We know now which policy triumphed. And the people of Europe and Asia know, too. For from us they have gotten precious little food and a bellyful of politics.
We here have paid highly for that policy. We have paid in taxes, in prices, in a decline of independent business and in greatly increased corporate profits.
We have paid more than that. We have lost the confidence of the world; we have conducted an inept and shameful diplomacy that has brought us into close and sickening comradeship with the fascists who surround our puppet king in Greece, and our puppet Dictator in China, with the feudal lords who rule the Arabs, and who once counted Hitler as their friend as they now count us. In every land the people are shocked and mistrustful of us while the big businessmen, the former collaborationists, the militarists and the large landholders look to us with outstretched hands for help—and they get it. If we continue, we can only pay a greater price, perhaps the final catastrophic price of war.
Let's see if all this is true. Let's look into the way the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine operate.
Most of us draw a general impression from the mass of statistics, opinions, news stories, magazine features, and headlines. To many, it seems that we are giving to the citizenry of Europe all that they need to rehabilitate themselves, and that, indeed without us, they would starve. To do this act of mercy, we are willing to pay higher taxes and higher prices. Faced by such a program of charitable works, certainly the man who objects at all must have motives that are suspect.
Well, the story is a little bit different.
For example, giving is not quite the right word. We exact a price, and a high one. For each ton of coal, for each carload of grain we grant to a European nation under the ERP, that nation must deposit in a special fund amounts of their own currency equal to the dollar value of the goods we send.
That special fund is to be under the control of our own ERP administrator. It cannot be spent except for purposes that we approve. If we send France three billion dollars' worth of goods, within a stipulated period of time the French must put six hundred billion francs into this special fund. That sum is about one-third of all the French money there is. If we control that fund, we control France. We can authorize its use to keep a government in power or to break a government. We can tell the French when, where, and how to spend their money. That is a price no free man would consent to pay. And no man should be forced to forfeit his freedom by paying it.
If a man came to you when you were broke and said, "I'll lend you enough to tide you over, and you don't have to pay me back at all. Just let me tell you..."
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