Ext 6116/46(S) 'Secret Weekly Political Intelligence Summaries, nos 356-416, August 1946-November 1947' [‎27v] (54/978)

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States 11 must assist the war-stricken
countries to recover,” although he refuses
to call a meeting of the House Appropria
tions Committee, as requested by the
President (see Summary No. 411), until the
Administration gives it what he calls
“ something to work on.” His opposite
number in the Upper House, Senator Styles
Bridges, has announced from Berlin that
he is “ fully in accord ” with the Presi
dent's foreign assistance plans, although
he is strongly opposed to the dismantling
programme for Western Germany. On the
other hand, Mr. Charles S. Halleck, the
Republican ‘ ‘ floor leader ’' in the House
of Representatives, predicts that the Presi
dent’s estimates of French and Italian
needs will be £ ‘ shot full of holes ” before
the special session is over, and Mr. Joseph
W. Martin, the Republican Speaker, has
intimated that his party may draft a
foreign aid programme of its own. It is
also suggested by Senator Ralph E.
Flanders, the chairman of a sub-committee
which has been investigating high prices,
that the Republicans might produce an
independent policy to deal with inflation.
The Republican leaders are apparently
testy that the President has not taken
them more completely into his confidence
on the price question, and it will probably
be this aspect of the programme which he
lays before Congress on the 17th November
which will provoke the most controversy.
A significant vote of confidence in
American foreign aid^ policy by one of the
European nations most likely to benefit
from it is seen to have been recorded in the
French municipal elections. According to
the New York Times, the success of the
R.P.F. constitutes “ a victory for the
Western world as opposed to Russian
totalitarianism ” in that the most impor
tant feature of the election platform was
General de Gaulle’s “ stand in favour of
France, freedom and the Marshall plan.’’
Nevertheless, it is conceded that “ while de
Gaulle embraces the Marshall plan for
France he is strongly against applying it
to Germany,” and that this and his opposi
tion to the Anglo-American plan for
German reconstruction “ could easily com
plicate negotiations for a German settle
ment.” Discussion on the form which those
negotiations should assume has meanwhile
been given a new turn by the suggestion of
Mr. Byrnes that a full international con
ference to frame a German treaty should
be held early next year, and that, if Russia
then failed to withdraw from Eastern
Germany, she should be arraigned before
the Security Council and possibly driven
out by force. This the former Secretary of
State advances as the lesson of his own
experiences in dealing with the Soviet
Union both in his book, Speaking Frankly,
and in a speech delivered at Columbia,
South Carolina, on the 22nd October. In
the book he reveals that even Mr. Roose’^t
began to entertain serious doubts about
future Soviet-American relations, and that
a deterioration actually set in between the
signing of the Yalta Agreement in Feb
ruary IMS and the late President’s death
in April. Left-wing commentators suggest
that Mr. Byrnes has made future Soviet-
American co-operation more difficult than
ever by publishing these revelations, and
the Detroit News demands that the State
Department now formally repudiate the
new " course of action ” which he proposes.
On the home front this week the lime
light has been held—not always deservedly
—by the inquiry of the House of Repre
sentatives Committee on Un-American
Activities into Communist infiltration into
the film industry. In this the testimony so
far has been noteworthy more for the
bewitching array of Hollywood person
alities by or against whom it has been
presented than for the evidence which it
has adduced of a dangerous Communist
conspiracy. The more responsible news
papers are unanimous in their condemna
tion of the Committee’s performance,
although the producers, actors and writers
whose reputations are being impugned
have not been left entirely defenceless. A
whole battery of expensive lawyers,
including Mr. Bartley C. Crum, who is
more usually retained to plead the Zionist
case in New York, has been hired to repre
sent them, and the unfailing Senator
Pepper has also come forward to vindicate
them.
Less spectacular than these hearings,
although more important, has been the
announcement of Senator Taft that he will,
after all, be a candidate for the 1948
Republican nomination. In making this
announcement on the 24th October Mr.
Taft said that he had been encouraged by
many offers of support throughout the
country. (He has just completed a 12,000-
mile speaking tour of the West). Desig
nating Representative Clarence J. Brown,
the Republican National Committeeman
from Ohio, as his campaign manager, he
added that, as a result of his heavy Con
gressional duties in Washington, he would
have to leave the task of electioneering for
the time being to the local Republican Com
mittee and to other friends in his native
State.