"Golden Opportunity"

In straggling confusion, a column of 500 determined college students wound up Capitol Hill one day last week and trooped into the House Office Building. The homemade placards the marchers carried proclaimed in screaming yellow their mission: "U.S. Students Demand Passage of the Marshall Plan."

Their demand was superfluous. There had never been any doubt about voting some large-scale aid to Europe. Last week, after seven months of planning, seven weeks of committee hearings, eleven days of grueling debate, passage in the Senate was already assured. The climax had come at exactly 5:05 p.m. the day before, when Ohio's Senator Robert Taft planted his feet squarely behind his Senate desk, thrust both thumbs into his pants pockets, and launched into a 90-minute attack on ERP's most vulnerable point: its size.

Challenge. In flat, precise tones Bob Taft methodically marshaled his arguments. ERP, said Taft, could never be justified on purely economic grounds. Neither was it "aimed at opposing any Communistic military attack." The only use that Taft could see for it was as a weapon "against the advance of Communist ideology throughout the world." For that reason, Taft was prepared to vote for it. But he warned that the initial outlay asked by the Administration might cause serious trouble in the U.S. economy. He urged that the figure for the first twelve months be sliced from $5.3 billion to $4 billion.

Then Taft aimed a blow at the heart of ERP. He saw no need for any moral commitment to continue ERP for more than its first year. "If I vote for the bill it will be with the understanding that there is no such obligation. . . . They have agreed to our help--yes. Fine. They have not agreed so far as I know to anything to our advantage. . . ."

Response. All through Taft's speech Michigan's Arthur Vandenberg had sat slouched in his chair, doodling with a pencil. Now he sprang to his feet, the color rising in his face. "I should think," he said, "[that] the Senator from Ohio would join me among the very first. ... If he found that those with whom we were cooperating were doing what we had contemplated and hoped for ... he would be the first to say it was a golden opportunity to continue this program."

At first Bob Taft stubbornly held his ground: "I don't recognize a moral obligation beyond one year." Then finally he backed down. Said he: "I do not know that the Senator and I disagree so widely. If conditions a year from now should be the same as they are now, if the recipient nations had cooperated and the program had proceeded, I should probably vote at that time exactly as I shall vote today."

18 Days. As Taft sat down, Vandenberg sensed that the time was ripe for a showdown. By a vote of 56 to 31, the Senate rejected Taft's amendment to reduce

ERP's first-year appropriation to $4 billion. Then, at five minutes past the next midnight, 31 Republicans joined 38 Democrats to approve the Economic Cooperation Act, 69 to 17, in just about the form in which Vandenberg had originally proposed it (TIME, March 1). Bob Taft, who had a train to catch, did not even stay for the final vote--he was paired for it.

There might be more trouble for ERP in the House, but it would be of a "constructive" sort, aimed at helping to shape a foreign policy both stronger and more coherent. But aid to Europe would pass--and probably soon enough to undercut at least some Communist propaganda in the Italian elections next month. The House, which was still planning to combine ERP with all other foreign aid projects in one omnibus bill, was heading for an April 1 passage. That gave Arthur Vandenberg 18 days to iron out the last differences in conference.

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