The Testing Time

Outside the quiet conference rooms in the State Department building leaves floated down from Washington's elms, scratched along the sidewalks, skittered under the feet of pedestrians. Inside, the Western world examined its problems and planned its plans (see INTERNATIONAL).

But beyond the guarded rooms, two

U.S. voices spoke with a candor that told more of international fact than all the diplomats' cautious communiques. At the National Press Club, Michigan's Arthur Vandenberg was delivering what he knew might be his valedictory. The X ray had revealed a lesion on one of his lungs and soon he would enter a hospital, possibly for a major operation.

In eloquent terms, Vandenberg restated his faith in the international cooperation of which he was a major architect. "The task is well begun," said Vandenberg, "but it is only just begun. The testing time must now be met, and time is of the essence. Successive stopgaps will not do . . . There are definite limits to the American resources which we can safely invest in foreign aid ... These limits must not and will not be overreached."

EC Administrator Paul Hoffman also coupled praises for Europe's progress with a warning. "In all candor and at the risk of being undiplomatic," he said, "our problem is not only to get Europe on its own feet but off our backs."

Neither meant that Europe was to be abandoned. But both meant that EGA dollars should and would be limited to the work of reviving Europe's production. Europe's own problem was to build its production up from there; it was also to distribute and to sell what had been produced. That meant breaking through the self-imposed barriers to trade.

It was that realization which lay behind two historic acts last week. By devaluing the pound, Britain took a long step toward freer trade and wider sale of her goods. By extending the reciprocal-trade program with no strings attached (see below), the U.S. had shown that it was also prepared to face the new demands of the testing time.

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