Carry The Torch Tonight For ERP

The "Save the Marshall Plan" rally will sweep into Sanders Theater this evening to climax a hasty but determined movement to influence Congressional action on the European Recovery Program. In a remarkably short time, the "Save ERP" campaign has spread to 35 colleges and universities in New England. Local committees have hustled out hundreds of letters, petitions, and telegrams to Congressmen, and in at least 20 of those schools, rallies similar to tonight's are planned.

The several committees in these New England colleges have a job to do and they must do it quickly. In opening the ERP debate yesterday on the Senate floor, Senator Vandenberg urged his colleagues to pass the bill within two weeks. His plea for speedy action has been sharply underlined by the rapid turnover of events during the past week across the Atlantic. But the determined Congressional opposition to vital aspects of Marshall's proposals will not necessarily be jolted into line by news of the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia or the ominous pressure put on Finland by the Soviets. One of the "Save ERP" Committee's points "reconstruction not relief"--is still in decided danger from such influential Congressmen as Senators Taft and Ball, who want to slice the program drastically, for reasons of "economy." If this ill-advised scissoring succeeds in turning the recovery program into a parsimonious dole for Europe's needy, then Mr. George Weller, whose letter appears elsewhere on this page, may be right. Such a "European Relief Plan" would actively encourage Communists, whose greatest fear is a courageous program of reconstruction.

Another group has shied away from helping to frame the best possible legislation because it is afraid the final result will somehow be less than perfect. Others complain that the whole recovery problem should go to the United Nations, where they hope that the Russians would be persuaded to agree with us. Still another powerful school of thought holds that we must wield European aid as a political weapon first and foremost, and that any possible economic benefits to the nations concerned are of relative unimportance. And there are only a few steps between this position and the belief that a so-called "preventive" war can alone preserve us.

These blocs must be the target of the New England student committees. As Vandenberg pointed out in his speech, the current legislation does not claim to be a cure-all, nor does it promise immediate results. But something will be passed, good or bad. The Harvard-Radcliffe Committee has rightly seen that its job is to hammer away at this Congress, in an attempt to keep the ERP bill within the broad and constructive frame of Marshall's original suggestion.