U.S. AID FOR EUROPE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 111, 23 February 1950, Page 5

U.S. AID FOR EUROPE

NEED AFTER END OF PLAN MR ACHESON’S VIEWS (N.Z.P. A.—Copyright) WASHINGTON, Feb. 21. Europe would still need United States aid after the Marshall Plan ended in 1952, said the United States Secretary of State (Mr Dean Acheson) to-day. He told the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives: “I do not think that all American aid will end for the world and certainly some parts of Europe in 1952.”

The extent of future economic help, he added, depended on the success of America’s efforts to close the dollar gap. The 'United States must continue to encourage the import of foreign goods or provide other countries with dollars, even if .this policy hurt at home.

Mr Acheson said: “If we are succesful some nations may. need only spot aid to help them over rough places.” Mr Paul Hoffman, the Marshall Plan administrator, to-day predicted a 10 per cent, increase in the dollar earnings of the Marshall Plan countries and an 11 per cent, decrease in their dollar requirements for 1950-51. Mr Hoffman was appealing to a joint Congressional committee for 2,950,000,000 dollars for the third year of the Marshall Plan.

Mr Hoffman based his appeal on ,wo considerations:

(1) It would be a cruel waste to jeopardise the progress already made under the Marshall Plan by not finishing the job. (2) Congress should take, into account the need.. for winning “the titanic struggle between the free nations under American leadership and the dangerous forces of Soviet Communism. *

“Simply Have To Win”

Mr Hoffman added: “If we want to avert a third world war, with its awful threat of the hydrogen bomb, we simply have to win this struggle,” Mr Hoffman said. He said that the Economic Co-opera-tion Administration looked for an increase in the dollar earnings of the Marshall Plan countries through exports, tourist visits, and invisible services. It looked for a decrease in dollar requirements through dollar savings, gains in domestic production, and additional supplies of needed items from non-dollar areas. •* Mr Hoffman said that the E.C.A. would withhold not less than 600,000,000 dollars from the appropriations “to encourage the aggressive pursuit of a programme of liberalised trade and payments.” Part of the sum would be used to support the proposed European payments union, and the remainder would be made available directly to qualifying countries. “Only as an effective payments union is put into operation will the full amount of the 1950-51 appropriation be made available to the participating countries,” he added. Mr Dean Acheson .addressing the Joint Committee, said: “The Kremlin is pursuing its course with efficiency and with signs of increasing boldness, using whatever means seen appropriate to it in a given situation.

Adequate Level , “The United States must continue Marshall aid at an adequate level, and the free world must obtain dollars to pay for needed American exports. It was in the American national interest to supply those exports as a necessary part of the buildings of a successfully functioning political and economic system. The only reliable way to do this was to increase 'United States imports from abroad.”f Mr Acheson said that whatever could be done to increase imports contributed to the success of the European Recovery Programme. The blocking of the Kremlin’s design for world domination lay in carrying out such a policy, and in American determination to do it, however long it took and whatever it required. Mr Acheson said that the United States favoured closer economic association among European countries, including Germany. The people of Europe must be convinced that the United States would not falter or lose interest in co-operation.