Dear Mr. Marsh:1 A day or so ago I sent you an acknowledgment of your letter of January nineteenth.2 But my mind has gone back so persistently to some of your observations that I decided to write you again.
First of all, you say, "We in Nebraska have always looked askance at Foreign Aid." The trouble with this whole problem is its name. Fundamentally, this is a program to help ourselves.
It would not be possible here to write a long exposition of the background of this problem, but I think I can sum up the reasons pretty well by taking a specific incident.
Therefore, consider for a moment the Mid East. To preserve this region from Communism is essential to the continued existence of America as a free nation. This is true because we must keep Western Europe from going Communistic. Yet without the opportunity to purchase fuel from the Mid East, Western Europe cannot live as a group of free nations. But, if all of the productive facilities and skilled labor of Western Europe should pass under the control of Moscow and International Communism, we would have to transform ourselves into an armed camp.
The first result of this would be vastly increased military expenditures--possibly 80 to 100 billion dollars per year. We would have a strictly controlled economy--all power centralized in Washington. If global war should then break out--and under these circumstances its likelihood would multiply one hundredfold--the northern hemisphere would soon become a desert. Certainly the free institutions and civilization that we have, and are defending, would no longer exist.3
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You referred to the size of the Budget.4 The figure of almost 72 billion of course deeply disturbs almost every thinking American. But even today the Congress has many people who are insistently demanding that we spend billions more upon our armed forces. Well over half of our national budget is devoted to the single question of national security,5 and, as I said, if we ceased the program that you call "foreign aid" and nation after nation began falling under the domination of Communism, our defense budget would be increased by a far greater sum than we could possibly save.
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Finally, with respect to the statements of the Secretary of the Treasury, George Humphrey, you obviously have overlooked his original statement, which was about as follows:
"No one has worked harder to reduce Federal expenditures than the President. He and I have worked together on this. Moreover, many devoted men in government have worked months and months to reduce our expenditures to the minimum. This is the best that all of us, working together, can do. But in the long term, it is not good enough. To continue indefinitely to spend at this rate will bring great trouble."6
With all of this I agree word for word and thought for thought. But the reason that Secretary Humphrey said "This is the best that we can do" is because he recognizes the terrible consequences, as of now, of providing inadequately for our security or for refusing to follow programs that give promise of keeping vital areas of the world out from under the rule of Communism.
All of the remainder, aside from these security measures, including Mutual Aid, is set up to provide for the requirements of the public or for the services which the public demands. For example, your own letter mentions the terrible drought that Nebraska is now experiencing. Great sections of our country are undergoing that drought, while some others suffer floods. In all of these instances, people turn to the Federal Government for help and it is promptly given. It is this kind of thing, multiplied in a hundred different directions, that accounts for the size of our budget.
The one way--under present circumstances--left to us to make economies is through perfection of administrative measures. In this line we have made tremendous improvements and have saved many millions. Counting both military and civilian workers, there are more than five million people now employed by the Federal Government. Consequently, to avoid duplication, to keep organizations streamlined and efficient, is a tremendous task, but one on which people like Secretary Humphrey, Secretary Wilson7 and many, many others are always working.
Real savings are going to be possible only when we have made noticeable progress toward a peace in which we can be confident. To promote such a peace is one of the reasons that I meet so many people from abroad and work so hard through the United Nations and elsewhere to advance understanding among nations. Until that is done, I am very much afraid that the United States will have to carry a very large annual budget, in spite of all the savings that may otherwise be made.8 Very sincerely
