Food to entrench reactionaries throughout the world and to plant the banners of American Big Business wherever a nation could be so corrupted. It ended in a great depression. That, too, will happen again under the ERP, and it will be all the worse because now America's monopolists are riding so much higher than in 1921. But the ERP boys say that though there is that one danger, they hold the trump card.
That card is: war.
But there is nothing inevitable about this picture. We are not faced with those dread alternatives which ERP presents. There is another plan. The press, by and large, has apparently not yet discovered it though it has been lying on the desks of all writers for some time. It is called the Wallace Plan. It is a plan which will see arms reaching, which will rouse no hatred and fear, for it does not deal in aid doled out as a gift or granted. It does not deliver a dole at a price, but it is a plan of genuine recovery.
Wallace's plan aims at an end to the Cold War, at the restoration of cooperation through the UN. It aims at the attainment of stable prosperity abroad and stable prosperity at home.
Here's how.
The stricken lands of the world would be aided by a Reconstruction Fund, modeled after the UNRRA and administered by the United Nations. Primarily, it would be directed to repairing war damage to soil, structures, and equipment and to expanding the national economies. It would eliminate the emergency, not perpetuate it. It would stand the nations of the world on their feet and make them self-sustaining, not poor dependents.
The Reconstruction Fund would receive contributions from ourselves and from other nations able to give. Part of the sum would be in the form of outright grants for food and fuel; part of it would be in the form of loans for capital development. Henry Wallace has estimated that fifty billion dollars ought to carry the plan for ten years. That’s five billion a year. If you total the inevitable military commitments along with the announced budget of ERP, it would come close to eighteen billion a year.
The UN agency would reverse the trend of past policies, which proposed to give first priority to our late enemies and the most arrogant aggressors while according crumbs to our least needy friends and to our most needy friends nothing at all. Instead, those nations which suffered most from fascist aggression would have first call on this fund. We would not lay down rules as to what type of government these countries must have, whom they must have in office, or how they must vote. We would go on the idea that what they do in their own country is completely their own business.
This UN agency would dispense its funds with a scrupulous regard for the political independence of the country which receives the benefits. There would be...
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