The Battle for Peace Terms

Henry Morgenthau's devastating plan for Germany (TIME, Oct. 2) was dead--or was it? Franklin Roosevelt took a sideswipe at the U.S. press for even reporting it.

At his press conference, the President announced that he had written a letter to Foreign Economic Administrator Leo Crowley. The letter was a full set of instructions for FEA policies when the war in Europe is over, including a section on "Control of the War-Making Power of Germany."

As if there had been no Cabinet battle over the Morgenthau plan, almost as if there had been no previous New Deal plans for Germany at all, the President urged FEA to accelerate its plans for the economic control of postwar Germany. FEA should see to it, the President said, "that Germany does not become a menace again."

Asked a newsman: Did this mean that the Cabinet split was healed?

That was all a newspaper story, replied F.D.R.

"No foundation to the stories at all?"

Every story that came out, said the President with some asperity, was essentially untrue in its basic facts.

The newsmen, recognizing an old Rooseveltian device, let the matter drop. Once again, the President had used the press as a whipping boy; once again he had thrown the ball to a new Governmental agency after three others had quarreled. To bottle up further leaks, the President ordered Secretaries Morgenthau and Stimson not to talk, and both called off scheduled press conferences.

But the highest sources in Washington insisted that the Morgenthau plan was not only still alive, but would yet turn out to be the final plan, though modified. According to these sources, his plan had been "bought" by Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at Quebec, despite heavy objections from Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. After the hubbub has died down, Henry Morgenthau's proposals supposedly will then reappear as the official U.S. proposal.

The Pros Speak. Also last week the presidents of the five largest U.S. engineering societies,* representing 70,000 professional engineers, put forth their own plan to strip Germany of its war-making powers but yet keep sound its civilian economy, so important to Middle Europe.

Their four points called for the elimination of Germany's synthetic oil and synthetic nitrogen plants, the stripping-down of steel production by 50%, the destruction of the Nazi aircraft industry.

These four points, said the engineers, could be enforced by an uncomplicated set of nonpolitical controls and "would afford ample insurance against war."

* Malcolm Pirnie, American Society of Civil Engineers; Chester A. Fulton, American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers; Robert M. Gates, American Society of Mechanical Engineers; Charles A. Powel, American Institute of Electrical Engineers; George G. Brown, American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

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