American Checks and Balances .
The Government and people of the United States have during the past week given a remarkable demonstration of their characteristic ability to do two things at once. With one eye on Korea and the other on the November elections, the President and congress have managed to combine a number of singularly enlightened measures with a number of profoundly unhelpful argu- ments. There has been no better piece of flews lately than that of
the appointment of Mr. Marshall to succeed Mr. Louis Johnson at Secretary of Defence. Yet even this may be interpreted as a move to rectify the system of checks and balances required by the American Constitution, for Mr. Johnson was never at any time an adequate counterweight to the overpowering General MacArthur. While the President's appointment of Mr. Marshall need not be interpreted as anything so crude and dangerous as setting a General to catch a General, it will certainly strengthen his own hand in a situation in which the Constitution, although specifically designed with this contingency in mind, has not so far helped him very much. During this same week the National Production Authority, with the immediate situation in mind, has taken control of 32 war materials and Mr. Gordon Gray, a Special Assistant to the President, has produced a report which includes a scheme for the extension of E.R.P. and the setting up of a new agency to cover all American foreign aid programmes. The background to this heartening display of enlightenment has been a series of attempts in Congress to hobble the Defence Appropriations Bill with a provision that aims at cutting off aid from any country suspected of shipping possible war materials to Russia or her satellites, to crab the appointment of Mr. Marshall, and to trap the pew Secretary himself into political indiscretions. But the observers in this country who have never got used to the fact that American politicians, like British politicians, often talk nonsense at election times, will still do well to watch what the United States Goverment does rather than what its opponents say.
