Francis O. Wilcox Oral History Interview, February 10, 1984

Notice
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Senate Historical Office and deeded to the public domain. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the Wilcox oral history interview.

The Senate Historical Office has made this interview available in PDF as part of its Oral History Project.

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RITCHIE: The last time we talked about your coming to the Senate and being appointed chief of staff of the Foreign Relations Committee by Senator Vandenberg in 1947. I wondered if you could start today by telling me a little about Arthur Vandenberg, and what type of a person he was to work for.

WILCOX: Well, I am prejudiced when it comes to discussing Arthur Vandenberg. I must say he was a remarkable person in many ways. He was one of the few senators who really did his homework. When he became chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee he told his wife that she could have two nights a week out. The rest of the time they were in their apartment at the Wardman Park with Arthur Vandenberg doing his homework. He was very considerate of his staff. I don't know whether I mentioned this before, but when he appointed me as chief of staff he said, "Go out and get the best people you can find. Only remember, I will hold you responsible." He said that with a little twinkle in his eye, but I knew that he meant it even so. He would come over to the Foreign Relations Committee rooms where we had our offices -- I think he liked to get away from the routine of his senatorial office -- he would come over there every morning and put his feet up on my desk and talk about foreign policy,

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and about the committee, and about the Senate, and about the State Department. He liked to exchange views and to test his ideas. His wife was equally solicitous of the staff. I remember she said that she was going to have a Christmas party -- she was not at all well, she had terminal cancer. I think the senator urged her not to have the annual Christmas party, but she said, "Arthur, I’m going to have that Christmas party if it’s the last thing I ever do." She had the party and she died shortly after that.

Arthur Vandenberg achieved a position of distinction in the Republican Senate, in the 80^th Congress, so that he was looked upon as the leader in the field of foreign policy, while Bob Taft was looked upon as the leader in the Senate on the Republican side on domestic affairs. They got along really quite well. But Senator Vandenberg’s attitude toward the Senate generally was that they were entitled to know everything that he knew, that they could not make up their minds unless they were fully informed, so he did his best to keep them fully informed. It was a remarkable thing that usually when he spoke there were sixty or so senators on the floor to hear him. This is, of course, quite unusual in the Senate because normally people aren’t interested in hearing what senators have to say -- unless they themselves are making the speech. But he treated members of the committee in a similarly solicitous way, making sure that they had every opportunity to get the information they needed to make up their minds in an objective way. Very often he would say, "Francis,

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Senator George isn't quite convinced that we should go down this path. I think we'd better have another meeting to see if we can't convince him."

Even though he may have had a majority of the votes in the committee, he nevertheless wanted to make sure that all the members were with him, and he took great pride in developing a feeling of unity and a spirit of unanimity in the committee. Indeed, as I recall, during his two years as chairman there was only one important vote that did not bring about a unanimous reaction from the committee, and that was I think of secondary importance. There was a personal reason why one of the senators didn't want to support a particular project. But he took great pride in that, and in those two years there was not one important vote that did not bring forth a unanimous reaction from the committee.

RITCHIE: Do you think that some of that was just the nature of who was on the committee, that they tended to think the way Vandenberg did, or was he really working behind the scenes to bring them all together into a consensus?

WILCOX: I think perhaps some of both. Certainly the latter was true. He did everything he could behind the scenes to convince them that they were going in the right direction. I think also, of course, there was a consensus in the country about our foreign policy at that time, which there isn't today. We had just emerged, from a

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terrible world war, and I think everybody wanted to do what was possible to create the kind of conditions that would make a more permanent peace possible. We knew we had to do something, we had to move in the direction of a United Nations; and later when the time came I think the country realized that the Russians were misbehaving and that we needed to do something in addition to counter the threat of Russian aggression, so it was desirable to have something like the NATO treaty, the Greek-Turkish program, and similar defensive devices. It is true that if Senator Vandenberg had not been in the Senate at that time (or someone like him), to encourage the Republicans to move in that direction, I think it is true that -- it is probable, I should say -- that some of these things might not have been done. He carried the Republicans with him on all these crucial votes. But it's interesting to note that from the United Nations, on down through the satellite peace treaties, the treaty with Japan, the NATO treaty, the Greek-Turkish program, the specialized agencies of the United Nations, the Marshall Plan; all of these things brought forth a strong show of support in the Senate, and I think that it was largely due to Arthur Vandenberg's leadership. Certainly if he had been on the other side of the fence the story would have been quite different. `

RITCHIE: He had made a very dramatic change in 1945, in his speech about becoming an internationalist. He had been a leading isolationist up to that point. That's largely what made him so

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valuable to the administration, since he was respected on one side and he had converted to the other, and carried people with him. Did you feel he had any lingering doubts? Having been an isolationist, was he worried about America becoming too involved in world affairs? Or when he made that conversion had he gone a hundred percent?

WILCOX: I don't know what you mean, Don, by a hundred percent. I don't think he had any strong doubts after Pearl Harbor. I think Pearl Harbor was the convincing demonstration to him that we lived in an interdependent world, that the United States could not remain isolationist. We had been pushed into the war whether we wanted to be or not, and there was no alternative. I think he felt that in the period after the war the only thing to do was to try and work with the other great powers to see if we could create the kind of world in which we might have a reasonable degree of stability.

RITCHIE: Senator Taft, on the other hand, who was equally respected by the Republicans in the Senate, really had very strong reservations about America's role overseas.

WILCOX: Yes.

RITCHIE: So there was a different way that a Republican leader could have gone in that period.

WILCOX: Oh, indeed. That's the reason I think that Senator Vandenberg's leadership was so critical, because if he hadn't been

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there, and Bob Taft had been the leader of the Republicans on the international side as well as the domestic side, the situation might have been quite different. I must say, however, that after Bob Taft -- and I always respected his intellectual ability, it was very great, there's no doubt about it -- after Bob Taft became a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, he grew in stature in the international field. I think he learned quite a little as a result of his experience on that committee and his mind began to change. You could see that before he died. His grasp of world affairs became better, bigger, broader, and he reacted as one who knew a little more about world. affairs than he had earlier.

RITCHIE: Do you think it was basically that he hadn't paid very much attention to it, or as much attention as perhaps he had to other issues?

WILCOX: Well, I think that generally speaking there is a relationship between knowledge and rational behavior. I think that he had not been as knowledgeable in the field of foreign policy as he became in later years. The two things are related.

RITCHIE: In those morning sessions, when Vandenberg would come in and put his feet up on the desk, did he ever express concern about Taft, and Taft's influence on the people he had to convince?

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WILCOX: Oh, yes. He recognized that there was a conservative wing in the Republican party, and he had to do what he could to carry that wing with him, or at least to mute its strength, to make sure that a sizeable majority of the Republicans were with him. He was able to do that because as the vote would indicate in all the cases that I mentioned, there were a few people who opposed him, but for the most part the Republicans followed his leadership.

RITCHIE: It was an unusual circumstance. The Republicans had been out of the majority for decades. They were now in the majority, and yet there was a Democratic president, and one whose reelection was very much in question. Were there any pressures on him to steer a more independent course from the White House?

WILCOX: Oh, yes, and of course there were plenty of opportunities to be critical of the administration and of the president and the Secretary of State. But I think by and large Senator Vandenberg had decided that what he was doing was in the national interest, and he tended to put party politics behind him when it came to foreign policy -- not always on domestic policy, but when it came to foreign policy he operated this way. He felt that debate over foreign policy issues ought to be complete and rational, but that politics ought to stop at the water's edge when it came to foreign policy. I think he practiced that policy.

RITCHIE: How well do you think he got along with Harry Truman?

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WILCOX: Oh, I think he got along with him fairly well. He had known him as a senator. They had been on opposite sides of the fence on a good many issues; but I think he got along with him fairly well. President Truman recognized that it was Arthur Vandenberg's leadership in the Senate that brought the Republican element along with him. So both he and the Secretary of State George Marshall, and Dean Acheson, were appreciate of Vandenberg's efforts and they did what they could to keep him fully informed, and to consult with him on important issues. This was also especially true of Bob Lovett, who was under secretary of state for a period of time with General Marshall.

RITCHIE: Do you think they were going out of their way to stroke the senior Republican member because of their need to carry Republican votes?

WILCOX: Well, they certainly needed to carry Republican votes, especially in connection with treaties, because as you know it takes a two-thirds vote of the Senate to approve the ratification of a treaty, and the Democrats certainly didn't have a two-thirds vote, indeed they lacked a majority in the 80^th Congress. So they would have been foolish indeed if they had not paid special attention to Vandenberg.

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RITCHIE: The reason why I asked that question was because for awhile Vandenberg's role has been somewhat downplayed by people writing on that period -- even some of the memoirs, Acheson and others -- didn't credit Vandenberg.

WILCOX: Yes, you are quite right about that.

RITCHIE: Some of the journalists painted him to be sort of a pompous fellow, and really not as important as he seemed to be at the time. Now there seems to be another school of historians who are saying: wait, Vandenberg played a very important role. So there is some controversy over how significant his role was in the whole process, and you certainly were in a key position to observe that, and to see the relationship between the two sides, and whether or not the administration sincerely sought out Vandenberg's opinions. Was he really making a contribution to the foreign policy of the Truman administration?

WILCOX: Well, he most certainly did. Of course, as I say, I'm prejudiced, but it is obvious to me that he made a very important contribution. There's tendency on the part of political party leaders not to attribute too much -- what shall I say? -- not to give too much credit to the loyal opposition. They prefer to take the credit for themselves and their own leaders. It's only natural that they would not want to bestow upon Arthur Vandenberg all the laurels that he was due. I worked very closely with him for several years,

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particularly the two years that he was chairman, and my honest opinion is that he was an indispensable element in the political relationships that existed in the formulation of our foreign policy in that very critical period. Without him, of course you don't know what might have happened, but certainly he firmly believed in the idea of a nonpartisan foreign policy, and he worked toward that end.

Now, he was critical of some of the things that the administration did, and he pointed out that there wasn't a bipartisan policy with respect to China and the Middle East and certain other problem areas. But he felt that there was with respect to NATO and the Marshall Plan, where consultation between the executive branch and the legislative branch was full and complete. He felt that in connection with the United Nations also there had been a full and complete consultation. Secretary Hull had called in members of the Foreign Relations committee -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- and they met from time to time to consider the kind of world order that we wanted to work toward. He felt that that was the way foreign policy ought to be formulated. But he repeated on several occasions when he was urged to be openly critical of the administration that he would call General Marshall and talk with him on the telephone, but that he would not take his story to the press. As he put it he could not do that to George Marshall." He was reluctant to be critical of him in public because he felt that General Marshall was a real patriot.

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RITCHIE: Marshall's stature was particularly high in that period. Do you think that they had a personal friendship as well, or was it just that he admired Marshall?

WILCOX: There was no question but that he had great admiration for General Marshall. But my impression is that Marshall was not personally very friendly with anybody. You know, he was a little bit like George Washington -- not the kind. of person that you slapped on the back. General Marshall respected Vandenberg for what he did in the way of contributing toward our foreign policy, and I think they got along quite well. Arthur Vandenberg's contacts during much of that period were with Bob Lovett, who was under secretary. He worked closely with him. They often met in Vandenberg's apartment in the Wardman Park in the evening, in the late afternoon, to develop, together, foreign policy ideas.

RITCHIE: How did Vandenberg use you as the chief of staff of the committee at that time? What types of things did he call upon you to do?

WILCOX: We advised with him on meetings that might be called, on matters that should come from before the committee and the Senate, on hearings, on who should be heard at the hearings, on the kinds of questions that might be asked and the possible outcome. We prepared committee reports for him. We did not normally prepare his important policy speeches, because he liked to prepare himself. He did

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them on his own typewriter at home at night in the Wardman Park Hotel. He used me, and I guess some of the others from time to time, to share ideas with. He liked to talk about foreign policy problems, look at the different options before our country, and raise basic questions about what we should be doing. This was what I enjoyed most in my relationship with him.

He wasn't inclined to delegate full responsibility for important matters of that kind because he liked to get into the substance of foreign policy himself. So that when we took up the Greek-Turkish program we wrote a letter to every member of the Senate, inviting them to send to the committee the kinds of questions that they wanted answers for. He and I sat down one afternoon together, going over these questions and organizing them, arranging them in the form of a little booklet of questions. We got the answers from the executive branch for all these questions; these were in turn transmitted to the members of the Senate. This was one of the kinds of things he did with the staff to make sure that the Senate had all the information they needed. He leaned over backwards to assure his colleagues that he had an answer, or he'd get an answer, to all their questions. And he followed this formula on the Senate floor. He didn't try to avoid problems; he was very meticulous in giving full answers to every question that came up, regardless of who asked them.

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In the case of the North Atlantic Treaty hearings, he invited two conservative Republican senators to come to the committee hearings and ask all of the questions they wanted to ask. They took a good deal of the committee's time. He was very patient in his efforts to convince his colleagues on the Republican side that they were fully informed and that they had access to all the information that they needed to make sound decisions.

RITCHIE: I wonder if his solicitousness. came out of his many years of being in the minority. When he finally got into the majority do you think he was more sensitive to the other side?

WILCOX: That might have been one of the factors, Don, but I think that he recognized his role as a kind of conciliator or mediator -- an essential element in securing Republican support for important foreign policy issues -- and he took his responsibilities very seriously. He felt that he could help develop with the administration the kind of foreign policy that would protect our national interest. This was the basis of his behavior, I thinks all the way along.

RITCHIE: You described his patience with people. But I read once where you said he could be an impatient man. In what ways did you find him impatient?

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WILCOX: Well, I didn't find him impatient very often. He may have been in connection with some of his domestic activities and some of his other senatorial duties, but I didn't find him at all impatient in connection with the treatment of his colleagues. He accorded them every respect, showed them every courtesy, invited them to committee hearings, permitted them to ask questions, and was quite responsive on the floor of the Senate. In private he may have expressed some unhappiness over the behavior of some of his colleagues, but he certainly didn't show that on the Senate floor or in the committee hearings.

RITCHIE: The first item that came up when he became chairman, you mentioned, was the Greek-Turkish aid program, which Truman proposed to Congress early in 1947. There is an incident which is repeated in all of the books about diplomatic history at that time, in which the Senate and House leaders were invited to the White House for a briefing. Vandenberg said to Truman that the only way he was going to get his program through was to "scare hell out of the American people." Ever since then there has been a debate over what he really meant by that. I wondered if you were familiar with that, and if you have any feeling what Vandenberg meant by that remark, and what it's impact was?

WILCOX: I don't think I can shed much light on that, Don. He may have said that. I suppose if he was reported to have said it he

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probably did. He was strong sometimes with his language. He had a way of presenting things in pictorial fashion, you know, with rather vigorous, strong language. I suppose that what he had in mind was the desirability of convincing the American people that we had to do this because of the serious threat of Communist aggression. I. think he recognized that there would be a lot of opposition to it, for it cost a lot of money. And it was an important departure in United States foreign policy. This applied also to the Marshall Plan. To start rehabilitating western Europe you had to condition the American people to get them in the proper mood, and one way of doing that was to indicate the nature of the threat we faced in the world, both from the Communist side and from the potential inability of Europe to revive itself without our help. If we couldn't get these two points across to the American people, we'd be in serious trouble.

RITCHIE: The difficulty was to convince people that this was really directly in America's national security, to become involved in other areas of the world, rather than things that seemed perhaps more directly related. I suppose that in 1947 it might have been questionable that the United States' immediate needs were in places like Greece and Turkey. Did you get a sense that he was trying to educate both the Senate and the American people?

WILCOX: Oh, yes. I think he recognized the threat that came to the United States as a result of the withdrawal of Britain from

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the Middle East, and the threat of Soviet penetration in the area. And he realized that both the Senate and the American people were really somewhat unaware of this new development and the danger it brought to the free world. Since it represented a big departure in our foreign policy at least as sharp as the Monroe Doctrine, the American people weren't quite ready for it. So he had to convince the members of the Senate and the American people; and one way to do this is to scare people a little. You have to jar them. Sometimes the Senate, the House, the American people don't make up their minds to take action unless they are frightened a bit or confronted with a crisis. I am sure that's what he had in mind. You know, we don't take action in this country until a real crisis hits us. We don't normally think too far ahead.

RITCHIE: The other thing that Vandenberg is given quite a bit of credit for is when the Marshall Plan was first proposed the administration proposed it as a multi-year package, four or five years, $17 billion, and it was Vandenberg who said they had to do it on a year-by-year basis. They cut it down, I think, to about $6 billion the first year, or something like that. What is it about the United States Congress that tends to deal with aid programs in particular, and the Marshall Plan specifically, on a year-by-year basis rather than on a long-range basis?

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WILCOX: Well I've wondered about that too, Don, but I think the simple fact is that they like to keep control of the situation. If they give the executive branch sufficient funds to run a four-year program of that magnitude, without having a chance to review it on an annual basis, they feel that it's giving the executive branch too much authority. So they have scheduled their hearings and their appropriations on an annual basis, and the budget is on an annual basis. Now, in some cases I think this wrong, because what you need, is sufficient lead time in certain situations, like foreign aid, where you should be in a position to plan over a period of time. Everybody talked about a four year program for the Marshall Plan, and that was the original proposal. But I think Vandenberg helped satisfy his Republican critics by making sure that they would have a chance to look at this program every year during its duration. Also the psychological effect of presenting the Congress with a $16 billion program was an important factor. Certainly the members could digest a $4 billion program much more easily than a four-year package. A number of things Vandenberg did were geared to the need to carry the Republican group along with him in the Senate. I think, though, that what you imply is quite correct, certainly in the construction of battleships and things of that sort that are done over a period of time it's unwise to base long range planning on annual appropriations. Congress does have the right to keep looking at these things but it can seriously handicap planning in the development

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field, for example, if those who are doing the planning don't have an opportunity to look ahead maybe several years to visualize the ultimate outcome.

RITCHIE: When the Marshall Plan was being discussed, and other aid programs, did they envision a permanent role of America in providing aid, or was this seen as just an emergency, stop-gap program? Do you think that people in the 1940s had some sense of what the continuing role was going to be?

WILCOX: No, I don't think so at the time of the Marshall Plan in any case. As the years rolled by they began to realize that more countries outside the western European area were going to be in real need, particularly as they began to gain their independence in the 1950s and '60s. They began to realize that these new countries obviously would have to have some economic and military help. But at the time of the Marshall Plan I think they felt that this was primarily the task of helping Europe rehabilitate itself, and they weren't at that point contemplating huge aid programs for the world generally. That came later.

RITCHIE: The Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan were in a sense unilateral actions on the part of the United States to intervene, to take the place of the British in Greece, to provide aid to Europe. Was there any sense of conflict being that and the United Nations

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ideal of multilateral action? Was there concern that the administration was tending towards not working with the United Nations on these issues?

WILCOX: Oh, yes. This question came up always in connection with these programs in the 1940s after we had joined the United Nations. There was a considerable degree of loyalty in the Senate to the idea of multilateral action through the United Nations, so that whenever something came up like the Greek-Turkish program, the Democratic members particularly had to be reassured, and some of the Republicans too, that we were not undermining our loyalties to the United Nations, we were not forgetting our obligations there: In the Greek-Turkish aid program, the bill itself provides that -- I've forgotten now the exact language -- but in any event there is some reference to the possibility that the United Nations might take action, and in the event they did act, and our assistance proved unnecessary or undesirable we would stop our aid to Greece and Turkey. I don't recall exactly the language, but in any event our obligations to the United Nations are explicitly recognized in the Greek-Turkish aid program. That was one thing that made it possible to get acceptance for the program in the Senate. Without it, I think, there would have been real trouble.

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RITCHIE: What do you think was Vandenberg's instinct in this case. Was he troubled over the conflict between the unilateral and the multilateral approach?

WILCOX: No, he wasn't troubled. I think he was very anxious to see the United Nations succeed. He'd been one of the framers of the charter and he was interested in doing everything possible to protect our relationship with the United Nations. But he also was aware of the opposition in the Senate to any action of this kind that would result in undermining our relations to the United Nations. So he was willing to take steps to effect some kind of a compromise with a proper bow towards the United Nations.

RITCHIE: He was also the author of the Vandenberg Resolution, which paved the way for the creation of NATO.

WILCOX: Yes. He and Bob Lovett were largely responsible.

RITCHIE: Again there were these two different paths in which the United States could go. Could you describe a little of the background to the Vandenberg Resolution? Did you work with him on that?

WILCOX: Yes. Oh, yes. The trouble arose, of course, because of the excessive use of the veto by the Soviet Union in the Security Council. There was at that time a tendency on Capitol Hill to look at all other possibilities for world order. The United Nations wasn't doing very well, so the members of Congress began to look at

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all the other possibilities in the world, such as the Federal Union idea, the Clarence Strait concept of Union Now, and other proposals of this kind. The idea arose that maybe if we had some kind of a regional defense arrangement like the Rio Treaty, this would supplement the provisions of the United Nations Charter and make possible the collective defense of the western world. We began to talk about that as a result of the prolonged hearings that were held on Capitol Hill.

The main supporters of this approach were Vandenberg and Lovett, and they met, as I said, frequently to talk about how this might be done without affecting adversely our relationship with the United Nations. As Vandenberg used to put it: "within the Charter but outside the veto." I met with the Department of State people from time to time, in my office, evolving the text of a resolution which was in turn evaluated and improved by Vandenberg and Lovett in their confidential meetings. Ted Achilles from the State Department came up on a number of occasions and we went over the text of the resolution and made suggestions for its improvement. Finally, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the resolution, which provided for the possibility of creating some kind of a regional defense arrangement.

The language was a little bit vague. It didn't expressly say there would be a NATO Treaty and a NATO installation in Europe, but

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it provided for the possibility of regional and other collective defense arrangements. The Senate passed it one afternoon by a vote of 64 to 4, as I recall, without very much debate. It's interesting, because this was the forerunner, this was the green light to the executive branch to go ahead and negotiate the North Atlantic Treaty for the collective defense of the Western world. It had very little debate on the Senate floor. I'm not sure that the Senate understood fully what they were proposing, but they did.

RITCHIE: Do you think Vandenberg understood fully what was involved?

WILCOX: I think so. When you look at it, though, in retrospect, the NATO Treaty was concluded after a good deal of negotiating, as you know. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had an opportunity to look at it on several occasions before it was finally concluded, and the members did make a number of recommendations that resulted in important changes in the treaty text. But I don't think that any of the senators who voted for the Vandenberg Resolution, or for the North Atlantic Treaty for that matter, had any real notion of the kind of organization that was to develop when NATO came into being: the extensive infrastructure, the communication system, the transportation system, the plan for the defense of Europe, the headquarters, the staff, and all the rest. I don't think any of the senators had a very good notion of the extent to which their vote for

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the North Atlantic Treaty would be developed or that they had any real knowledge of the kind of result that would take place. In their wildest dreams I don't think they would have thought of that, because the treaty itself -- a very short document -- offered the base for literally hundreds of executive agreements between the United States and the other NATO countries. And it was as a result of this network of executive agreements that the NATO system evolved into the elaborate defense structure we see today.

RITCHIE: And beyond that, collective security arrangements all over. the world: SEATO, CENTO. It was just the beginning.

WILCOX: Yes, that was the philosophy that Secretary Dulles had anyway -- of developing collective defense pacts for the Middle East and Asia, and of course, the Rio Pact with the Latin American countries had been consummated before the United Nations Charter was ratified. Nothing was said or done about Africa at that point, because the countries of Africa mostly remained within the empires or the domain of the mother countries.

RITCHIE: The whole concept of executive agreements removed a lot of Senate control over foreign policy, since presidents were making agreements without having to send them back for ratification a treaties. The number of executive agreements increased considerably, and much of the legislation that was passed at that time gave presidents a larger share in foreign policy. We began the process

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building the "Imperial Presidency" under probably the least imperious of modern presidents. Do you think that senators like Vandenberg and others had a sense of the power shift that was going involving presidents and foreign policy? Was there concern on their part?

WILCOX: Oh, I think they recognized it, but it wasn't until maybe a little later that the use of executive agreements developed the way it did. When the executive branch had trouble getting treaties through the Senate, they began to think of other ways of achieving their purpose. During the '40s and the period when we were building for the post-war era, and when there was a real consensus in the country about our foreign policy objectives -- and good bipartisan relationships -- I don't think there was quite the same need for executive agreements as there was later on. It was afterwards, in the '50s and '60s that we began to notice a rather important trend on the part of the executive branch to resort to executive agreements rather than to treaties, partly because of the increase in business in the world in international affairs, and partly because of the desire to avoid the two-thirds vote in the Senate for the approval of treaties. Certainly by the '60s this had developed to a point where there was real concern on Capitol Hill. Then in the early '70s, as you know, steps were taken to make sure that the Congress at least had knowledge of the executive agreements that were concluded. Before that, there hasn't any assurance that the Senate knew about them even, some cases. Now, under the terms of the Case-Zablocki Act, they are

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sent regularly to the Senate so at least there is an opportunity to find out what's going on in the executive branch. The arrangement seems to be working fairly well.

RITCHIE: The election of 1948 turned out very differently than everybody anticipated, both in the presidency and the Senate. Did Vandenberg see the handwriting on the wall, or was he as surprised as everybody else?

WILCOX: I think he was surprised. We'd talked about the election on various occasions. He would list all the reasons why he shouldn't be President of the United States. His name had been proposed as a likely candidate, as you know, earlier. He apparently had thought this through very carefully and had a whole list of reasons why he shouldn't be a candidate, including the fact that he felt at home in the legislative branch -- that is where he could exercise the post influence and could be most effective. He had not been an executive. He thought that someone like Tom Dewey would be a lot better equipped than he. So he talked himself out of the race. Then he envisaged the very hopeful prospect, from his point of view, that Tom Dewey, Foster Dulles, and Arthur Vandenberg would be a superb team of leaders, exceptionally well equipped, certainly to conduct foreign policy. He was looking forward to that, and he, like most everybody else, thought Tom Dewey was going to win the election. The morning after the election, he walked into my office, took his cigar

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out of his mouth, and said about Harry Truman, "You've got to give the little guy credit. There he was flat on his back. Everyone had counted him out, but he came up fighting and won the battle." He said not one word of criticism but only admiration for the great effort President Truman had put forth, although I knew he was terribly disappointed.

RITCHIE: Of course; also he lost the chairmanship of the committee with the Democrats winning the majority of the Senate.

WILCOX: Yes. The next year Tom Connally came back as chairman of the committee.

RITCHIE: Did that change Vandenberg's role in the Senate, or was he still as influential in the minority as he had been in the majority?

WILCOX: Well, the majority still had to look to the minority for support because, as you know, in the Senate in the foreign policy field, indeed in most domestic issues, the majority still has to look to the minority for support. This is certainly true in connection with treaties. For instance; the North Atlantic Treaty. Vandenberg supported that, even though he was not then the chairman when it was finally approved. So his role remained not as important in a way as it had been, because he couldn't run the committee any more. He still had a lot to say about the minority members of the committee

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and their attitude about foreign policy. His leadership of the committee declined, obviously, but he still worked fairly closely with Senator Connally. The two of them cooperated reasonably well. There was jealously involved on the part of Senator Connally, but they got along reasonably well because I think Connally knew that he had to have Vandenberg's support to get the job done. And, of course, I was in a good position to encourage that feeling.

RITCHIE: I was going to ask you about that, because it must have been very difficult for someone like Connally, who obviously had a large ego, to deal with Vandenberg, who was getting such good publicity and so much attention from the Democratic administration. Did you sense Connally's chaffing under that?

WILCOX: Oh, yes. It was apparent that Connally did not have the intellectual apparatus that Vandenberg did, and there was, as I say, a little feeling of jealously on his part, particularly when the administration continued to pay a lot of attention to Vandenberg. Indeed, I had to remind the administration from time to time not to neglect Senator Connally, because it was important to Vandenberg as well as Connally that the two work together. Sometimes the administration forgets these things, .and you have to remind them not to forget to consult with key people.

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RITCHIE: Do you think that an administration tends to assume that the members of its own party are automatically going to be good foot soldiers, but they have to go a little further down the road for someone from the opposition party?

WILCOX: Well, they better not do that in the Congress of today, because the members of Congress as you know are very assertive. They are inclined to be very independent; and the new members, especially the younger members, flaunt their independence in a rather obvious way. The executive branch has to be really very careful with both parties in Congress these days and not take for granted their own party members. Indeed, I think they realize that. We have had some good assistant secretaries of state, and some good secretaries, who have recognized that both parties had to be brought along with important decisions.

RITCHIE: You mentioned that Connally clearly wasn't as intellectual a senator as Vandenberg was. Did Connally lean on Vandenberg, or turn to him for advice?

WILCOX: Yes, he realized -- perhaps reluctantly -- that he needed Senator Vandenberg's support on important issues in the committee. He recognized Senator Vandenberg's intellectual ability and his influence in the Senate. So he did, I think, depend on him, and lean on him, and was careful not to offend him. He used to call him "Old

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Van" when he talked to me about Vandenberg. He'd say, "Old Van!", "we want to get Old Van in on this." (On his part, Vandenberg referred to Connally as "Old Tom."

RITCHIE: Did you find any change in your role, or the staff role, in the change between the Republican majority and the Democratic majority?

WILCOX: No. I had first worked for Senator Connally and he seemed quite content to have me continue on as his staff director. I think that in some ways he leaned on the staff a little more than Senator Vandenberg did, but in some ways less so, because he was not inclined to come in and sit down and put his feet up on my desk and talk at length about foreign policy. I don't think he was that much interested in foreign policy problems, the substance of foreign policy. I found him easy to get along with. I don't think he was quite as solicitous of the staff as Senator Vandenberg. For instance, he didn't throw an annual Christmas party for the staff as Vandenberg had. He didn't write his own speeches as Vandenberg did, but he relied upon us for the normal staff functions. He would expect us to set up committee meetings and the agenda, prepare the kinds of questions that should be asked of witnesses before the committee, to keep him informed of important developments, to recommend the kinds of meetings that we needed, and the kinds of problems that we needed to discuss, handle relations with the executive branch, and so on. He

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would look to us for advice of that kind, and on the Senate floor, of course, I always sat with him whenever we had an important issue on foreign policy. We tried to keep him properly briefed so that he could defend the treaty or the piece of legislation that happened to be on the floor.

RITCHIE: Did you find you had to provide him with more information when you sat next to him in the Senate than you did Vandenberg?

WILCOX: Yes, I think so. Senator Vandenberg, as I said, did his homework pretty thoroughly. Senator Connally wasn't inclined to do his homework as thoroughly as Vandenberg.

RITCHIE: Who wrote Connally's speeches for him? Was it your staff or his own staff?

WILCOX: We did it. I did some, and Pat Holt did some. Carl Marry might have. Both were very good writers. We'd collaborate, depending upon the issue, and who the staff person was responsible for a particular matter, and how important the problem was. Very important problems I would sit on the floor with him, and in some cases where we had a technical problem he needed to explain or defend the staff member responsible for that particular question would be with him.

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RITCHIE: He seems to have done pretty well in the repartee of debate. He was famous for the humorous put-down, and the bombastic response, sort of a stump-speaker's training.

WILCOX: Yes, he was very good at that. Sometimes he was a little abrupt; sometimes a little abrasive; sometimes he turned people off; sometimes he said things that he shouldn't have said, but on the whole he handled floor debate pretty well. For example, one day the Senate was discussing the question of neutrality in war time and I the use of weapons, and the fact that you couldn't always choose the weapons you were going to use -- this would depend upon the adversary. He illustrated this point by telling the story of two men in Texas before the War Between the States. They were talking about the impending conflict, and one of them said to the other: "Aw, let them come. I think we can lick the damned Yankees with cornstalks." So the war came and went, and the two cronies met on the street corner again and were talking about what had happened. One of them said, "Say, I thought you said we could lick the damned Yankees with cornstalks?" The other said, "Yeah, but the trouble is the doggone Yankees wouldn't fight us with cornstalks." Now that's the kind of illustrative story that he could tell on occasion. And I've seen him put Bob Taft down rather abruptly, in a way that Vandenberg would not have done. His repartee was good. He was sharp and he had a quick tongue, and a quick temper. He was inclined to be more political in

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his approach on the Senate floor. I think he allowed politics to play a more important role than Vandenberg did in his consideration of foreign policy questions.

RITCHIE: Did this work against the type of consensus that Vandenberg had been trying to build in the committee and in the Senate?

WILCOX: Yes, there was some -- I suppose in a sense Senator Connally was not as dedicated to the idea of non-partisan foreign policy as Vandenberg, and consequently it made it a little more difficult for Vandenberg to do the things that he wanted to do.

RITCHIE: Vandenberg became ill in the summer of 1949, and was in and out and not there for a while. Did this create problems, the fact that he was no longer around to lend his prestige to the bipartisan program?

WILCOX: Yes. I think it did, without any question. He was missed, he was sorely missed. The best answer to your question was expressed in the New York Times, when Vandenberg became seriously ill. It was obvious he could not resume his duties in the Senate. The Times printed a remarkable editorial about the senator's role of leadership, and remarked that "Even the Democrats miss the clear, authoritative voice of Vandenberg that rises above the buzz of party politics to define American policy to the world. For Senator

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Vandenberg's distinction is that he had given leadership to both parties in the development of foreign policy, and more than any other American has lined up behind it the massive popular support that has been our greatest asset in the post-war years. This leadership is lacking today." This is a reasonably good evaluation of the sentiment at the time that he became seriously ill and it became known that he couldn't resume his duties. He continued to exercise some influence by correspondence, but obviously he was in bed and under a doctor's care, and as he became more seriously ill he had less and less to say. But he continued to be interested up to -- I won't say the very day that he died, but till very shortly before he died he was interested in what was going on. I had some correspondence with him during his illness to keep him abreast a little of what was going on.

RITCHIE: There really wasn't anyone to step in to fill the void that he left. There wasn't any Republican member of the committee who had the same stature.

WILCOX: No, there really wasn't at that time. But people come and go in this country and nobody is indispensable. The committee continued to do a pretty good job with Tom Connally, and Alex Wiley, and Walter George as chairmen during the next six years.

RITCHIE: But among the Republican leadership, the really powerful Republicans weren't members of the committee at that time. Taft

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hadn't come on the committee; Wherry was outside the committee. The people who were really leading the party weren't necessarily the Wileys and the Henry Cabot Lodges.

WILCOX: No, that's right. You're quite right.

RITCHIE: Did that create a problem for bipartisanship? Did you sense that it was pulling apart at that stage?

WILCOX: I don't think that it pulled apart in the early 1950s, until maybe '55 or '56 or in the later '50s maybe. It seemed to me to begin to deteriorate a little bit. But President Eisenhower was respected by both parties and he favored a bipartisan approach. Certainly by the time the Vietnam War came along it had pretty well fallen apart. But I don't think that Vandenberg's departure from the scene meant an immediate eclipse of the bipartisan approach, because it was used in connection with the Japanese Peace Treaty, in connection with the Southeast, Asian collective defense pact, and other matters that I think fitted into the pattern of our post-war diplomacy.

RITCHIE: Well, for the Truman administration, who was it for them to turn to on the Republican side after Vandenberg wasn't on the scene anymore? Who did they use as a conduit, or who did they listen to?

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WILCOX: Well, as you say, they had a problem. The remaining Republican committee members weren't as effective in the Senate. There was Alexander Wiley and Alex Smith of New Jersey, Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa, and his colleague Guy Gillette. And Henry Cabot Lodge. These were, as I remember, the members who were on board at that time. Senator Smith was not a strong senator, but he was thorough and very dedicated. I think the administration tended to rely on him some because he was a Republican, after all, and he was loyal to the administration. Cabot Lodge had some influence and was a very good senator, and was often looked upon as one who could make a short speech very effectively in the Senate. He liked short speeches, but he spoke well. Bourke Hickenlooper from Iowa was a good senator, not an exceptional one -- but solid -- and he usually did what I thought were the right things. There wasn't anyone, though, who had the stature of Vandenberg. These were all fairly good senators, the ones I mentioned, but they didn't have the stature of Vandenberg and, therefore, there was no one that the administration could turn to -- that is, in quite the same way.

RITCHIE: You also had the switch in the State Department from Marshall to Acheson. Marshall seemed to have a better relationship with Congress, or at least was respected widely. Acheson seemed to be a little more prickly figure.

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WILCOX: Yes, he was a little more abrasive. However, I thought Dean Acheson was a very capable Secretary of State; he and Foster Dulles were two of the most successful ones, the most able ones. But Dean Acheson did have a tendency to look down his nose at some members of Congress whom he thought were not as well-equipped mentally as he was, and who didn't understand all the ins and outs of foreign policy as he did. I think he tended to look down on them, or at least they felt he was looking down on them. I'm not sure that he did, but this was their reaction. Also there was some question when he was inaugurated as Secretary of State, some question about his feeling toward the Soviet Union and toward Communism. In order to assure Senate support for him on the Republican side, Vandenberg questioned him on his attitude toward Communism, and even wrote out a little statement for Acheson to agree to, which he did, about his opposition to international Communism. But I think he proved himself to be a very able Secretary of State. There was this little friction between Acheson and Vandenberg at the outset, but I think Vandenberg did it to win the support of his party in favor of the appointment.

RITCHIE: Friction between Vandenberg and Acheson?

WILCOX: Well, I was referring to the little note that he wrote about Acheson's opposition to communism. This assured the members of his party that they were supporting a good Secretary of State, one

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that they could stand behind. Nevertheless, from the letters Acheson wrote to Vandenberg it is obvious that he had a good deal of respect for the Senate.

RITCHIE: It's pretty remarkable that a Republican senator would draft a statement for a Democratic Secretary of State to make to convince other Republican senators to vote for him!

WILCOX: It's not customary, obviously, but much of the discussion in the committee centered around this question, and Senator Vandenberg -- as the meeting progressed -- drafted a little note. I don't know whether Dean Acheson modified it a bit, I've forgotten now, but anyhow that was the basis for support for him.

RITCHIE: In the 80th Congress you had someone like Vandenberg making actual political suggestions, to the Truman administration: don't present the Marshall Plan as a four-year plan, do it as a one-year plan; do this to help you get it through; this is the way to deal with Congress. Now you had Acheson coming in as Secretary of State, just about the point when Vandenberg was fading from the scene, although there was some overlap. Was there anybody who had that kind of political insight that Acheson could lean upon, or do you think that some of the rough edges of Acheson's political career had to do with the fact that he didn't understand the legislative process as well and didn't have that kind of advice?

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WILCOX: Well, he should have understood the legislative process fairly well because he had served for a time as Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations and he had dealt with a good many members of the Congress. But I think the point you make is a valid one: he didn't have quite the same person that he could turn to that George Marshall had. It is true that the Acheson-Vandenberg terms overlapped somewhat. I can remember Acheson coming, before the Foreign Relations Committee with the North Atlantic Treaty text and discussing it with the members of the committee, and Vandenberg was active in the discussion at that time. So there was a short period of time when the two worked together. But the fact that Vandenberg disappeared from the scene was a handicap which had an effect upon the term of Dean Acheson.

RITCHIE: There seemed to be much more of a consensus in the Senate and in the United States about European affairs, and American versus Soviet activities, than over Asian affairs. It seems as if there was two different approaches. The Asian issues were much more divisive and raised a great hue and cry on the Senate floor. Do you have any explanation for the difference in the way America looked across the Atlantic as opposed to across the Pacific?

WILCOX: Much of it came from the debate which took place as a result of the removal of Chiang Kai shek to the island of Formosa, now called Taiwan. The Republicans, of course, charged that the

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Democrats "lost" China -- and one could argue as to whether anybody "lost" China -- but the fact is that the Kuomingtang faction that we were supporting lost out in their bid to defeat the Communist element on the mainland, so the Nationalists moved to Formosa. There was a good deal of feeling among the Republicans that the administration hadn't handled this matter very well, and since this was a political issue that had not been dealt with in a bipartisan way, they felt free to criticize. And in the Foreign Relations Committee I remember that we added $75 million to the authorization.for aid programs to be spent -- I've forgotten how they put it -- in the general area of China, the Asian area. In any case, it was thought that this might be helpful to the Chiang Kai shek regime. Then, of course, the China Lobby became very strong in Washington, and put a lot of heat on in the next few years to maintain the opposition to mainland China and to support the Chiang Kai shek regime in Formosa. We did everything we could in those days, in the 1950s, to keep Nationalist China in the United Nations and in all the other international organizations, and at international conferences, and we did everything we could to keep the Communist Chinese out of the United Nations and the various international conferences that were held in that period.

Part of the problem stemmed from General Marshall's trip to China to see if he couldn't help promote a reasonable solution to the problem. There was a lot of controversy, you will recall, in Washington as to whether General Marshall had performed his duty

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satisfactorily or whether he had been hoodwinked in someway. This continued to be a divisive factor in the foreign policy of the United States and certainly in the Senate. The Republicans were more or less convinced that the Democrats had been responsible for the "loss of China." I happened to be in the State Department later in the 1950s and it was my responsibility, as Assistant Secretary of State, to take those steps necessary to keep Communist China out of the United Nations and to make sure that the position of the Nationalist regime was protected, and I can assure you .that we did everything that was humanly possible to achieve this objective, until we arrived at the point where it became apparent that the other members of the international community would not support our position.

RITCHIE: When you were still on the Senate staff, did you feel the pressure of the China Lobby? Did you sense their pressure on the members of the Foreign Relations Committee?

WILCOX: I didn't feel it personally. I don't think they bothered me very much as I recall, but certainly as the years went by the pressure from the China Lobby became greater and this was one of the things, of course, one of the principal factors that led us to pursue the policy that we did in support of Chiang Kai shek. It was only a Republican president like Dick Nixon who could not be accused of being a Communist, or pro-Communist, it was only someone like him

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who could change the course of events. His trip to Asia in 1973 and the Shanghai communique, of course, changed the picture.

RITCHIE: You also began to get some new members of the committee, people like William Knowland and Taft, who were sympathetic to Chiang Kai shek.

WILCOX: Strongly sympathetic, yes.

RITCHIE: Did that change the atmosphere in the committee?

WILCOX: Well, I think it certainly made it more explicit and more concrete. Senator Knowland was as strong an advocate of Chiang Kai shek as you could find anyplace, so he made his views known quite clearly during that period after Chiang Kai shek went to Formosa. I don't know that it changed the attitude of the committee very much in this regard. There were no specific things that came before the committee in the way of treaties or legislation that had a direct bearing upon the problem, but certainly whenever the issue arose, Senator Knowland and Senator Taft made their views known very emphatically.

RITCHIE: You had people like Kenneth Wherry, and you had Joe McCarthy in the Senate, a very vocal group. What was your feeling as a foreign policy expert sitting there watching the Senate scene in 1949 and '50?

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WILCOX: Well, I had some reservations about it. I thought General Marshall was unfairly criticized. I thought he did the best he could in the very difficult trip he took to China. I thought that it was rather foolish to engage in a political debate as to who lost China, because nobody lost China. The course of events were such that Chiang Kai shek, despite the help he got from us, was not able to maintain his position there and he had to go to Formosa. The Chinese Communists won out and we had to make the best of it. This got to be heavily involved in politics, and of course, my position generally was that I preferred to have the members of the Senate and members of the committee look at such problems in an objective way, and in a nonpartisan way, ,and not to let political considerations color their decisions too much. That's the attitude of a professional, I suppose, who tends to be more idealistic in his approach than maybe some of the politically oriented members of his committee. But when you work on Capitol Hill for a while you learn to live with these things and you appreciate the fact that the Congress is a political body after all. They're going to take advantage of situations like these that may give them some political advantage.

RITCNIE: When you had a senator like William Knowland on the committee, who really thought very differently about an issue, very passionately about an issue, than say of the rest of the members of the committee, how did the staff deal with Knowland? Would he come to you as a staff person for assistance,. or would he go to outside

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sources, Alfred Kolhberg or someone like that to write speeches for him or to prepare things? He was so diametrically opposed to the prevailing sentiment, I wondered how the professional staff could deal with him, and whether or not he even made demands on the professional staff.

WILCOX: I had very good relations with Bill Knowland. During the floor debates he would, I think, respect the background and the knowledge of staff members and seek advice and help from them. He was not inclined to bypass the staff, nor was he suspicious of our attitudes. He may have gotten some help from outsiders or from the China Lobby. He probably was influenced by the China Lobby, no doubt. That's the reason they're there. But we had no great difficulty with either Senator Knowland or Senator Taft. I think that both of them began to appreciate more some of the problems involved in foreign policy as they became oriented in the work of the committee. Both Senator .Knowland and Senator Taft were very effective senators. When you had their support on the floor obviously you were going to go far toward achieving your objective.

RITCHIE: One other thing: members of the Foreign Relations Committee tended to be some of the most powerful people in the Senate. They all seemed to be chairmen of other committees. It seemed like they gravitated toward the Foreign Relations Committee. Did you find

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that a senator who was also chairman of another committee, as say Walter George was chairman of the Finance Committee, or…

WILCOX: Bill Fulbright was chairman of Banking and Currency.

RITCHIE: Right. Did they tend to use their own committee staff? A chairman of a committee who was also a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, would they come to the Foreign Relations Committee staff, or did they already have an entourage of staff they could turn to?

WILCOX: Well, I suppose all senators have certain loyalties toward some staff members of their own, but there was a considerable overlapping of chairmen with other committees. I think this was probably due to the fact that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was then, and I think it still is, the most prestigious committee on Capitol Hill, unless it be the Appropriations Committee. It was natural that some of these members of the Senate, chairmen of other committees should also be members of Foreign Relations. They don't do it today, so much, they're a little more careful about the way they spread these perquisites around. Bourke Hickenlooper was chairman of the Atomic Energy Committee and was a senior member of our committee. Some of them undoubtedly used some of their own staff, but when it came to Foreign Relations Committee problems they recognized that we were more conversant with those issues than their own staff members, so I think the tendency was normally to turn to the

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staff of the committee. Alexander Wiley was maybe an exception for a time because Julius Cahn was his administrative assistant and he took an interest in foreign policy and indeed later asked to be made a member of the committee staff. He came to all the meetings and he took an active part in the staff work that Senator Wiley required. We worked with him; he worked with us. But I think generally the tendency was for members to respect the integrity and the knowledge of the staff of the Foreign Relations Committee.

RITCHIE: Did you find when you were on the committee that senators tended to defer to other senators who had expertise in a field, like Bourke Hickenlooper on Atomic Energy...

WILCOX: Yes.

RITCHIE: Or Walter George on Finance? How does it work?

WILCOX: Well, we felt it was a good thing to have this kind of overlapping of committee assignments because we had a greater capacity to exchange views that were of mutual interest. Certainly the Banking and Currency Committee had quite a little to do with the problems that the Foreign Relations Committee took up, and similarly the Finance Committee with Walter George. So that if the problems under consideration involved treaties, double-tax treaties for example, this was of interest and importance to the Finance Committee and

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maybe the Banking and Currency Committee. We had considerable liaison at certain times with the Committee on Agriculture, which was important.

One of the problems in the Senate and the House is that there isn't -- there wasn't then and I don't think there is now in most cases -- a very close working relationship between the standing committees. Each committee is a little entity or an island unto itself, with a staff director and a chairman and others on the committee working on their particular problems. They don't communicate as much as they should with either the staff or the committee members. Certainly there isn't as much communication among the staffs and among the committees as there should be in order to have a good overall view of what is happening, and an exchange of information that might be useful in exploring a problem that overlaps the interest of maybe several committees. This has been one of the things that I often noticed when I was on Capitol Hill and we tried to do something about it. We tried to improve relations with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, for example and exchange information and ideas. We met with them from time to time.

RITCHIE: With members of the staff of the House committee?

WIICOX: Yes, and we tried to develop closer working relations with some of the other substantive committees of the Senate, but as I

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say there's not been a tendency to do this as much as I would like to see. We did have some joint meetings of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees.

RITCHIE: Of course, the Senate staff was much smaller at that point, and I suppose it was easier to make contacts.

WILCOX: Yes.

RITCHIE: Did you know most of the other staff directors?

WILCOX: Yes, I knew a good many of them. Appropriations and the critical ones, Commerce, Banking and Currency, Armed Services, Labor, most of the major committees I knew the staff director.

RITCHIE: I also wanted to ask you about the situation with the House. Looking back the House did seem to be the tail. The Senate would always act first on foreign policy issues and the House was in the position of having to go along, although at times they seemed more reluctant than the Senate to go along with the administration. I was wondering about the types of relations and how the senators like Vandenberg dealt with House members? Was it an equal relationship or did House members feel second-ranking? Did that cause some difficulties in relations?

WILCOX: Well, you know, House members always refer to the "Other House," they don't refer to the Senate as the "Upper House."

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They call it the "Other Body" when they talk about the other side of the Capitol. And Senate members react the same way. Sure, there's been a feeling on the Senate side that the House members are less important, and there's been a feeling on the House side that the senators are a bit snobbish, they're elected for six years after all. There are these feelings and these differences in point of view. I think it's recognized everywhere that the Senate committee is far more important because it handles not only legislation and hearings and so on, but it handles treaties and it handles nominations, two very important aspects of our foreign policy that the House doesn't get involved in.

There's been a shift in this regard, however, because in recent years with foreign policy costing so much, and the House being primarily responsible for money matters, the administration has had to recognize, and the Senate has had to recognize, that the House has a more influential role than it had twenty-five or thirty years ago. I know that there's a tendency to want the House members to come over to the Senate side rather than have the Senate members go over to the House side -- except for the State of the Union address -- so they tend to compromise on this, maybe even making it half way. There are these little differences that arise. And the jealousies may come up in little conference meetings between the House and Senate members. The tendency there is for the House members to hold the line and expect the Senate members to make the compromises because the Senate

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members are so darned busy they don't want to stay, and the House members sometimes-like the Russians -- they're willing to stay on and on and on to make their point. So there are these little differences; but I notice that whenever a House member can do so without serious jeopardy to his career, he is willing to run for a Senate seat from his state. But these are little differences that depend a lot on the individual and I think most senators treat House members with the courtesy and respect that is due them.

RITCHIE: I wondered how it worked into the legislative strategy. You work so hard to get something through the Senate and then it still has to go through the House. Did the professional staff members provide information and counsel to your House counterparts?

WILCOX: Yes, oh, yes. There is some of that on important issues where the House is importantly involved. We used to keep in close touch with Boyd Crawford, the staff director of the House Foreign Affairs Committee at that time, and furnish him with information and ideas and any exchange of views that might be helpful in getting the approval of the House Committee for the matter under consideration. On the Marshall Plan, for example, the staffs of the two committees worked very closely together in developing the background data the Congress needed to consider the issues involved.

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RITCHIE: Well, I have loads of other questions I'd like to ask, about the Korean war period, and the period when Alexander Wiley was chairman of the committee, but I think this might be a good breaking point for today.