BOLDER 'POINT FOUR'

...The ideas which the joint authors—Professors Max F. Millikan and W. W. Rostow—developed at the Center for International Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology would have commanded public attention in the form of passages in a President's Inaugural Address and a speech subsequently delivered to the General Assembly of the United Nations...

...Faced with the club-car suspicion of new ideas which characterizes this businessmen's government, the authors have resorted to private and public infiltration...

...These sums are to be made available to Free World countries without any military or political strings, but under strict business-like criteria designed to guarantee that both loans and grants would be effectively used and that the loans could be repaid within a reasonable length of time...

...There must be no tie between economic and military pacts, and no explicit political conditions within the Free World beyond the requirement that national development goals be democratically established...

...The additional sums envisaged must be large enough to remove lack of capital as a bottleneck to growth, while maintaining the tough criteria of productivity envisaged...

...To me, at any rate, the measure to which this proposal commands Administration attention is a real test of how "modern" Republicanism has become...

...To judge by his recent speech at the Fourth National Conference on International Economic and Social Development, Paul Hoffman has given it careful consideration...

...effort...

...and those, like India, which are already well under way...

...The heart of the proposal is the establishment, by the United States and other industrialized nations, of a new long-term capital fund of from 12 to 15 billion dollars over a five-year period for loans and grants to accelerate economic growth in underdeveloped countries...

...An aid| program with strings yields satellites, not partners...

...Reviewed by David C. Williams UNDER a different kind of Administration, this book might never have been published...

...There must be a real measure of international contribution and international administration...

...We cannot emphasize too strongly," the authors warn, "that this program will not achieve its basically political and psychological purposes unless its fundamental features are preserved . . . The sharp edges of policy which must be preserved appear to be these: "A...

...for the latter, a guarantee that progress will not be strangled by the lack of adequate capital...

...The plan must look to a long future and envisage a sustained U.S...

...It is nothing less than the weaving into one meaningful and generous pattern of the wide range of piecemeal activities which resulted from President Truman's launching, as "Point Four" of his 1949 Inaugural Address, of the bold new idea of aid to the people of the underdeveloped areas in making their way into the Twentieth Century...

...I highly commend this slim and concise volume as required reading for other Twentieth Century Republicans...

...The plan is directed at the two types of underdeveloped countries which the authors carefully distinguish— those which have yet to establish the pre-conditions of economic growth (in the form of efficient government, an adequate supply of managers and technicians, etc...

...After some months during which their proposal circulated in manuscript among State Department officials and others professionally concerned with our foreign economic policy, it has now been addressed in book form to a wider public...

...The opportunity still exists for one of our leaders to insure himself an honored place in history by giving them his name and support...

...What is this proposal in quest of a sponsor...

...For the former, it will be a powerful inducement to put themselves in a posture for growth...