Louise Slaughter: “I would like to paraphrase an editorial from Toronto that I think we really ought to hear. It was written by a man named…”

“I would like to paraphrase an editorial from Toronto that I think we really ought to hear. It was written by a man named Gordon Sinclair who is the voice that we always hear on a program called As It Happens. This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the Earth. Germany, Japan and to a lesser extent Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today even paying interest on the remaining debts it owes to the United States. When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it. When earthquakes hit distant streets and cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped. The Marshall Plan and the Truman policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries, and now newspapers in those countries are whining and writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans.”