AID: What Money Can Buy

As the 85th Congress, in its final hours last week, passed a $3.3 billion foreign aid bill, many were the critics prepared as always to judge the wisdom and virtue of each congressional session by the sheer size of this key appropriation. Such people measure influence abroad by dollars spent, and were thus easy targets for those who regard foreign aid as simple bribery, and are angered every time a beneficiary does not toe the line.

But foreign aid has come a long way from the postwar days when the simple criterion was to reward friends and to deny foes. The money doled from the U.S. till last week, to an odd set of customers, still had the same general purpose as the weapon once known to Europeans as "the cavalry of St. George."* But on both sides of the cold war, foreign aid was now devoted to far more complex purposes.

The four Soviet submarines that appeared in the English Channel last week, apparently bound for Egypt, were a sharp reminder of an important Russian addendum to the original doctrine, i.e., help your enemy's enemies. Other powers were beginning to make their own distinctive contributions to the theory and practice of foreign aid. Items:

¶ In Africa, General Charles de Gaulle sought to sell his new constitution to Africa by threatening to cut off economic aid to those who voted no.

¶ West Germany planned to make $125 million in long-term credits available to Arab, Asian and Latin American nations. Helpful as this would be to the recipients, it was also designed to give West German exporters a competitive edge in some rapidly expanding markets.

¶ In Indonesia, East German engineers, attempting to demonstrate that the Communist world has as much to offer technologically as the U.S., blandly explained that it was not their fault that the $8,000,000 cane-sugar refinery near Djokjakarta, which they had promised to finish by now, was still not in production. Pooh-poohing Indonesian charges that the mill's machinery had been designed to process beet rather than cane sugar, the East Germans huffily and indignantly complained that everything would have worked out fine had Indonesian contractors laid proper concrete foundations.

A Cry from the Heart. Ingenious as some of its imitators might be, the U.S. still stood pre-eminent in the art of aidmanship. It was getting resigned to expecting no gratitude, and to accepting anomalies. Recognizing that poverty always has its claims on the rich, the U.S. could observe, in Latin America and the Middle East, that poor nations often had some mighty extravagant spenders among them. Italy had its 2,000,000 unemployed —and its rich who escape honest taxation. Wealthy Actress Gina Lollobrigida made the headlines last week by reporting a taxable income of only $18,583 for 1957, but she was only the prettiest rather than the most flagrant practitioner of a well-established Italian habit.