Gray Prospect

Gordon Gray, Special Assistant to President Truman, released Monday his "Report to the President on Foreign Politics." The Gray report surveys all the American aid programs since the war--the Marshall Plan, Point Four, the various assistance programs for Asia--it surveys the success of these programs, and recommends methods to continue them. Gray's program is a little superficial, but it is basically sound.

Gray points out that economic aid has been, and can be, a remarkably effective weapon against Communism; he describes the way U. S. aid enabled Europe to "progress far towards a self-sustaining position." And he concludes that the U. S. must broaden its aid program still further it if is to keep up the good work.

The report's proposals are not new. It calls for increased loans and grants to underdeveloped areas, for expanded technical assistance programs, for lower tariffs and harder currencies and the encouragement of private investment in foreign countries. These are fine and virtuous measures; they outline the only way to keep our foreign friends economically healthy and enthusiastically non-Communist.

What Gray does not tell is how we can do the job without lowering our economic standards. He skirts the problem of who is going to pay the bills, and with what. Gray admits that rearming the West is going to make the financing of his aid programs just that much harder; he also notes that building up undeveloped areas will be a tough and expensive hob in itself. Gray also believes that Europe is not yet ready to fend for itself; there is a lot of evidence to indicate that even this moderate position may be too optimistic. European recovery has been good but not spectacular, and there is still much to be done.

Gray suggests no way by which the U. S. can carry this increased load of aid without having to cut into its own economy. This is the annoying detail which is perhaps best left out of an idealistic report. But it is the annoying detail the U. S. must face. If the U. S. is to carry out the proposals of the Gray report--and our national security may depend on those proposals--it had better be prepared to give plenty, and to give it cheerfully, for as long as our perspective allies need aid to remain solvent and to remain allies.