To the Aid of Aid

Some Government committees are appointed to delay action. Some are appointed to build up support for a course of action already agreed on. But when Dwight Eisenhower put onetime Under Secretary of the Army William H. Draper Jr. in charge of a committee last November to survey the vast U.S. foreign-aid program, the roll call of blue-ribbon committee members * made it clear that the President wanted hard answers. Last week in the Draper committee's preliminary report, he got three that nobody quite expected. Said the committee:

P: In asking for $3.9 billion for foreign-aid funds in fiscal 1960, the President is asking for too little, and not--as his knife-whetting congressional foreign-aid enemies are saying--too much. Needed, some $400 million more.

P: Contrary to general Washington belief that too much aid goes for military forces and too little for economic buildup, more money should go to military assistance--and most of the proposed $400 million increase should go to put hardware in the pipeline for NATO forces. But the $2.3 billion that the President has requested for economic aid is "the minimum."

P: The U.S. should stop thinking of mutual-assistance funds as stopgap measures, should put the mutual-security program on a permanent basis--it "is and will continue to be an essential tool" of foreign policy. "In our fascination with our own mistakes, and the constant use of foreign aid as a whipping boy, we may be gradually choking this vital feature of our national-security policy to death."

Some Democrats, feeling the sting of recent Republican attacks on "spenders," grumbled that foreign aid might still be the place to cut. Such ardent Democratic believers in economic aid as Montana's Mike Mansfield and Massachusetts' Jack Kennedy were disappointed at the Draper committee's accent on arms. And Illinois' Everett Dirksen, Senate Republican leader, made the best of both worlds by saying that if the Draper committee recommended $400 million more than the President's $3.9 billion, then the least the Congress could do was to get busy and pass the $3.9 billion.

* In addition to Draper, board chairman of the Mexican Light & Power Co. and retired World War II major general, the committee includes: Houston Lawyer Dillon Anderson, onetime presidential assistant for national-security affairs; Detroit Banker Joseph M. Dodge, onetime Budget Director; American Red Cross President Alfred M. Gruenther, onetime Supreme Allied Commander in Europe; Washington Lawyer Marx Leva, onetime Assistant Secretary of Defense; New York Banker John J. McCloy, onetime High Commissioner in Germany; Dallas Businessman George C. McGhee, onetime Assistant Secretary of State; General Joseph T. McNarney (ret.), onetime Commander of U.S. forces in Europe; Admiral Arthur W. Radford (ret.), onetime Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman; Oklahoma Oilman James E. Webb, onetime Under Secretary of State, onetime Budget Director.

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