The Angel's Job

The U.S. got a perfect illustration last week of just what, in practice, is involved in being a "good angel" to backward people (see above). Few countries in the world are more backward than Syria. Her people work the land with wooden plows as they did centuries ago; crops in even the best years barely provide subsistence living. Most peasants are sharecroppers, chronically in debt to moneylenders. Yet, potentially, Syria is a rich land, well able to support twice her present population. Proper irrigation would double her arable land. U.N. experts have drawn up plans for a pilot irrigation project: with $15 million Syria could drain the vast Ghab marshes, divert the surplus water for irrigation and put 148,000 acres to the plow.

But last week Syrian Premier Khaled el-Azem, a veteran politico who plays along closely with Syria's big landowners and the army in the hope of some day becoming President, announced that his country would not ask Washington for Point Four aid. Alleged reason: fear of "Western imperialist penetration."

Washington had not officially offered Syria Point Four help. Why was Premier el-Azem in such a hurry to say no? Answer: French Levantine financiers, allied with Syrian moneymen, want to run the Ghab reclamation project themselves (although there is no evidence that they can do it), because they see in it a first-class opportunity to sell developed land to large landowners at large profits.

Lesson for the U.S.: it is not enough to offer aid to backward peoples; the U.S. must also persuade their rulers to use the assistance for their countries' true benefit or find men who will cooperate with the U.S. That is a very difficult job, at which the U.S. so far has been notably unsuccessful; but unless it is done, and done well, U.S. plans for help to backward lands will be doomed to failure.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.