Successive governments have likewise requested the extension of these programs beyond June 30, 1948.

It is my observation that these programs have great value to Paraguay and to the United States. They have made Paraguayans enthusiastic supporters of international cooperation, and when one considers that only through constructive international cooperation can peace be attained, then these programs take on a meaning and an importance which it is difficult to overestimate.

Through these programs we are able to exert our influence directly, helpfully, constructively, and with the consent and support of the government concerned, on the farmers, workers, and other citizens of a foreign country.

No other program of assistance or cooperation that I am familiar with allows us to do this so successfully.

In a dispatch which I wrote in Paraguay last year, I said, among other things:

I believe the cooperative-action technique has demonstrated its value as a pattern for intergovernment collaboration.

I foresee that our Government will adopt it in the Near East and other places where poverty and ignorance are a menace to our institutions and security. Extremists who have no love for our system of Government are capitalizing on the poverty and ignorance of millions of backward peop'es throughout the world in order to advance their own techniques and designs. Un'ess the democracies show an equivalent interest in these underprivileged peoples, they can expect the extremists to win them over and set them at odds with the democracies. In my opinion, the cooperative and helpful technique is an excellent device for influencing these millions of underprivileged to their advantage and to ours.

I have naturally been gratified to learn that the cooperative-action technique, which so far has been used only in the programs in Latin America, may soon be used in our program of assistance to Greece.

I have no doubt that the experience gained in Latin America, and which is serving us well in Latin America, can also serve us well in Greece and in other countries outside the American continent. Mr. JONKMAN. Any questions, Mrs. Douglas?

Mrs. DOUGLAS. I think it sounds wonderful.

Mr. JONKMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Beaulac. It was nice of you to come up.

Mr. BEAULAC. Thank you for the opportunity.

Mr. JONKMAN. Then we will stand adjourned, and I think we had better arrange a meeting a little later.

We will have the clerk notify you.

Mr. CORRY. Thank you very much. We are deeply obliged to you. Mr. JONKMAN. Thank you, Mr. Corry. You have all been very helpful.

We will stand adjourned.

(Thereupon, at 3: 45 p. m., an adjournment was taken, to meet at the call of the chairman.)

INSTITUTE OF INTER-AMERICAN AFFAIRS

FRIDAY, JUNE 27, 1947

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE No. 4-STATE DEPARTMENT

ORGANIZATION AND PERSONNEL,

Washington, D. C.

The subcommittee met at 2:15 p. m., Hon. Bartel J. Jonkman (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Mr. JONKMAN. We will come to order, please.

This is a meeting of the Subcommittee on Personnel in the State Department, considering reincorporation of the Institute of InterAmerican Affairs.

Colonel Harris, I think you were testifying when we last adjourned. You may proceed.

STATEMENT OF COL. ARTHUR R. HARRIS, PRESIDENT OF THE INSTITUTE OF INTER-AMERICAN AFFAIRS AND INTER-AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION, INC.-Resumed

Colonel HARRIS. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, you asked for certain examples of the results of our work in Latin America. I have here some examples which I hope will be what is wanted. May I give these to you?

Mr. JONKMAN. Yes. Do you wish to make any comment on them, Colonel?

Colonel HARRIS. If I could give two typical examples of what these contain, I think that would serve the purpose, rather than going through them all.

Mr. JONKMAN. Very well.

Colonel HARRIS. In the health and sanitation work-the town of Chimbote, Peru, on the west coast of Peru, has the finest harbor in Peru. It is near iron and coal. They hope to some day make that a sort of a Pittsburgh of Peru on a much reduced scale, naturally.

There were about 5,000 people in 1943 when we went in. Twentyfive percent of them are filled with malaria. There was little hope of them accomplishing very much in this condition.

In cooperation with the Peruvian Government, we went in there and worked on malaria drainage; we put in a 42-bed hospital, We have a health center for preventive medicine trying to prevent it being necessary for them to use this 42-bed hospital. Now the index has dropped from about 25 percent malaria to less than 9 percent.

The town has grown in these 3 years from about 5,000 to about 10,000. They are ready to expand and carry out their plans now, as far as health and sanitation are concerned, with good labor conditions.

Another example, we might take the town of Ataituba on the upper Amazon. This is a town where we originally went in to be of some help to the rubber workers. It is a typical town of the Amazon of less than 5,000 inhabitants. When we went there about 80 percent of the people had worms, diarrhea, yaws, pinto, or something of that sort. There was no water supply. They simply got their drinking water out of the Amazon, with all the bacteria there.

One in every four persons since we have been there has been treated for dysentery, worms, or some intestinal disease. We have helped them to obtain a safe water supply; a health center, with a doctor and a visiting nurse there. This is maintained in cooperation with the Brazilian Government. A water supply was built with funds from Brazil, from the little town, and partly from the Servicio.

The work there was watched by the other towns along the Amazon and I understand eight mayors from these towns came in with money in their pockets to interest us in doing the same thing in their communities. Those are typical examples, and we have others here.

In education, I might cite an example of a little town in Bolivia, the town of Batallas. On June 4 of this year there was an uprising against the government, rather typical of that region, by the rural people, not in Batallas, but in the surrounding country.

It is usual under similar cccurrences for the people of Batallas to join enthusiastically in any revolution. This year they refused to join because they said they had a school they were very much interested in, and that if they joined in the revolution the government might take this school away. This school was one we were working on with the Bolivian Government.

We were teaching the children not only how to read and write, but why they should wash their hands, how to take care of themselves, health education, better food, how to improve things in their houses, and how to educate the community.

We were helping the adults toward better living conditions. The rural insurgents around there said, "We will burn down your school." The Batallas people said, "Do not try it." They threw an armed guard arcund the school, and when Dr. Mauck (vice president, InterAmerican Educational Foundation, Inc.) was there about the 6th of June the armed guard was still around the school, and the insurgents had not burned it down.

They wanted the school very much, and I use this as an illustration of the result of our work there, and the stability which it helps to effect. This work is going on in many other towns in Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador.

As a matter of fact, the three governments have become so interested in this rural education that the ministeries of education of these three governments got together, maybe for the first time in history, and these three countries, which are rather suspicious of each other, are now working together to get the same kind of educational instruction in this area around Lake Titicaca, where they have the same sort of problems. I think that will suffice for an example of the educational work. I might give one other example, perhaps in the food-supply work. In Costa Rica, there is a whole area which has been abandoned by the United Fruit Co., where they could not sell their bananas on account of the blight. The whole country was very poverty-stricken. Lacking bananas to sell, they were trying to raise corn. They have a very

heavy rainfall and the corn would rot before they could get it to market. We put in a corn drier which dries about 29,000 bushels of corn per harvest, and it preserves corn which would otherwise be lost.

This was their pay crop. They have two crops a year. They are now forming a cooperative to buy this corn drier from us, and they will, we hope, carry this on by a local cooperative form of activity. These are just three of the examples that I have here, sir.

That finishes my testimony, Mr. Chairman, on this point.

Mr. JONKMAN. I would like to ask you about the Institute, as to whether it would be a permanent or a temporary institution. Which is it?

Colonel HARRIS. The present Institute was organized, Mr. Chairman, as a temporary institution to meet the problems of the war, and to combat Nazi influence down there.

It was hoped that after a few years we could turn over the part that was good to the host government so they could carry it on. However, miracles do not happen overnight, as I said before, I think, and there is still a lot of work to be done.

The State Department believes this is one of the best programs that has been undertaken by our Government. Mr. Woodward is here to tell you that from the State Department viewpoint, and the other governments want it very much.

There is another foreign European ideology down there which is probably more dangerous than the Nazi influence ever was. Changed conditions have made us change cur opinion as to the desirability of carrying this on after the war was over. We believe there is a great need for its continuance.

Mr. JONKMAN. What is the view of it right now; will it be more or less permanent, or temporary?

Colonel HARRIS. We are asking for a 5-year charter. I think it is up to the Foreign Affairs Committees of the Congress to decide whether it should go on any further than that.

Mr. JONKMAN. I mean with your view of the situation at the present time, do you think 5 years would wind it up?

Colonel HARRIS. It entirely depends on the international situation, I would say. I would really hesitate to express an opinion.

We believe that this is somewhat of a preventative and we believe an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You had to go in and cure Greece. We hope this preventative here will prevent South America from ever getting in the same situation as Greece did. Mr. JONKMAN. Have you any questions, Mr. Kee?

Mr. KEE. Yes. I was just wondering, Colonel, whether or not it has been your experience, or whether it is the custom, when you establish these hospitals and schools and get them operating, that these people will carry them on after you get them started.

In other words, do they cooperate with you to the extent that when you get a hospital established or a school established and get it operating, can the American head of the enterprise move on to some other place with the assurance that the work will be carried on?

Colonel HARRIS. Absolutely, that is our intention and has been our intention right on through.

Mr. KEE. It has been your experience that they have done that after you have gotten the enterprises going-that they have carried it on? Colonel HARRIS. Yes, sir.

We have never in any place operated a hospital over 1 year. We never intend to. The health centers have taken a little more time because it has been such a new idea to them.

Mr. KEE. Following the language and thought of Mr. Jonkman, it would not be the idea that as you establish these schools, hospitals, medical centers and so forth, you would always have to keep increasing the force of the Institute in order to have somebody to remain and carry on the work, but you could move on to others. It would be a sort of revolving proposition.

Colonel HARRIS. That is exactly the idea we have, Mr. Kee, yes, sir. M. KEE. You could go on and establish new places.

Colonel HARRIS. Yes, sir.

I have a list here, if you would go over it, sir, of some of the things we have already turned over, by country, I think this is. It starts with Bolivia.

Mr. KEE. Then if that is the state of affairs, it would not be your idea that you would have to continually increase your force?

Colonel HARRIS. Absolutely not.

Mr. KEE. Once you have it e tablished, you have a working force which could be moved from point to point?

Colonel HARRIS. Yes, sir.

We actually go in and work with these people. They learn by working and seeing us work. Thev do not learn by listening.

Mr. KEE. Yes, I understand you would have to stay there and set it up and see that it was operated and show them how to do it. Then when you got it established you cou'd move on to another center.

Colonel H⭑RR's. That is bolutely the idea we have, sir.

Mr. KEE. You could rrcbably have some representative return from time to time to see whether or not it was being operated properly. Colonel HARRIS. Yes, sir.

Mr. KEE. In the educational field. do you work the same way? Colonel HARRIS. Yes, sir. We work the same way in the educational field. The routine is usually that we have the summer schools for teachers from all over the rural areas. We selected instructors in one instance who were given 3 months' training under our techniques. The national instructors, plus one or two of our people, carried on the summer schools.

The teachers who attended the summer schools then went back and put these new ideas into their schools, and our people visited the schools from time to time, and made ccmments and suggestions and carried it cut that way.

I might remark that of 2,000 rural-school teachers in Costa Rica last year, they had 1.800 applications to attend these four schools, of which they could only accept 400.

Mr. KEE. That is all, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. JONKMAN. I would like to pursue that inquiry. I think we will be mighty interested in what programs you have instituted there that have become self-supporting and independent.

In what countries are they located? How many do you have? You have a list, I understand, but I would like to have a brief reference to it.

Colonel HARR'S. The list I gave are projects that we carried out under the programs that we have turned over, such as water supplies, hospitals, health centers, sewage-disposal plants, and things like that.