The National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution have consistently for many years advocated a strong military defense and have opposed any legislation which would weaken the defense of our Nation. We are dedicated to the preservation of our Republic functioning under the supreme power of the Constitution of the United States and to opposition to any legislation which would take control from our U.S. Congress and bestow sweeping powers to the Director of any Agency answerable only to the President and the Secretary of State. Sincerely yours, ELIZABETH C. BARNES, National Chairman, National Defense Committee. BERRYVILLE, VA., August 12, 1961. COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, New Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. GENTLEMEN: I am writing to oppose the bill S. 2180 which would establish a U.S. Disarmament Agency for World Peace and Security. The only security citizens of these United States would receive from the results of the creation of such an agency would be the same kind of security enjoyed by the lamb in the same cage with the lion. The best way we can have security is to be prepared for any attack against us. We certainly cannot be secure by disarming. High on the list of the aims of the Communist Party is that of disarmament in the United States. *** We must remain strong, particularly in the field of nuclear weapons. We do not need to draft more men-rather we need to resume nuclear tests. In any war, we can win only with modern weapons-not with men, for we have only about 7 percent of the world's manpower. In a war fought by men with weapons of World War II vintage, we cannot win. We must maintain superiority in the nuclear field, and use that superiority on the center of the threat-Moscow. To do otherwise is to aid and abet the enemy. Please place this letter of protest in the printed hearings to be held August 14 and 15, and place my name on the list to receive these hearings. Yours truly, Hon. J. W. FULBRIGHT, ELIZABETH H. OSTH. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y., August 15, 1961. Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, DEAR SENATOR FULBRIGHT: As one who strongly registered his opposition to the unworkable veto provision of the U.N. Charter both at San Francisco and the Senate hearings, I feel inspired to send this message. I am very much opposed to the bill in its present form. I would support it if the following provisions would be added: (1) a time limit-say 2 years-should be established as to the life of the Agency. If it does not produce a workable plan capable of achieving enthusiastic acceptance by all mankind, then it should be dissolved and (2) a special peace and disarmament congress should be elected in its place. Its work should consist solely in finding workable solutions to the problems of preventing world wars and achieving complete world disarmament except for the U.N. police forces. It should consist of one peace representative elected in each congressional district for a term of 2 years in odd numbered years and without regard to party labels. The purpose of all this is to avoid the creation of a peace and disarmament bureaucracy subservient to the Pentagon, the State Department, and the munition makers, and beyond the reach of the common people. If the new peace and disarmament plan soon to be unveiled by Gen. John McCloy contains the "peacemaking by all" formula as wrapped up in Senate Concurrent Resolution 85 by Senator Brewster (introduced in 1952), the work of the proposed disarmament agency for world peace will be minimized. If it does not, then it should lose no time in uncovering the nuclear age's most promising peace formula for preventing or neutralizing an accidental or unauthorized world war. As a very consecrated peace advocate for over 25 years, I trust that you will include this letter in the printed record of the hearings now being held on the proposed disarmament agency. I am very sorry that I cannot appear in person. Sincerely and gratefully, CLIFFORD R. JOHNSON. Hon. J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT, Chairman, Foreign Relations Committee, Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. WHEELING, W. VA., August 13, 1961. DEAR MR. SENATOR: On occasion of the hearings on S. 2180, the bill to establish a U.S. Disarmament Agency for World Peace and Security, we would like to inform you of our desire to see this bill passed into law before Congress adjourns. We are gratified to know that our own Senator Jennings Randolph is one of the sponsors of this important bill. We are also glad to see reconfirmed by the drafters of S. 2180, as stated in section 2, that— "An ultimate goal of the United States is a world which is free from the scourge of war and the dangers and burdens of armaments; in which the use of force has been subordinated to the rule of law; and in which international adjustments to a changing world are achieved peacefully." These are the reasons which, we believe, make passage of S. 2180 of paramount importance: 1. To provide an informed basis for disarmament negotiations. (a) The establishment of a U.S. Disarmament Agency will facilitate and give validity to disarmament negotiations in the coming U.N. General Assembly session. Failure to pass this legislation would be a serious blow to our position as peaceminded moral leaders of the world. (b) The establishment of a U.S. Disarmament Agency has become a necessity at this time of heightened tension over Berlin. The President has announced increased military preparedness, by emphasized our continued desire to negotiate. Negotiation will be meaningless without the research and planning to be accomplished by the U.S. Disarmament Agency. 2. To initiate practical planning for conversion to peacetime economy. As we work for our goal of peaceful settlement of conflicts and of arms control, we must prepare ourselves intelligently for the possible achievement of this goal. Careful study and planning in the area of our national economy are essential to making arms reduction a possibility. Respectfully yours, W. WALLACE CAYARD, INTERNATIONAL UNION, UNITED AUTOMOBILE, AIRCRAFT & AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENT WORKERS OF AMERICA, Washington, D.C., August 18, 1961. Hon. J. W. FULBRIGHT, Chairman, Foreign Relations Committee, DEAR SENATOR FULBRIGHT: I welcome the opportunity to write to you on behalf of the 1,300,000 members of the United Automobile, Aircraft & Agricultural Implement Workers in support of S. 2180, a bill to establish a U.S. Disarmament Agency for World Peace and Security. Since the end of World War II, the UAW, its leaders, and its rank and file, have urged that our Government prepare a peace strategy and mobilize the resources of the Nation for the purpose of waging peace with the same unity of purpose and willingness to make sacrifices with which we maintain our defense effort. At the end of World War II, President Walter Reuther of the UAW proposed that the factories which were converted to the production of planes after Pearl Harbor be reconverted to the production of homes. In 1950, the UAW again proposed that the Government allocate $13 billion a year, 1 percent of the cost of World War II over a period of 100 years, to a total peace offensive in a worldwide effort which would enlist all the people of the world through the United Nations to strike directly at the causes of war. These programs, we regret to say, were not accorded the enthusiastic reception with which the UAW proposal for 500 planes a day was greeted during the Second World War. Just as the recent request for an increase in our defense expenditure was enacted almost overnight while action to relieve unemployment to meet the national education emergency, or to provide medical care for the Nation's senior citizens languish for decades, programs designed to insure the survival of man on this planet have been greeted contemptously as utopian or radical or impractical, at the same time the skids were uniformly greased for almost every suggestion to build a more deadly nuclear bomb, to devise a more lethal bacteriological weapon, or to compound a more devastating chemical killer agent. Because at last, the Humphrey-Morgan bill constitutes a recognition by our National Government that the highest impracticality is the waging of war and that no human effort can be more urgent than the search for a way to establish peace once and for all on this earth, we, in the UAW, endorse this bill and commend the men and women whose efforts are bringing to reality the first National Government agency in history committed to a program of peace and designed to dam the current that today is carrying us toward universal self-annihilation. Yet, in endorsing this bill we, in the UAW, have an obligation to observe that the testimony offered in its support unfortunately tends to define the responsibilities of the new Agency so narrowly that the large opportunity for making a giant. step toward peace is in danger of getting lost in minutely detailed academic exercises. The interest of the UAW in a peace effort is not a sentimental and pious undertaking. Wage earners, their sons and daughters, their fathers and mothers, their sisters and brothers, were the first and the most numerous casualties in the Korean war, the Second World War, the First World War, and in most, if not all, the wars that have been fought in the last three centuries. When the wars have ended, as if the casualties on the battlefield and the death and destruction from civilian bombings were not enough, wage earners have been further victimized by the economic shock resulting from the dismantlement of war industries. I have been informed, for example, by the Defense Department that when the present beefed-up defense program comes to an end, 100,000 aircraft workers will almost certainly lose their jobs and that on the basis of present Government plans, Los Angeles, San Diego, and other cities where aircraft production is concentrated, face the possibility that they will take their places alongside the coal communities in Pennsylvania and West Virginia as economic deserts. For our members, I wish to convey to you our deep conviction that a crash program to insure the survival of man on this planet is far more urgent than a metropolitan project to land a man on the moon. Furthermore, we should like to see clearly established as one of the responsibilities of the new Disarmament Agency for World Peace and Security, the development of programs directed to the elimination of the economic causes of war, and to the relief of the people victimized by the economic consequences of arms production. For example, I have read Mr. McCloy's statement before your committee and the later statement by the Secretary of State, Mr. Dean Rusk. The note of urgency in their presentation is realistic and convincing except that there is a regrettable tenor in Mr. Rusk's statement, which seems to me to burden the new Agency with a cold-war responsibility toward the Communists which will not facilitate its primary purpose, the search for peace. Both statements, moreover, omit any signficant references to the economic goals of the new Agency. I am well aware that the language of the bill declares that "This organization must have the capacity to provide the essential scientific, economic, political, military, psychological, and technological information upon which realistic disarmament policy must be based." So that the direct interest of wage earners may be reflected in your hearings, I specially wish to emphasize the economic responsibility which is to be assigned to the new Agency. Unfortunately, our defense program has established a powerful vested interest in arms manufacture which ramifies, not only through the American society, but into every national community that receives U.S. military aid. Any disarmament program which begins to approach success will almost certainly have to overcome the powerful opposition which was described eloquently by President Dwight Eisenhower in his last message to Congress: "Until the last of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense, we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, 31⁄2 million men and women are directly engaged in the Defense Establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all U.S. corporations. "This conjunction of an immense Military Establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the Federal Government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved, so is the very structure of our society. "In the councils of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. "We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." Every indication we have suggests that there is a parallel entrenched interest in arms and the military in the Soviet Union. Certainly a peace development and research program will inevitably collapse in final frustration, which does not direct itself specifically to the certain opposition from the agencies and forces with a stake in arms that will inevitably rationalize their selfish ends in the most persuasive appeals to every nationalist prejudice. I acknowledge that section 31 (h) under title III of the proposed bill authorizes research and programing in this area. Granting that the conception of this bill is a magnificent blueprint for a new agency which could be monumental in the history of man, it is nevertheless our belief that recurring incidents to our continuing relations with the Russians or the Chinese may very well lead to a preoccupation with the national security conceived in terms of a military defense, unless a legislative record unmistakably sets forth the intent of Congress that this agency truly concern itself with the real problems we must solve in order to achieve world peace and security. In this context, it is noteworthy that the 2,500 delegates to the special convention of the UAW, which met in April of this year, unanimously adopted a resolution calling for a detailed program to meet the personal and family needs of defense workers. This resolution, which I am attaching as an enclosure to this letter and which I hope you will introduce into the hearing record recommends (a) A commission on the economics of disarmament, which is provided for substantially if the Humphrey-Morgan bill is enacted; (b) Programs designed to foresee shifts in production and to prepare for them so they can be undertaken without deprivation to defense workers; (c) Provision for the maintenance of defense workers and their families during reconversion; (d) Relocation programs for defense workers for whom jobs cannot be found in the immediate area of their former employment; (e) Research grants to defense contractors enabling them to develop production plans for civilian goods; (f) Federal loans to companies with defense contracts to enable them to convert to civilian production; (g) Grants to workers to enable them to secure training to qualify them for nondefense employment; (h) Recognition by the Government that the compensation of defense workers for financial losses suffered as the result of contract cancellations is a legitimate cost item in defense contracts; (i) Encouragement of contracts between unions and defense contractors which provide for the needs of laid-off defense workers. For our membership, I note with approval section 26 of title I in the bill which authorizes the President to appoint a general advisory committee of not more than 15 members to advise the Director of the new Agency. The Peace Agency, which in many ways is an embodiment of the finest ideals of the American community, is entitled to the advice not alone from the usual roster of big names which serve on Government advisory committees. Particularly, since the Disarmament Agency will be responsible for our national effort on behalf of the survival of humanity, it should be advised by men and women who speak for the aspirations of the entire people, the victims of past wars, the fathers and mothers of the people who are called up in a national crisis, the spokesman of the organizations that have actively condemned war and the nuclear poisoning of mankind, wage earners, and religious groups. I am not suggesting that there should not be a spokesman for General Motors, General Dynamics, General Instruments, and the other generals and admirals who have traditionally been entrusted with the national security, but the stake of every American family in the realistic direction of the Peace Agency is an interest paramount to our deepest concern as citizens and human beings. It is inconceivable that the people would give their proxy to General Motors in a national election, or the keeping of their conscience to General Dynamics in a personal moral issue. Similarly, it would be intolerable if representatives capable of speaking the deepest convictions of the American people were not present when the Peace Agency explored the alternative paths to peace and survival. Finally, I would be less than frank if I did not call your attention to my own belief, which was very well expressed by Mr. Chester Bowles, the Under Secretary of State, on his return from his 20-nation tour of Europe, Asia, and Africa, that there is in the world a widespread skepticism of the motives and purposes of the American Government. No effort by our Nation alone can hope to be successful in the quest for a just and final peace in this life. Ultimately, what we accomplish must be achieved with the cooperation of the people of the world, the men and women in Russia and China, as well as in Portugal and Spain and France, the people of Central Africa and the workers and peasants in Cuba, as well as those in Paraguay, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and the Union of South Africa. If our peace efforts are accompanied by public statements as oblique and lacking in candor as our official statements after the U-2 incident or the Cuban invasion, the peace pretensions of the United States will be discounted to the value of the ruble at the end of the First World War and the present effort will come to the same tragic end as other tongue-in-cheek peace efforts in the past. The strategy for peace must be based on a tactic of truth. Nor can the structure for peace be founded on the uncertain whimsy and the dream-like self-delusions of people who refuse to see China on the map. So long as American policy excludes the Chinese Communist Government from the councils of nations, no effort of the Peace Agency can engage the basic problem of survival. To plan for a world peace agreement which denies the existence of the most populous nation in the world or to hope for a footing in the future for mankind without taking into realistic account the single most unstable factor in the delicate balance over the hellish abyss of war, is a project as meaningless as seeding the arctic waste with lemon trees. It would be, I should say, the equivalent of lodging our desire to live in an H-bomb. Sincerely, EMIL MAZEY, Secretary-Treasurer, UAW. |