Strength & Maturity

Peach trees and flowering shrubs bloomed across Oklahoma last week. Out on the panhandle, Bermuda grass was turning from winter-brown to green. Beef cattle moved on to the fattening ranges of the Osage. In California, sunbathers headed for the long Pacific beaches. In Manhattan, city hicks swarmed into Madison Square Garden for the circus.

Across the abundant Midwest, the sun was bright and warm. Cool winds blew across the prairies. Winter wheat showed emerald in the rolling fields. On thousands of U.S. farms, plows and disc harrows turned back the black earth for next month's corn planting.

Boston baseball fans worried about Ted Williams' appendix. Bewildered Nebraskans found themselves caught up in the hottest political campaign to date (see Republicans). In Denver, a young secretary sighed a variation on an old theme: "I'm afraid those prices are going to stay up in the clouds forever."

Nothing for Granted. Prices were high, but so were wages and so was employment. National income was running at the rate of $215 billion a year--a new record. Production lines were humming. There were no critical consumers' shortages anywhere. People were already getting used to such products of the postwar dream world as television and home laundries. One U.S. steamship company was ready to lay down the largest, most luxurious passenger ship in U.S. maritime history; the new Ford would soon be unveiled.

In the election year of 1948, the U.S. was secure and prosperous. But it was no longer taking its peace and prosperity for granted. Despite some serious failures of leadership, the U.S. was realizing as never before its power and its responsibility.

Since the war's end, the U.S. had shipped more than $15 billion worth of relief goods to stricken nations abroad, last week dispatched the sooth relief ship to Italy alone. Now, with ERP, it was preparing to send $5.3 billion more.

Inspired Diplomacy. There were many battles still to be won; the struggle over Berlin was just beginning. But the U.S. seemed to be on the right track at last. The quiet refusal of General Lucius Clay to back down a fortnight ago in the face of Russian pressure was a prime example of U.S. resolution. Said a businessman in Kansas City: "Now the people of Europe know what to expect. All we need is the determination to carry through."

But even the U.S. did not seem to realize how much Europe--and the rest of the world--depended on that determination. In a nation which prides itself on great deeds accomplished offhand, the launching of ECA was accepted almost matter-of-factly. What ECA meant to Europe was summed up last week by London's Economist :

"Search back as one may . . . there is no record of a comparable act of inspired and generous diplomacy. ... It will be difficult after this demonstration of international solidarity to go on repeating the old gibes about American isolationism, the old complacent references to American political immaturity. . ... In recent months the American public is rapidly qualifying for the title of the least isolationist and self-absorbed of peoples." The U.S. would have to go some to live up to that eulogy. But it was learning.

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