Far-off Frontier

It was 5:37 p.m. on July 21, 1949 when the vote came, and the U.S. Senate ratified the North Atlantic Treaty. With the vote the formal frontier of U.S. defense leaped across 4,000 miles. It now ran from the windswept tundras of Norway, across the low-lying plains of The Netherlands and Belgium, down the scarred Rhine valley to a dust-hot road barrier outside troubled Trieste.

In the cluttered little Senate chamber where Clay and Webster had listened to the promulgation of James Monroe's chesty Doctrine 126 years ago, the atmosphere was tense. Every Senator but Louisiana's Allen J. Ellender was present.

As their time ran out, opposition Senators took on an air of desperation and despair. "We will be making the mistake of our lives," cried Missouri's Forrest Donnell. Nebraska's Kenneth Wherry raised an atomic cloud over the issue: "A treaty supersedes a law. Are we committing ourselves ... to share the atomic bomb?" Cried Ohio's Robert Taft: "It is not a peace program, it is a war program."

The chamber was deathly still as the clerk began the roll call. The first, and critical, vote was on the reservation proposed by Senator Wherry, which would insist that the U.S. had no obligation to furnish arms to its new partners. It was defeated, 74 to 21. Two other reservations were knocked down. Then, by a majority of 82 to 13, the Senate approved the North Atlantic Treaty.

As he signed the instrument of ratification this week, President Harry Truman declared: "This treaty is a historic step toward a world of peace . . . but it is only one step." One hour later, he submitted the next step to Congress. He asked for $1,450,000,000 military aid to the U.S.'s friends (see INTERNATIONAL).

In the accompanying bill, $1,093,450,000 was allotted to the pact countries--$938,450,000 in military equipment and technical assistance (half to come from surplus stocks) and $155 million in materials and machinery to help Europe's own arms production. Another $300,580,000 would go for military help to Greece, Turkey, Korea, Persia and the Philippines.

Said Harry Truman: "The U.S. has no intention, in the event of aggression, of allowing the peoples of Western Europe to be overrun before its own power can be brought to bear. This program ... is a tangible assurance of our purpose."

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