But let us, for the moment, concede the validity of the “stomach theory,” and ask a further question: Is our foreign aid program the kind that will bring prosperity to underdeveloped countries? We Americans believe--and we can cite one hundred and fifty years of experience to support the belief--that the way to build a strong economy is to encourage the free play of economic forces: free capital, free labor, a free market. Yet every one of the “neutral” countries we are aiding is committed to a system of State Socialism. Our present policy of government-to-government aid strengthens Socialism in those countries. We are not only perpetuating the inefficiency and waste that always attends government-controlled economies; by strengthening the hand of those governments, we are making it more difficult for free enterprise to take hold. For this reason alone, we should eliminate all government-to-government capital assistance and encourage the substitution of American private investment. Our present Foreign Aid program, in sum, is not only ill-administered, but ill-conceived. It has not, in the majority of cases, made the free world stronger; it has made America weaker; and it has created in minds the world over an image of a nation that puts prime reliance, not on spiritual and human values, but on the material things that are the stock-in-trade of Communist propaganda. To this extent we have adopted Communist doctrine. In the future, if our methods are to be in tune with our true objectives, we will confine foreign aid to military and technical assistance to those nations that need it and that are committed to a common goal of defeating world Communism. NEGOTIATIONS As I write, the world is waiting for another round of diplomatic conferences between East and West. A full scale summit meeting is scheduled for Spring; later on, President Eisenhower and Premier Khrushchev will have further talks in the Soviet Union. And we are told that this is only the beginning of a long-range American policy to try to settle world problems by “negotiation.” As the preparations for the Spring meetings go forward, I am struck by a singular fact: no one on our side claims--let alone believes--that the West will be stronger after these new negotiations than it is today. The same was true last Summer. We agreed to “negotiate” about Berlin--not because we hoped to gain anything by such talks--but because the Communists had created a “crisis,” and we could think of nothing better to do about it than go to the conference table. After all, we assured ourselves, there is no harm in talking.