seem particularly imperative that no step be taken which might interfere with a peaceful solution of international differences. American women do not want to send their brothers, sons, and husbands into another war. We do not want to see our sisters all over the world send their brothers, sons, and husbands into another war. Is there anything that the people want that this pact provides? The people want better homes and schools and a better standard of living. This pact will give them bigger and better bombs and bigger and better bombers. The people's will is for peace. And the pact would inevitably lead them to war. It is because we are convinced that the whole spirit of the North Atlantic Pact is contrary to the needs and the will of the American people that we, of the Congress of American Women, oppose it. And it is for this reason that we will fight it with all our strength-and with all our hearts. The CHAIRMAN. Senator Vandenberg? Senator VANDENBERG. No questions. POWERS OF COUNCIL UNDER TREATY Senator DONNELL. Only two questions. One is, Miss Draper, would you tell us, please on what you base your view that the Defense Council makes the decision when armed attack is taking place? I do not find anything in the North Atlantic Treaty that says the Defense Council has that power. Miss DRAPER. As I understand the treaty, it is not, of course, put in the clearest language, which we hope to arrive at by the end of these hearings, but as I understand it, there can be an Atlantic Council which is a Defense Council which can be called into existence at the request of the signatories of the Atlantic Pact to maintain and develop the resistance of the signatory countries to armed attack, and therefore it would seem as if, under those circumstances, they can decide their own action, though we know in the North Atlantic Pact that it is suggested that the Security Council of the United Nations would be informed after this decision had been arrived at. Senator DONNELL. That is the basis of Miss DRAPER. Yes. your view? MEMBERSHIP OF CONGRESS OF AMERICAN WOMEN Senator DONNELL. The only other question is this: Senator Connally inquired as to the Congress of American Women. How large an organization is that, and where is its membership geographically? Is it all over the United States? Miss DRAPER. Its membership is in about 14 different States. The number is 300,000, including our affiliated representation, and I have just come back from a tour of 10 States where I have spoken in churches, in schools, in girls' colleges, in universities and in many organizations of men and women, including the Congress of American Women, and the opinion of the majority of those people is against the North Atlantic Pact. Senator DONNELL. Finally, where was the national convention held to which you refer? How many delegates were present at it? Miss DRAPER. It was held in New York City and 197 delegates, guests, and observers, officially elected, were present. Senator DONNELL. How many of those were members of the Congress of American Women? Miss DRAPER. They were all members of the Congress of American Women or affiliated groups, with the exception of 11 guests who came as friends of the group to listen but not as official members. Senator DONNELL. Thank you. Miss DRAPER. You're welcome. The CHAIRMAN. Is your organization listed on the Attorney General's subversive list? Miss DRAPER. Indeed it is, as most organizations that are fighting for peace are. The CHAIRMAN. We have the pleasure this morning of hearing Mr. Norman Thomas, a man of wide information and considered views. Mr. THOMAS. It is very nice of you not to say, as most people do, "the man most often defeated in the United States." The CHAIRMAN. That is no discredit, to be defeated. Mr. THOMAS. I am glad you think so. Anyway, I am just expressing appreciation of your omitting that usual part of that introduction. The CHAIRMAN. I never introduce anybody with any strings to it. Mr. THOMAS. By the way, I want to express my special thanks to you gentlemen for the trouble you have taken for allowing me to appear on short notice. Only because of several other obligations. including jury duty, did I request that consideration, because I could appear at no other time. The CHAIRMAN. Jury duty is a very laudable responsibility. Mr. THOMAS. For lack of time, I have written out only an outline, which I shall elaborate briefly. STATEMENT OF NORMAN THOMAS, NEW YORK CITY Mr. THOMAS. May I make it clear that I am not committing the Socialist Party or the Post-War World Council by what I say? In both organizations there is division of opinion, but I think virtual unanimity on the safeguards which I shall stress. As matters stand, I favor ratification of the pact for reasons somewhat similar to those given by John Foster Dulles. To refuse now to ratify the pact in which our Government took the initiative might be a tremendous jolt to governments and parties in Europe on which the hope of democracy depends. I always believed that the negotiation of the pact was motivated by a sincere desire only for defense and not aggression. Nevertheless, I thought there were better ways for the United States to assure the nations of the world of all practicable support against military aggression. Neither under the pact nor without it is it possible or desirable to say that any aggression means that the United States will formally go to war, but there are other supports that can be given. I feared that for the United States to seem to give special aid to some nations, members of the United Nations but not of the pact, would tend to encourage aggression against nations outside the pact. UN AND THE TREATY In some quarters it is argued that the pact may be a step to a North Atlantic Union which I think would virtually junk the UN. For that we are not ready and I hope will not be ready. Weak as the United Nations is in many ways, I do not want it junked or further weakened under any circumstances now. We want to move toward a world federation of the right sort in which better balance will be achieved if there is a United States of Europe along with the United States of America, the Pan American Union, and the U. S. S. R., rather than if the nations of Europe are divided permanently in the orbits of Moscow and Washington. I do not want the pact to hinder the growth of sentiment and organization for the United States of Europe. ARMS NEEDED TO SECURE EUROPE There has still been no answer at all to my insistent question whether responsible military men really believe that by any pact or any feasible expenditure under it we can make western Europe invulnerable if the Russian high command should decide that the hour had come to attack, even in the fact of risk of world war. Unless Germany should be rearmed, which no one dares so far to suggest, it is estimated that our allies could make available about 12 divisions for defense along the Rhine while the job would require 40 divisions with appropriate air support. I have heard earnest and intelligent advocates of the pact and military appropriations under it admit that what they are after is a psychological rather than logical effect on the nations; that actions in themselves inadequate or irrational may yet convince the world of our sincere intention to act against aggressors and thus strengthen the morale of our friends and weaken our potential enemies. Along that line of argument lie dangers: the danger of raising false hope, the danger of building up a whole network of national military machines insatiably crying for more; the danger of aggravating rather than minimizing the armament race without compensating guaranty of that precarious thing, military security. I want to say that even on the military side we do not reckon just with the military strength of Russia and the satellite states, but with the probable fact that in the very military forces of France and Italy there would be a fairly high percent of Communists whose first loyalty would be to the Communist cause, not the most certain of allies, therefore. I noticed with regret a dispatch in this mornings paper showing some increase of the Communist vote in Sardinia, and of the Left Socialists, the so-called Left Socialists. Actually they are not left. And I think that has to be borne in mind in any computation of military affairs. To guard against these dangers that I have referred to briefly many things should be done, some of them possibly by reservations to the pact or by action parallel to it. I stress the most important: FRANCO SPAIN AND THE TREATY 1. It must be made absolutely plain that the United States will steadfastly oppose the inclusion of Franco's Spain in the pact. I am not too happy about Salazar and Portugal, nor am I inclined to think there is much strength from his membership. It is nonsense to think that in a military sense the poverty-stricken, tired Spaniards, many of whom hate Franco, would be an asset. The only use for Spain would be as a possible bastion behind the Pyrenees for American troops after the rest of Europe had been overrun by Communist forces. That is a grim outlook for American boys which can scarcely be tolerable to our allies. They want to be defended, not liberated once more after a horrible atomic war. To take Spain into the pact would be cynically to flout any contention of concern for democracy or regard for the moral character of government. Cruelty and intolerance in Spain parallel cruelty and intolerance in Communist countries. Franco cannot cleanse his hands of blood by wringing them in frantic 'protestations of hatred of communism. Cruelty and injustice are cruelty and injustice no matter under what flag they are committed or under what slogan they are sanctified. COLONIAL POLICIES AND THE PACT 2. Steps must be taken so far as possible in conjunction with the United Nations to make it clear that the pact will not furnish moral or economic aid, directly or indirectly, to the wretched colonial wars which have been waged by the Netherlands and France in Indonesia and Indochina. These wars create a situation made to order for racist and communist exploitation against the United States. From Asia may yet come a greater peril to us than from Europe. The news of another agreement in Indonesia is good. This time it must be carried through to a fair and just peace with the satisfaction of Indonesian desires for independence, and we must not be blackmailed by the Netherlands or France into a support of their colonial policies on the ground that they are necessary to us in western Europe. We are necessary to them. DISARMAMENT 3. The third provision which must accompany the ratification of the pact is the declaration that the effect of the pact must be to reduce and not increase total armament expenditures; that is, ours and theirs. It is clear that no practicable expenditure of itself will guarantee perfect safety. The steady increase of expenditure jeopardizes our own economy and tends to build up the military everywhere. It is appalling to think that we will be expected to help finance the European equivalent of our brass hats who, according to the Hoover Commission, do not know the meaning of proper budgeting, in Luxemburg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, France, Britain, and possibly Salazar's Portugal. Think of all of them clamoring for more. It is fantastic to expect American taxpayers to accept so great a burden, and we would not get, as I think Senator Vandenberg is quoted as saying yesterday, and we would not be building, a sound Maginot line by any conceivable appropriation of that sort. 4. Most of all I want to urge that, preceding the ratification of the pact or accompanying it, there will be a mighty appeal by the United States for an end of the armament race under effective international controls which would make the pact unnecessary. The end of the armament race requires the universal abolition of peacetime military conscription, the demilitarization of narrow waterways and island bases, the liquidation of weapons of mass destruction, and the international control of atomic energy for peace, and the general reduction of national military forces down to a police level. These things will, of course, require a strengthening of the UN and provision for an international security force probably on a quota principle. I do not think that the men in the Kremlin would accept the necessary controls, certainly not at first proposal. Nevertheless, an American appeal might be a beginning which would bear fruit sooner than we think. A continuance of the present armament race dooms mankind to poverty and war. It is quite true that you can preserve peace by overwhelming military superiority. You can preserve peace by fear, for a time, and somewhat precariously, but it is not conceivable that for the next generation there will be such a complete preponderance of force on our side that we will win the way a bulldog wins against a rabbit, because the rabbit knows he hasn't got a chance; and in this race, everything we know about history, everything we know about logic and psychology, make it entirely certain that after 30 more years of an armament race we will go to war. You get what you prepare for. In the meantime, Shaw's famous statement that "If the other planets are inhabited, the earth must be their lunatic asylum," is verified by what happens, for in every land less fortunate than our own not compulsorily disarmed, every night's sun goes down on children crying themselves to sleep for lack of bread, although every government is spending from 25 to 50 percent of its budget on arms and not getting security out of it. Economically it is the greatest boondoggling in the world, and I do not see a successful war against poverty anywhere, or on the food problem. DANGERS OF ARMAMENT RACE If there has to be this stress on arms, and inevitably the hate, the fear, the hysteria, that are necessary to support so great a burden everywhere, the continuance of the kind of cold war even on a less aggravated plane than now, inevitably that kind of thing will give rise to incidents that will bring war. I do not think that there can be an end of conflict in the world so long as you are dealing with aggressive totalitarianism, but I think that the time may come when somebody will have the sense even on that side to realize that mankind is doomed so far as decent civilization, possibility ultimately that the human race is doomed, if we are to go on and on with this armament race, and that it is universally desirable to take it out of the realm of atomic war. To a certain extent we have done it in civil life. There are immense conflicts, even in America, that no one dreams will bring us to war, because there has been a change of attitude and in plans. There can't be a change of attitude and in plans while you have to maintain the attitudes and the economic burdens of the present armaments race. There are no logical limits that can easily be fixed to it. It is always more and more, and the Hoover Commission made it unnecessary for me to comment on the way the military budgets, even in America, are compiled. That is why I wish with all my heart-I think something dramatic ought to be done-that Secretary Acheson, while this Assembly of the United Nations was still in session, would go before it and say, "We |