Comes a Point

With radio ruffles and press flourishes the Soviet propaganda machine last week made the grandiloquent most of a Soviet decision to halve the reparations balances owed the Soviet Union by Rumania and Hungary. Moscow papers coupled the announcement with further furious attacks on the European Recovery Program, suggested that Moscow might soon devise an ERP of her own for "friendly neighbors."

Actually the reparations cuts were more nearly a political gesture than an act of generosity. Originally reparations to be paid by each country had been fixed at $300,000,000. In goods, services and occupation costs, the Soviet Union had already taken over three times that amount from Rumania. In Hungary, through seizure of so-called German assets and a system of joint Hungarian-Soviet companies, the Soviet control of Hungary"? economy had become so complete that further reparations payments would, in effect, mean that the Soviet Union was exacting war damages from itself.

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