FOREIGN RELATIONS: Let There Be News

Not long ago, on street hoardings and building walls in Vienna, there appeared a slick American poster bearing a message stamped across an Austrian ration card (see cut). The message read: “Sixty percent of your ration is a present from American aid for Austria. The money that you pay for it stays in the country. The Austrian government uses it to help the needy.”

The poster was one indication of the State Department’s earnest intention to meet Communist propaganda against the U.S. in Europe. Under Secretary of State Robert A. Lovett now feels that there is another pertinent way of telling the U.S. story. That, he said, would be the delivery by air to Europe of U.S. newspapers and magazines. In a letter to Wisconsin’s Senator Alexander Wiley (one of a number of Congressmen to broach the scheme), Lovett said that the department would ask Congress for funds to finance such a project.