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Today the Marshall Plan is only a bright memory. But the very act of recalling its historic impact raises the question: Would the U.S. ever again give itself to an undertaking of such boldness and magnitude? Surely some of the world's conspicuous difficulties — the food and energy shortages, to name but two glaring ones — seem deserving of comparable heroic efforts. Such problems so far, however, have inspired occasional grand rhetoric without matching action. So perhaps a better question is: Could the U.S. today even muster the combination of generosity, self-sacrifice and determined will that it dedicated to the rescue of Western Europe? Does the national character remain capable of that spirit?
Beyond doubt the American temper is strikingly different today from what it was then. After World War II, the nation enjoyed an almost cocky belief that it could do anything — and everything. Had not the U.S. just saved civilization? Did not the U.S. own the Bomb? Most Americans were eager to proclaim their nation the greatest. And they turned out to be perfectly willing to prove it — once they had been asked to. Americans of Marshall's day, of course, also had trust in their Government — and a certitude about their power to prevail that had not been crumpled by Viet Nam.
The loss of trust and certainty are major differences in post-Watergate America. The nation also, more than in the past, nurses cynical doubts about the Government's capacity to solve any social problems — those at home or abroad. More over, Americans of 1977 often seem confused, in the words of one scholar, "as to where and in what way American power and intelligence can be most usefully applied." The words are those of a man who happened to direct the Marshall Plan in Europe in 1950-51 — Professor Milton Katz, now director of international legal studies at Harvard Law School. Katz nonetheless believes that granted the recovery of trust and some clear sense of national purpose, the country could still match the great deeds of the postwar era.
Most thoughtful Americans — particularly those old enough to have seen the nation at its best — are likely to agree. That adviser to many Presidents, Lawyer Clark Clifford, does. "I don't think there's been any radical change in the American character," he says. And ever buoyant Hubert Humphrey, mulling the Marshall Plan days last week, ventured a feeling that seems typical in Washington: "I think we would do it over again — if the same circumstances existed."
There, of course, is the crux of the matter. History never quite repeats itself. The Marshall Plan arose out of a specific juncture of event, public mood and leadership. And who could possibly guess when and how such an impelling convergence might occur again? Nobody. But it would nonetheless be hazardous to assume, if it did occur, that the American people would fail to yield their best once more.