The Bare Chance

In the French Foreign Ministry in Paris last week, the delegates of 16 Western European nations, headed by Britain's Ernest Bevin, put their signatures to a document embodying their ideas on what the Marshall Plan should be. The document was promptly transmitted to Washington.

The Paris document was an effort to show how Europe would help itself to economic recovery. George Marshall had said, in effect: "The U.S. helps those who help themselves." The Paris conferees had now, in effect, replied: "O.K., here it is." The next move was up to the U.S.

Whether or not the plan was feasible or sufficient, U.S. action of some sort was obviously necessary; Europe's condition was desperate. Britain's liberal Manchester Guardian, for one, recognized the urgent fact: "There is at best a bare chance of saving Europe. ... It is the American public with whom the next move lies. . . . Reassurance could work wonders in the despondent state of the European mind. . . . Never before has one nation carried a greater responsibility for the fate of others in time of peace."

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