Twenty Senators

Early one night last week, the doorbell began ringing at a fashionable old apartment in Stoneleigh Court, a stone's throw from Washington's Mayflower Hotel. The callers were admitted by Kansas' 76-year-old Senator Clyde Reed, ushered in with a cautious admonition: "Now boys, this is not a drinking party." The warning was unnecessary. The men who gathered in the handsome, antique-filled room had come with a dead serious purpose.

They met in an effort to frame a Republican approach to the European Recovery Program--an approach which would differ somewhat from Senator Vandenberg's participation in the so-called bipartisan foreign policy. Republicans wanted to make sure that whatever total amount was appropriated for ERP was really necessary, and that the administration of ERP would be in competent hands. They also wanted to find a way in which the Republican Congress could put its label on the plan.

The Inheritors. The moving spirit of the gathering was Majority Whip Kenneth Wherry, the ex-isolationist from Nebraska. Among the conferees were such diehard inheritors of the old isolationist tradition as Ohio's John Bricker, Illinois' "Curley" Brooks, Missouri's James Kem. In all, 20 Republican Senators turned up. Except for California's Bill Knowland, all were men who had been stirring restlessly under the bipartisan policy. All had been growing increasingly critical of Arthur Vandenberg's willingness to work with the Administration.

When newsmen heard of the meeting and took a look at the guest list, they thought they saw the ghosts of the little group of irreconcilables who kept the U.S. out of the League of Nations. There was some excuse for the parallel.

But within 48 hours, Ken Wherry was indignantly on the defensive. "We are not going to form an anti-anything bloc," he protested. "It was just a meeting to see what should be done about the Marshall Plan. This was not a move to split the party but a meeting to see what could be done about avoiding differences of opinion on the floor."

As more details seeped out, there seemed to be justification for Wherry's defense. After hours of discussion, opinion had crystallized on one point: the State Department could not be trusted to handle either the dollars or the distribution of U.S. aid. Except for half a dozen bitter-enders, most were willing to accept the Marshall Plan in principle--but with some Republican trimmings.

Substantial Change. What that meant was becoming increasingly clear. Even Arthur Vandenberg was privately convinced that the Administration's bill could and would have to stand substantial change. He had already publicly tipped his hand by agreeing with a suggestion of World Bank President John J. McCloy. The proposal: that ERP include a formula for "progressive credits"--i.e., make the amount of aid extended dependent on the rate of the economic recovery.

That was one amendment that would be sure to please the potential rebels. There were others. The money to be spent on ERP would probably now be fixed somewhere between the $4 billion which Bob Taft had urged as the top limit, and the $6.8 billion Administration figure which Vandenberg still tacitly supported. The administration of ERP would be handled by a separate agency, with the State Department limited to passing on political issues.

With such changes written in, most of the 20 Senators would go along. There were bound to be some furious debates for the record on such ticklish points as socialism abroad. But none of the compromises seemed likely to cripple ERP. Some of them might help. And all of them would give Republicans something to tell the voters about next fall.

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