The audience and the press considered this the keynote of Marshall's pronouncement. (MARSHALL PLEADS FOR EUROPEAN UNITY, said the Times the next day.) The General continued:
Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist. Such assistance, I am convinced, must not be on a piecemeal basis as various crises develop. Any assistance that this government may render in the future should provide a cure rather than a mere palliative.
Any government that is willing to assist in the task of recovery will find full cooperation, I am sure, on the part of the United States Government. Any government which maneuvers to block the recovery of other countries cannot expect help from us. Furthermore, governments, political parties, or groups which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to perpetuate human misery in order to profit therefrom politically or otherwise will encounter the opposition of the United States.
Here, and at the end of his talk, Marshall cut off the applause--lowered the impact by moving quickly to his next point. As the audience rose to applaud the end of his address, the Secretary took off his glasses, leaned forward on the lectern, and reached into his pocket for some scribbled supplementary remarks. Then he reiterated his earlier point, "the vast importance that our people reach some general understanding of what the complications really are, rather than react from a passion or prejudice or an emotion of the moment." It was this gesture that led many members of the audience to believe to this day that the "Marshall Plan" was an impromptu stroke of genius that the General happened to toss out at the end of his prepared address.
"AFTER the speech, the applause was tremendous and the distinguished guests crowded around the Secretary," reports Bell. The audience surely grasped Marshall's plea for European unity, but few if any were aware that day of the significance of his plans for the United States' role in European recovery.
"I was much impressed . . . as were many of the others I talked to," says Conant. "However, I am frank to say I had no suspicion that the speech would turn out to be so epic making. That it was a major speech there could be no doubt, but since none of us knew that it would be immediately picked up by high ranking officials of foreign countries, we could not anticipate the subsequent developments."
The immediate favorable response by foreign officials was not accidental. "Unbeknownst to Marshall, Undersecretary Acheson had called in key English correspondents, briefed them on the upcoming proposal and urged them to dispatch the full text of Marshall's remarks in their papers," according to a member of that year's senior class, Douglass Cater, '47, now Washington editor of The Reporter.