Out of the Woods

Congress approved the Bretton Woods monetary agreement last week. Thus was completed (except for President Truman's signature) the first long U.S. step toward participating in international agreements resulting from World War II.

Congress was clearly in step with the nation's march toward world cooperation. Even Ohio's Republican Senator Robert Alphonso Taft, who led a diehard fight against Senate approval, admitted that the country was now internationalist (but he termed it "pathological internationally").

Senator Taft fought vigorously and well for most of four days. In the clinches he pulled several cliches ("we will just pour $6 billion down a rat hole"). But his infighting was good: he had carefully studied the involved Bretton Woods proposals, which many a Senator obviously had not. At times, Senator Taft had Administration proponents stuck on fine points of the agreement's $8.8 billion monetary fund and $9.1 billion international bank structures (TIME, July 23).

Bob Taft, Montana's Burt Wheeler, Illinois' "Curly" Brooks and Nebraska's Kenneth Wherry almost succeeded in delaying Senate action until mid-November. They were joined, surprisingly, by Minnesota's Republican Joseph Hurst Ball. The vote against delaying (52 to 31) was too close for Administration comfort. It found B2H2 (Ball, Burton, Hatch, Hill) split for the first time on an international issue, with Ohio's Harold Burton in Senator Ball's corner.

Then, one by one, the Senate majority crushed amendments that would have crippled or lessened U.S. participation. On the final vote, the count was 61 to 16 for approval. Next day the House, which had previously passed the bill by 345 to 18, roared its unanimous approval of the minor technical changes the Senate had made.

President Truman had what he wanted: an example of U.S. faith in world cooperation (the U.S. was the first of the 44 signing nations to approve the year-old Bretton Woods pact). This week the Senate readied another example: ratification of the San Francisco Charter.

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