One for Our Side

Senator Tom Connolly, head of the Foreign Relations Committee, has promised to get the Administration's Point Four program out on the Senate floor soon. His group passed the bill last week by an 11 to 0 vote, and restored the original 45 million dollar appropriation from which the House had snipped 20 millions.

Even the full appropriation is not too much for this measure, one of the most important parts of President Truman's foreign program. He announced the plan in his inauguration address last January, when he requested aid and technical assistance for backward countries throughout the world. At that time several United Nations groups began preparing methods of distributing any funds that they might get. After the State Department asked for such plans, the U.N. last spring appointed a special commission to investigate further what was needed and where. During the year expectant financially-troubled countries applied to us for technical and financial help under the program. These nations and the U.N. have been waiting for America to make up its mind.

Helping poor nations can sometimes keep them from looking to the Communists who are always willing to promise everyone an even share of the world's goods. But Point Four, of well executed, can be successful in a more positive way. It can partly raise living levels in deprived parts of the world, open new markets for the world's production and new sources of raw material. In return for aid the U. S. stands to gain politically and economically--and might store up some good will where good will for the West is now in low stock.

Point Four is not, as critics of the program claim, a one-way conveyor belt to have-nots: nations that participate must do their share of the financing, and of the labor. Nor does it have to be imperialistic: the State Department has promised to keep business out of foreign governments' affairs, pressure from the National Association of Manufacturers notwithstanding.

To attract private investors, the administration has asked that the U. S. government guarantee to some degree all non-public American investments under Point Four. Although the House removed this enticement from the bill, the Senate Banking and Currency Committee is now working out a guarantee system.

Both parts of Point Four should be passed, without further cuts or more restrictions. Many nations--too weak, perhaps, to have a say in the cold war--are waiting for America to toss bread upon the waters.