Aid & EDC

Intermittently all week John Foster Dulles and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wrestled with one of the nation's thorniest and most persistent problems of diplomacy: how to get France to ratify the European Defense Community treaty. Although both forces had a common goal, the signals between the State Department and Capitol Hill were at times thoroughly confused.

Behind closed doors, the committee met to vote on an amendment to the foreign-aid bill offered by Majority Leader William Knowland. The amendment called for drastic action: it would cut off military aid to France and Italy on Dec. 31 unless they ratified EDC or agreed with other NATO powers on a satisfactory substitute. New Jersey's Republican Senator H. Alexander Smith, acting as chairman, was sure that the committee would approve Knowland's proposal. Then Smith checked with Secretary Dulles.

Anxious Calls. The word from the State Department was not at all what Smith had expected: Dulles found the Knowland amendment unacceptable. In view of that Smith suggested a delay in the committee vote. California's Knowland, who operates with the finesse of a Patton tank, roared his protest: the Senate is coequal with the executive branch and he was tired of giving in to the State Department.

Nonetheless, Smith managed to stave off a final vote. Then he made some anxious telephone calls to Dulles. The result: when the committee was called back into session, Dulles and Under Secretary Bedell Smith, although thoroughly busy with Geneva, were both present to tell why they objected to Knowland's amendment. The reason was simple: it would tie their hands too closely.

If there had to be such an amendment, one already approved by the House was more acceptable to State. Introduced by South Carolina Democrat James P. Richards, it would deny only the funds to be appropriated this year, allowing France and Italy to continue using the millions already appropriated but not yet spent.

Increasing Impatience. After half an hour of back-and-forth before the committee, Arkansas' Democrat William Fulbright peered at "Beedle" Smith and asked: "Look here, General, speaking as an official of the Republican Administration, which do you prefer, the Richards amendment or this?" With soldierly precision Smith replied: "There just isn't any question about it. We prefer the Richards amendment."

Without another word, Fulbright moved that the committee substitute Richards' amendment for Knowland's. Voting with Fulbright for the motion were Republicans Smith, Alexander Wiley and George Aiken, Democrats Walter George, Theodore Green, John Sparkman and Guy Gillette. On record against it went Republicans Knowland, Homer Ferguson, Bourke Hickenlooper and William Langer and Democrat Mike Mansfield. Dulles had won his point, over the opposition of his own party's Senate leaders.

At week's end, back from his flying trip to Paris, Dulles sat down once more with the Foreign Relations Committee and with other leaders on the Hill, both Republican and Democratic. This time he was working on a different phase of the same problem. If the French Parliament does not ratify EDC at its present session, due to end around Aug. 15, said Dulles, then the U.S. and Britain should grant limited sovereignty to West Germany (see FOREIGN NEWS). This would mean that the Senate and possibly the entire Congress would have to be called back into special session this fall to vote its approval. Would this be agreeable?

Congressional leaders of both parties, increasingly impatient with the U.S.'s European allies, said it would be.

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