The Poplar Standard

FOREIGN AID: Hoover Plan

Herbert Hoover, former U. S. president, has urged congress not to commit this nation—even "morally"—to a four-year European recovery program, and advised a reduction of the $6.8-billion-dollar outlay proposed to carry the Marshall plan through its first 15 months.

In the 4,000-word statement which he filed with the senate foreign relations committee Hoover expressed his opposition views to the administration's foreign aid plans.

Of greater significance, however, was the fact that Hoover's own opinions amounted to a documentary of the entire right-wing, conservative element of thinking which rejects an "internationalist" foreign policy on the grounds that U. S. resources should be concentrated at home.

Decrying even a "moral commitment" for the four-year period contemplated in the state department's proposals, he asserted the U. S. should keep itself entirely free "to end our efforts without recrimination."

He expressed, too, the fear that a lavish outpouring of aid would weaken the American economy to the extent that all world recovery would be defeated. The volume of exports and funds proposed in the Marshall plan, he opined, might aggravate the already serious inflation, draining our national resources—and continuing high tax rates, "all of which might bring depression and thus destroy the strength of the one remaining source of aid to a world of chaos."

Hoover recommended further that the Marshall plan, if it is adopted, be run by a bipartisan commission, and suggested that up to three billion dollars in food, coal, fertilizers and cotton be labeled frankly as "gifts" because unsecured loans "will not and cannot be repaid."