to see in the morning newspaper a six-column, front-page picture'of
the riots in Cicero, Illinois—~all over one Negro family moving into a
suburb. Few events could have done more damage to our cause and
that of the free world than that picture. The population of Singapore
is about 90 percent Chinese and about 9 percent people of varying
shades of color. It is less than 1 percent white. I was thoroughly dis-
gusted at the exaggerated play given that picture by the Singapore
newspaper but it was big news everywhere. The only thing we Ameri-
cans can do is to try to see that by our own acts we do not feed the fires
of hate spread by our enemies. More than half the people of the world
are yellow, brown, or black. They are acutely conscious of discrimina-
tion by reason of color, wherever it occurs. We have to work steadily
at the business of removing the beam from our own eye.

Our foreign aid program should be put on a permanent basis. The
cost is modest enough and only about 2 percent of our military budget.
Some of the most significant parts of our program are providing the
simplest means of communication and transport. But an appropriation
which helps build a highway in Burma is not very helpful if it only goes
halfway through the jungle. Aid in building a jute mill in Pakistan
doesn’t raise any living standards if no money is available for ma-
chinery when the mill is finished. All experience shows that a three-
or five-year commitment for a modest amount is more valuable than
a larger commitment made on a year-to-year basis, with no assurance
the program can be completed.

No program is any better than the people who administer it whether
it is military aid or economic aid. Nor is it any better than the politicians
who direct it. Every day the world becomes more complicated and it
takes a higher degree of special information and personal dedication to
administer the affairs of government.

When we think in terms of operating these programs it is well to re-
member that no one resents advice more than the man who needs it
most. Sometimes we have sent abroad people who were so unsuccessful
at home that they had to assume an unearned importance in other
lands. By and large, however, the amazing thing is the high quality of
the personnel in our foreign—service and foreign-aid programs. These
labors need to be carried out by our best, our brightest, and our most
sensitive people.

Foreign service is never serene and it is often uncomfortable. Outside
one embassy residence only ten feet over the wall, I stood and watched
a little colony of five hundred refugees as they lived, cooked, and eked
out a miserable existence in their mud huts. The odor rolled over the

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