oodbye 1952 ?
It has for so long been the custom to regard the year 1952, in hick Marshall Aid is due to come to an end, as the dies irae of e European economy, that the direct beneficiaries under the uropean Recovery Programme may have some difficulty in chang- fig their minds on that point. But the revolutionary ideas bout world strategy which the Korean conflict has promoted will retty certainly have their counterpart in the economic field. The eparture of Mr. Paul Hoffman from the Economic Co-operation Administration is only one sign of the times. Mr. Hoffman has done his work extraordinarily well despite the isolationists in the United States who tried to crab his efforts, and despite certain faint-hearts in Europe who persisted in regarding him as a sort of avenging headmaster long after it had become perfectly clear that he was a reasonable man, tackling a very difficult job. But the third annual appropriation has been passed by Congress, the nature of the task is changing, and the time has probably come for a new administrator to take over. Mr. William Foster, who succeeds Mr. Hoffman, will include among his working data the report on the long-term aspects of the dollar gap which is now being com- pleted by Mr. Gordon Gray, a special assistant to President Truman. This report does not regard 1952 as a more fateful year than any other. It will only be one of many in which the effort of rearma- ment will have to be maintained. But it is already known that, inadequate as the British military programme almost certainly is, it is sufficiently large to intensify the problem of closing the dollar gap by ordinary means, of restoring the convertibility of sterling, and of holding inflation in check. In fact, the total effect of the new world situation may have been not to postpone the long expected perils of 1952 but, on the contrary, to bring them forward towards the present.
