I should like to suggest that Government, and especially th. Department, could do a service to nd American people if it treated them . adults, as grown-ups knowing the of life, in imparting information ato , the course of American foreign affm ’ That we have certain ideais 75 noble purposes in our conduct > foreign relations goes without swin? We believe in our own democracy aS cherish our freedoms and wish o tb peoples could be equally lortuiuta And we sincerely desire a decent just peace for the whole world. ““ But, like every other nation human beings in this world, we p urs S a foreign policy not only in the i nI( ? est of noble ideals but m the forth™ ing of Wjfiat we believe are our„2; best national interests. Needles, d say, what is in our own best intermf. is not always in the best interests 2 other nations. “ ™

More Frankness Asked Secretary Marshall’s denartnw. could be a little more frank in exrE' ing these things sometimes. After Si there is nothing wrong, nothing t. id ashamed of, in having national inhS dress them up in highfalutin huSLJ as noble ideals. Lately in the preset the friendly nations of Western Fr/ ope I have noticed an annoyance a what they term “American self-rise,? eousness.” . shouldn’t our people be frankh told that our policy makers havp ?s d^L it ci s . in , th =.“ art interests of t£ United States to "contain” Russian en pansionism and the spread of munism to Western Europe and tto Mediterranean? And that to aermS plish this is the real reason why w. are furnishing arms to Turkey Greece, and not because we kid ouT selves that we axe thereby saving £ mocracy in these undemocratic lands? That we are actively interveninsin Greece, where we have in fact, m Walter luppmann said, temporarily usumed the real control of that mo. posedly sovereign State? That for a good long time we have intervened in the internal affairs of Italy and that it was primarily our intervention, as Joseph Alsop con. Armed from Rome last Monday—though the fact was well known to all alert observers—which last June induced Premier de Gasperi to throe the Communists out of the Government and substitute a Cabinet mads up of Christian Democrats and Right Wing independents whose majority in a democratically elected parliament is slim indeed? Our foreign policy, despite all the fine public pronouncements, operates also on- this kind of practicallevei, as it must in the great diplomata: struggle against Russia and the spread of Communism. There is no reason that I can think of why this aspect of it should not be frankly presented to the citizenry.