AMERICAN AID TO EUROPE

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25346, 20 November 1947, Page 7

AMERICAN AID TO EUROPE

SENATE COMMITTEE MEETS MORE INFORMATION SOUGHT (Rec. 7 p.m. WASHINGTON, Nov. 18. The Senate Appropriations Committee decided unanimously to-day to take an inventory of United States food supplies and crop prospects before taking action on President Truman’s request for 597,000,000 dollars for interim aid for France, Italy and Austria. “We are not going to be stampeded into action before we know where we are going,” said the committee’s chairman. Senator Styles Eridges (Republican, New Hampshire). Senator Bridges added that the committee wanted detailed estimates of expenditures from the funds sought. The decision to take an inventory was made at the committee’s first meeting since its return from its six weeks’ European tour. Senator Bridges emphasised that the decision should not be interpreted as hostility to the foreign aid programme, but it was merely an attempt to develop “a sound approach.” The administration was emphasising speed, but was not furnishing details of its plans. A committee member, Senator Clyde Reed (Republican. Kansas) said that a drought in five major wheat-pro-ducing States indicated that their production would fall from about 676.000.000 bushels this year to 300.000,000 next year. “At the present rate of exporting we shall clean the United States out by June 30, and we shall have no normal carry-over,” he said.