"Only One Choice"

Governor Tom. Dewey had long held his fire, ignoring his critics, who cried that he was evading major issues. Last week he finally spoke out. Slipping into white tie & tails for the 30th anniversary dinner of Forbes magazine (see BUSINESS), he spoke plainly and forcefully on U.S. foreign policy.

The timing was opportune and opportunistic. Congress was about to begin work on the European recovery program, upon which most congressional leaders seemed to be in basic agreement. Republican Tom Dewey's approval of the program kept him in step with Republican congressional leaders.

But the man from Albany tried to do more than that. He wanted to widen the perspective of the men in Washington. Any program of aid to Europe alone was not enough, he said. A successful American strategy in foreign policy must also include aid to China. There must be an end to past contradictions in U.S. policy which had "seen our own Government turn against our wartime Chinese allies and order them, under pain of losing American support, to accept into their Government the very Communists who sought to destroy it." Now, said the Governor: "We have only one choice and that is wisely to aid those who stand with us in the world in the hope that they will rise again as bulwarks of the institution of human freedom."

By wisely aiding, Dewey meant wisely administering. There must be a change in method. Ten times during his 3,000-word speech, ex-Prosecutor Dewey indicted the administration for its "serious economic and diplomatic blunders."

Dewey's own recommendation was for a new agency to administer the job of foreign aid, supervised by a "genuinely bipartisan board" (which was just about the projected shape of ERP). To be sure that the aid was not wasted by the recipients, Dewey urged that it be granted only in installments, each installment dependent upon proof that "the aid is being wisely employed for the purposes for which it is intended."

In the long run and the long view, said Dewey, reconstruction was a straight business proposition and should not be left in the hands of "social planners who do not know a loom from a corn-husker." Said he, with an eye on his business-minded audience: "It is time we got business men into a business job."

Essentially, Tom Dewey plainly implied, that meant getting a Republican back in the White House. Whatever success U.S. foreign policy had had to date, he attributed to the bipartisan policy Candidate Dewey had "had the honor to inaugurate" in 1944 and to the actions of the Both Congress. Said he: "It may well eventuate that the election of a Republican Congress last year not only saved the domestic affairs of the United States, but it may well also save the peace of the world."

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