Standard Soap Opera

The whole thing was as stylized as the synopsis of a soap-opera plot. Exasperated by India's refusal to support the U.S. position in the United Nations, Congress was in no mood, week before last, to discuss India's plea for 2,000,000 tons of grain to feed its famine-threatened millions. Texas' Senator Tom Connally had pointedly announced that India would have to wait while a Foreign Relations subcommittee "looked into" the whole question of U.S.-Indian relations. Would Congress relent? Would India be left to starve?

The U.S. press promptly burst into a chorus of high-minded admonishment. Editorialists, in their best voice-of-reason tones, reproved the hasty Connally; readers wrote grave letters of warning to editors; Communists crowed. Columnist Walter Lippmann exhorted with heavy passion: "We can not, we must not stoop to it ... For it would illustrate too dramatically the propaganda of our enemies --namely, that American philanthropy undermines the independence of the nations which accept it."

But, as every intelligent schoolboy knows, there was no need for all this huffing. Uncle Sam would never condemn people to starvation out of spite. Last week 14 Senators and ten Representatives banded together to press for bipartisan action. Among them was Minnesota's Representative Walter H. Judd, a courageous champion of China's Chiang Kaishek and a dead-aim critic of Nehru's foreign policy. And Wisconsin's raspingly 110% American, Senator Joe McCarthy, came out for feeding the Indians. This set the scene for the announcement that President Truman would shortly make a formal request for the grain.

As any soap-opera fan could guess, there would be a few more scenes of cliff-hanging suspense. Then India would get its grain.

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