AMERICA ACCUSED OF PLAYING POLITICS WITH EUROPE’S MISERY

Evening Star, Issue 26103, 17 May 1947, Page 12

AMERICA ACCUSED OF PLAYING POLITICS WITH EUROPE’S MISERY

WASHINGTON. May lfAfisert.iiig that the Adniiaiatratioii tvas “ playing politics with Ewi'opo a misery,” the former Vice-President, Mr Henry Wallace, advocated a 150,-000,000,000-dollar peace programme oi investments and exports throughout the world. He said the only hope for peace was a major effort to restore world economy by American resources. ’ ‘ The Truman doctrine may not, lead to war, but it will never lead to peace,” lie said. The American programme should aim at, first, restoration of the living standards of Europe and Asia to pre-war levels, which involved an investment of 5,000,000,000 dollars a year for five years; secondly, the raising of the living standards of Eastern Europe to those of Western Europe at a cost of 5,000,000,000 dollars a year for five years; and, thirdly, raising the Asian living standard to European levels, which would require 1,000,000,000 dollars of American exports a year for i 0 years. Mr Wallace said that the programme would restore the world’s shattered economy on a long-term self-liquidat-ing basis and approach the world’s needs from the standpoint of all humanity. He declared that the Truman doctrine’s exclusion of countries within the Russian orbit from American food reconstruction materials was “ the cruellest kind of warfare —warfare against people in need.” Such, a policy must sooner or later lead to }var. “ There is abroad in America to 7 day a spirit of meanness, selfishness, shortsightedness, and fear, which is a betrayal of every principle for which the war was fought,” Mr Wallace concluded.