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Military government weekly information bulletin
Number 87 (April 1947)
Press and radio comments, pp. 24-31
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Page 25
have its greatest test. Economic Warfare can- not exist side by side with political coopera- tion. President Truman compared the attacks against trade and commerce of other nations with political or military aggression. He does not propose the abolition of protection, but the continuance of a policy of carefully adjusted reduction of trade barriers through- out world. Interest of this country calls for relatively free movement of goods and pay- ment among nations. This is also the condi- tion necessary for a healthy economic and political world structure." St. Louis Star-Times: "More than anything else. Truman dispelled a lot of fog with which the high-tariff bloc has tried to shroud the international trade program. He asked the people to go along or go back into isola- tion. The choice should be easy, for, as he said, 'isolation, after two world wars, is a confession of mental and moral bankruptcy.'" St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "During the war, we were solemnly dedicated to root out eco- nomic warfare as a cause of a shooting war. When peace came, we lent billions to get other wartorn countries on their feet. We led in founding the International Bank and Monetary Fund, Congress found reciprocal tariff reductions had done American interests much good and no harm - and conferred further tariff-reduction powers on the Pres- ident. We took the lead in United Nations and in drafting the charter of the ITO, a UN auxiliary, for the mutual renunciation of economic aggression. Thus we have great effort and great amounts of money tied up in this policy, as well as high hopes." New York Sun expressed concern over "certain fundamental aspects of foreign trade about which the President was silent." The Sun said: "t is of paramount concern, for instance though not mentioned by President Truman --- that since 1934 the United States has reduced more than 1,200 of its tariff rates, and about half of them were cut 50 percent. Further cuts would make a disrupting, even disastrous, attack on the protection that remains. Moreover, this is the only country in the world that maintains labor standards by federal control of wages and hours, on a scale far superior to working conditions elsewhere on earth. On these pri- mary points, Truman said nothing at Waco. Texas." Wall Street Journal said the US discus- sions with other nations at Geneva concern- ing reciprocal trade agreements seem to offer hope of some accomplishment because the agreements "are specific contracts with closely limited objectives." However, the financial paper said: "We are forced to doubt that building another forum for continuing discussion of the world's ills will help to cure them. It seems still more doubtful that international trade can be organized and at same time freed of restraints that now lie upon it. Its disabilities are due, not to lack of organization but to lack of ordered life within the' principal trading countries. It is not easy to see how the ITO can fill that vacuum." US Editor Gets German Meal The impression of a visiting American concerning the food served the Germans was given by Victor 0. Jones of the Boston Globe following a recent tour of the US Zone by a group of American editors. He wrote of his visit at Wiesbaden with Dr. James R. Newman, Director of the Office of Military Government for Hesse, and added: "In between times he gave us a taste of what the average German eats for din- ner . . . . Dinner, incidentally, added up to 640 calories and consisted of a small meat ball, baked potato, dried lima beans, two slices of black bread, a tiny pat of oleo, two-thirds of a small apple, and a cup of the vilest coffee I've ever tasted. "I accused Dr. Newman of poisoning the coffee, but his secretary assured me it tasted rather better than what the Germans got. A sassy German waitress said to make the demonstration really accurate we should be eating our meal in an unheated house and with no tablecloth . ... I must admit it gave me a sense of fullness even though I couldn't get down the second slice of bread." 25
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