Where Does Aid Go?

If the Administration was ready to drop an optimistic other shoe for the benefit of airpower alarmists last week, there was no such confident posture on an equally important question: Has the time come for a new look in foreign aid? For weeks there has been talk that a thorough review of U.S. assistance abroad was in the offing with stress on two problems: 1) How broad shall economic aid? and 2) How will it be distributed? Congress has shown a willingness to mark time on 1957 foreign-aid appropriations until the review is completed.

Last week President Eisenhower invited key House and Senate leaders to his White House study for a two-hour discussion with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Instead of a long-range program, the men from Capitol Hill got an alternative: approve a flexible, $4.9 billion 1957 program now; after that undertake a more thorough joint executive-congressional study.

Broad View. Next day Secretary Dulles flew off to the meeting of the NATO ministerial council in Paris. phrasing mark-time generalities on his program for expanding the scope of NATO (see FOREIGN NEWS). Questioned on foreign aid at the presidential press conference later in the week, Ike also seemed anxious to keep to broad terms. But he insisted on one point: "The present program has been built up on what we believe to be a minimum basis," and should not be cut. He hoped to see a commission formed that would start from this basis, report by about Jan. 20 its feeling on the big question: "In the years to come, where is U.S. aid going?"

Ike picked one place that it is not going: through the United Nations. The President rejected Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge's suggestion that a larger share of U.S. aid be channeled through the U.N. Explained Ike: theoretically the idea is sound, but practically the U.N. is much too muddied by international politics for the Lodge idea to work. Our efforts, he said, must be as of now largely on a "bilateral basis." In Paris Secretary Dulles was unwilling to channel aid through NATO lest the act be misconstrued as resurgent Western colonialism. By rejecting these two outlets, the Administration was laying down some ground rules for Ike's long-range review.

Rigid Fix. Into his 30-minute press conference, Eisenhower crammed some other solid answers. Acknowledging a Washington debate over whether or not the U.S. is headed for inflation, he reaffirmed an earlier statement backing the Federal Reserve Board's decision to raise interest rates to member banks although the President's own administrators opposed the decision (see BUSINESS). In an off-the-cuff opinion, he suggested that Illinois' Senator Everett Dirksen's proposal to limit income taxes to a 25% ceiling might get the Government into "a very rigid fix." He revealed that he had persuaded retiring NATO Commander General Alfred Gruenther not to retire "for a long time, but I couldn't do it forever."

When a reporter sought comment on the Chotiner investigation (see below), the President laid down a two-prong code of ethics for the Government people under him. Every citizen must receive courteous treatment, he said, but at the same time, if anyone comes claiming privileges on the basis of a White House connection, "he is to be thrown out instantly."