The Real Aid

Upon the U.S. rests a responsibility linked to, but greater than, its political leadership of the free nations in the cold war. It is obliged to represent before the world the moral and social postulates that underlie the free-enterprise system as now practiced in the U.S.

In 1955 that system scaled a new peak of success; so spectacular was its performance that TIME'S Man of the Year could be chosen only from among the captains of the U.S. economy. The real story of U.S. business success is still not fully understood by Americans--and scarcely understood at all in other countries. Non-Americans cannot escape the-fact of U.S. economic success, but many can and do refuse to face its implications.

An inescapable aspect of U.S. economic prowess is the foreign-aid program--one of the most extraordinary projects in world history. Originally conceived as an emergency measure, it has taken on the look of a long-range policy. Last week Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced that next year's foreign-aid spending would be at a level of $4.4 billion--v. $4.2 in 1955. Significantly he added: "We consider that both the economic aid and the military aid will go on for a considerable period of time at about the present level."

Because of a journalistic blunder, announcement of the foreign-aid program for 1956 caused a headline hassle, with various Congressmen reacting sharply against what they thought was a proposal to raise the spending level abruptly. But there is no strong resistance, congressional or public, to continuing the old levels of foreign aid.

Inside the Administration itself, however, there exists a strong and growing feeling that government-to-government aid does not really get over the point of the economic system that makes these huge grants possible. Said a top official last week: "What we need to do is to recapture to some extent the kind of crusading spirit of the nation's early days when we were darn sure that what we had was a lot better than what anybody else had. We knew the rest of the world wanted it, and needed it, and that we were going to carry it around the world. The missionaries, the doctors, the educators and the merchants carried the knowledge of the great American experiment to all four corners of the globe." The official who said this estimates that every dollar's worth of private business done by Americans abroad has a political value worth ten dollars sent abroad by the Government. By continuing to make capitalism work and grow at home, and by spreading the word and the work overseas through private investment and public aid, the U.S. has its best chance to fulfill its obligation of world leadership.

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