CONGRESS WILL NOT WRITE BLANK CHEQUE

Northern Advocate, 6 September 1947, Page 7

CONGRESS WILL NOT WRITE BLANK CHEQUE

(Received 12.30 p.m.) WASHINGTON, September 5. THE chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee (Senator Vandenberg) said today it was up to President Truman alone to summon Congress for aid to Europe and to justify the summons by producing facts. Senator Vandenberg warned that Congress would not act in the dark and would not write any blank cheques. He dashed any hope that the Republican Party would recognise the crisis described by the Under-Secretary _ (Mr Lovett) on Wednesday, and that the Republican leaders of the House and Senate would call Congress into session.

He pointed out that many members were now abroad and would not return before mid-October. Senator Vandenberg’s statement came after an outbreak of accusations from other Congressmen that the State Department was artificially generating a European crisis for political purposes. London despatches describing a meeting today between the British Foreign Secretary (Mr Bevin) and an American Congressional delegation in which he gave it as the British view that the proposed scheme for redistribution of U.S. gold was an integral part of the Marshall Plan left no room for further scepticism in Washington as to the seriousness of the proposal, which Mr Bevin first advanced in his address to the Trade Union Congress. Foreign policy officials generally took a serious view of the atmosphere created by Mr Bevin’s linking of his gold redistribution ideas with the programme of European self-help. b They pointed out that the plan would have a rough enough passage in Con-

gress under the most favourable circumstances without having it pictured to potential opponents as an “all American grab bag.” As compared with the first reaction of surprised bewilderment, the official attitude today turned to resentment and indignation, says the New York Times correspondent. Mr Henry Morgenthau, junr, former Secretary of the Treasury, branded the scheme as “cockeyed and ridiculous.” The New York Herald Tribune says whatever its effect in Britain, Mr Bevin’s statement is a mere crass blunder in America.

The paper’s financial writer says there is general agreement in Wall Street with the idea that gold should be distributed more widely. However, it is considered that distribution can be achieved only by the normal flow of production and world trade and not by an artificial abracadabra which would give gold to other nations only to have it flow back to the United States because of a disequilibrium of trade elsewhere.