Gratitude

"In granting aid to others, we must bear carefully in mind that each of us is the guardian of his own interest, and we must not expect . . . sentiments and manifestations of gratitude . . ."

So said the State Department's top planner, George Kennan, last week in a speech in Manhattan. Oklahoma's Senator Elmer Thomas plainly disagreed with Kennan. Thomas felt that as a representative of the great and generous U.S., he deserved a little special gratitude from Sweden, a nation which had received some $79 million of his country's Marshall aid.

Senator Thomas, junketing in Europe as a member of a Senate committee to investigate foreign aid, dropped in on Sweden a few days ago to sample its gratitude in person. He left in a huff. "There is one country," he told reporters last week, "into which we have been pouring money. It ignored us completely. If they get one dollar in the next [appropriations] bill, it will be over my protest." The country in question, he added, had "helped no one in the last 135 years."

"You," answered Sweden's Liberal Stockholms-Tidningen promptly, "are a boor and a liar, Mr. Senator." Apparently, it went on, Mr. Thomas failed to find in Sweden "the extreme reverence that he deems due an American Senator . . . That is really too bad." The Liberal Expressen got pretty boorish itself: "The U.S. Senate is certainly a high assembly, but it is also a dumping place for all sorts of quaint characters from the darkest corners of the union." It must be, mused Expressen, "pretty dark in Oklahoma."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.