A Faint Umbilical Cord

Public hearings on the European Recovery Program ended last week. Before they did, all kinds of citizens had come forward to speak their minds. George P. Murdock, a Yale anthropology professor, thought ERP should be abandoned in favor of "the greatest Red Cross drive in history." Joe Scott, president of the League for an Undivided Ireland, wanted a guarantee that England would get no money to perpetuate Irish partition.

Jolt. Big Labor sounded off, too. Officially, Big Labor was all in favor of ERP. C.I.O. President Phil Murray cried that it would be "well-nigh criminal" to reduce ERP's appropriation by a billion or more. But when it came to the points where ERP touched home, the C.I.O. sang a different tune. Joe Curran, boss of the National Maritime Union, charged that the proposed sale and charter of 500 U.S. Liberty ships to Europe would cost 500,000 American jobs. He urged not only that the ships be kept, but that at least 60% of ERP supplies be transported in U.S. bottoms.

The day after the last testimony was taken, the State Department sent Congress an updated tabulation of what the Administration hopes to spend on all foreign aid programs through fiscal 1949. The jolting total: $9,333 million. Major items in addition to ERP: $1.4 billion for government and relief in occupied areas; $570 million for aid to China; $430 million for Greek-Turkish aid, Japanese-Korean reconstruction, Trieste aid and inter-American military cooperation; $133 million for Philippine war damage.

Slash. This week, Senator Arthur Vandenberg's Foreign Relations Committee sat down to write the bill it will present to the Senate. One thing was sure: ERP would not be administered by the State Department. Confided one Senator: "The people in State have no business competence and a great talent for bitching things up."

But Colorado's Eugene Millikin, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said reassuringly: "We'll get a bill, and contrary to most superficial impressions, it will be a good bill. It will have a faint umbilical cord to the original State Department program, but in its important respects it will be our bill."

The committee hoped to have the bill, cord and all, on the floor by March 1.

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