Bowles Declares Parties Both Accept New Deal

The Republican Administration agrees with the principles of the New Deal, Chester Bowles said last night, and as a result the only serious disagreement in American politics is on questions of detail.

But the issues debated are "no longer central to our fate," he continued, and the emergence of critical new questions in the field of foreign policy requires a new consensus of political thought and probably a new political alignment.

Bowles delivered the second of three Godkin Lectures last night in Sanders Theatre on "The New Deal Becomes Acceptable." He will give his concluding address tonight at 8 in Sanders on "A New Political Focus."

The former Governor of Connecticut and Ambassador to India asserted that by studying "what the parties actually do" wide areas of agreement can be discerned both in foreign and domestic questions.

"Welfare State"

"The domestic political consensus," he said, is essentially "an agreement on the 'Welfare State.'" He maintained that both parties agree on the "first of the underlying premises of the New Deal: that the federal government is responsible for certain minimum standards for all Americans."

In foreign policy as well, he continued, the Republicans support the basic Democratic concepts in recognizing the need for cooperation with "like-minded foreign nations to protect our own national interests," and in acknowledging that the existence of a major totalitarian power is a threat to our national interests and its expansion "must be resisted and thwarted."

Welfare Programs Extended

Bowles cited as evidence for the under-lying GOP support of New Deal programs that "no New Deal legislation has thus far been repealed," and that in several areas the current administration has actually extended the scope of welfare programs.

But the broad consensus of agreement, he added, is insufficient in respect to questions of foreign policy, where the policy of both the Eisenhower and Truman Administrations, dating from 1947, is losing relevance.

He singled out for especial attack the Administration's method of handling foreign affairs, an approach he termed "sloganeering." He attacked this approach as characterized by statements such as "the painless liberation of the satellites;'...'the art of going to the brink;' and the 'Reds are on the run.'"