by DEREK KARTUN The US invades Europe a | F you mean oil, Mr. Truman, why say Greece? Why say Turkey when you mean gravy?” Pro- fessor Shapley, of Harvard University, was re- cently moved to protest in this way against the U.S. gov- ernment’s habit of hiding its true policy behind a facade of talk about freedom and American-style democracy. Now ‘progressive opinion in the U.S. and Britain is again disturbed by the latest devel- opment of American foreign policy, dressed up as usual to look like something quite other than what it is. The Marshall plan is the sig- nal that the U.S. is moving into Europe. And if the Europeans do not like it then so much the worse for the Europeans. It is the opening out of the campaign for the Western bloc. U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall declared that U.S. help to European states must not be on a piecemeal basis. She must help in drafting a joint pro- gram for the countries of Eur- ope “from Britain to: Russia.” He added that his policy was directed against no country or doctrine, but “against hunger, poverty and chaos.” We could all say Amen to that and wait for a credit program which would help the recovery of the devastated countries of Europe. If Marshall means what he says, he will grant credits to countries as far apart as Bri- tain and Yugoslavia; he will help the Poles and Albanians to rebuild: he will help Bul- garia and Rumania to buy fer- tilizers and machinery. If words have any meaning they mean. roughly that. But it is already clear from the speech- es of his subordinates and the actions of his department that he intends nothing of the kind. In spite of his reiterated re- marks about the inclusion of Russia, it is obvious that Mar- shall’s Europe, like that of fort mer Prime Minister Churchill, does not correspond with the Europe on our maps. WELVE months state department officials were already outlining in de- tail the meaning of American dollar diplomacy. , In the discussions on Euro- pean relief a Senate committee was told that conditions for credits to such countries as Yugoslavia would be made “so difficult that .these countries would be unlikely to accept them.” Towards the end of 1946 the same state department protest- ed to Britain over a_ credit which we planned’ for Czecho- slovakia to buy surplus medical equipment. During the: hearings on the Greek-Turkish Bill in Congress, War Secretary Patterson and other spokesmen made it clear that American aid was based on strategic requirements. When Alcide de Gasperi, Italy’s Catholic Premier, was in Washington in January, he was wined and dined, and told that he could have his requested 350 million dollar loan if he ex- cluded the Communists from his government. , ‘ When Leon Blum of France visited Washington last summer he was granted a loan on terms which spelt ruin for important sections of French ecenomy. More recently, on the day fol- FRIDAY, JULY 18, 1947 ago U.S. exclusion lowing the of the Communists from the govern- ment, the American-dominated World Bank granted a $500,000,- 000 loan to France. Still more recently the US. cancelled. her $30,000,000 credit to Hungary for the political reason that she disapproved of the charges of treason against ex-Premier Ferenc Nagy, now in the USS. In recent months ex-President Herbert Hoover and Senator Vandenburg — both men of de- cisive influence in foreign af- fairs—have called for vast. US. help to build a strong capitalist Western Germany. : sae picure built up by these activities is all too clear. The dollars are there to be had for the asking, provided Britain is willing to abandon its plans of nationalism and control over capitalism, and pro- vided the countries of’ Europe exclude from their governments the representatives of the over- whelming majority of the work- ing class. ; The aim of this dollar policy is not only to solve the pressing problems set by the United States’ own runaway economy of boom and slump. It is also a means of _ establishing those types of reactionary govern- ments in Western Europe which will allow American big busi- ness untrammelled freedom. It is a means of halting the development of socialism. Mr. Marshall hopes in addi- tion, to achieve the important strategic aim of organising a bloc of Western European na- tions hostile to the Soviet Union. '@ HATEVER he or his sup- porters in Britain may say about the benefits. of a united Europe, it is, nevertheless, a fact that the Europe as Mar- shall conceives its future can not be united since it °deliber- ately excludes half of the con- tinent. And it cannot be a force for peace and reconstruction, since its aim is to destroy the gov- ernments of national unity in such countries as France and Italy and install in their places governments of the Right. In Italy there is grave dis- quiet, since the exclusively Ca- tholic government of de Gasperi took office. This cabinet repre- sents less than half the country and only a fraction \of the workers. One could not imagine a less suitable administration to solve Italy’s pressing economic prob- lems and organize the rebuild- ing of the country. Yet the Am- ericans are mighty pleased with it. The policy in France which led to the exclusion of the Com- munists from the government has also “led to the strikes, which are having serious effects on recovery. The Americans — still talking about the need to reconstruct— were enthusiastic over those policies of the Ramadier cab- inet which produced the catas- trophic drop in living condi- tions which led to the strikes. e URELY it is clear from. this that, however much Marshall may call his program a plan for reconstruction, so long as jit is based upon political discrim- ination and the support of the extreme Right*it cannot recon- struct anything at all. Dollars are useful today when all the world is crying out for the goods which America pro- duces. But dollars without poli- tical freedom to unite the coun- try and release the great store of energy and enthusiasm of the workers are not a means of. liberation but a road to ruin. To hide this simple fact there has been much _ propaganda lately to the effect that the Communists of Western Europe are counting on economic mis- ery to lift themselves to power. But it is not the Communists in France who have held up production, but the emergence of an unrepresentative govern- ment. And if Spain is living today in misery and squalor it is be- cause Franco has been main- tained in power by British and American trade and diplomatic support. And finally, both as a means of creating hostility towards the Soviet Union and a hedge against the failure of the plan, the blame for breakdown of the Paris Conference ts heaped on Foreign Minister Molotov. e HE =Marshall plan to _ unite Western Europe is decked © What the Marshall plan really means out in the same false colors aS adorned the Greek-Turkish plan. For the, plan to be successful it needed the respectability and solidity to be derived from! British and French participation and Ernest Bevin of Britain and Georges Bidault of France aré all too eager to give it. Even Marshall could hardly have claimed that he had unit- ed Europe if he had managed’ to collect together nothing more than de Gasperi’s Italy, Fran- co’s ramshackle prison-house, @ West German State and a few smaller friends of the dollar. For Britain the plan offers nothing but continued depend- ence on the U.S. and an undig- nified scramble in the dust for the dimes which Uncle Sam will be good enough to throw to her and her neighbors, What eastern Europe fears by ISRAEL EPSTEIN HE Marshall plan talks, now going on without Russia, in- volve more than the headlines tell. The issue. is not only whether Europe will be con- structed—but how. This brings up deep, century-old questions which go to the heart of Euro- pean economy and vitally affect American prosperity. Traditionally, eastern Europe was an agricultural backyard for western industry. Politically, as even a big-business maga- zine like the London Economist admits, “before 1939 western diplomatic and business repre- sentatives .. in many ways acted as colonial governors on behalf of western interests.” Balkan peasants toiled and starved to produce cheap raw materials. Their landlords, of- ten partners in foreign con- cerns, sold these abroad ata fine profit to themselves. They imported cars, fine clothes and fripperies for their own use and spent every ‘season’ in Paris or London. Poverty and lack of industry played hob with national inde- pendence. When Hitler put his army behind the economic drive of Germany’s Ruhr region, Eur- ope’s industrial powerhouse, the Balkans became Nazi colonies. They had to sell their products for a kind of scriv-money that could buy only German goods at German prices, like miners or sharecroppers at a company store. The landlords still did pretty well and in most cases became Hitler’s docile foremen. ODAY most of the old rulers are out. The East European peoples want a higher standard for everyone, which only new industries on the spot can give. They would rather import trac- tors and machinery to produce their own consumer goods than buy these abroad. They no long- er want to be sharecropper states. Politics quite apart, these aims are better served by large-scale mutual trade than just by west ern buying. Czech industry 38 willing to supply the Balkans on better terms than the west used to. Russia is a market for some planned east Euro- pean factories,» while the west wants only raw products. Every east European land wants stronger neighbors in the g interests of joint defense against any German revival. With France as well as Russia, all want the Ruhr kept down till they themselves are properly equipped. France, you recall, has been shot to pieces thrice in one century—in 1870, 1914 and 1939—by Ruhr-made guns. That is why east Europe fears a western-drafted overall plat for the whole continent, Othe? wise she is not opposed 1 western trade, but seeks it. PACIFIC TRIBUNE— PAGE