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FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE,

SUITLAND, MD., May 15, 1948.

House of Representatives,

Washington, D. C.

GENTLEMEN: It is my opinion that the attached peace plan presents the only means by which war can positively be outmoded. It is not the people of any nation that starts a war, but their government, through power politics. If the power to declare war is once vested in the people of each nation, by majority vote, there will be no more wars. Also if such power is once obtained by the people of each nation, they would never surrender it back to their governments or dictators.

This arrangement once effected by the United Nations Organization, and the world would feel safe to proceed along friendly lines. A world disarmament agreement would soon follow in line and save billions of dollars in taxes which is now being spent to keep these nations prepared for war; the war jitters would be removed.

It is my opinion that the present Charter should be revised whereby these attached stipulations can be incorporated therein.

Respectfully yours,

FRANK E. VANDERHOOF.

VANDERHOOF 13-POINT PEACE PLAN TO ELIMINATE FUTURE WARS

[Copyright 1943 by Frank E. Vanderhoof]

1. An organization or association to be formed among the United Nations, and those others which will have been freed from the bondage of Germany, Japan, and Italy.

2. These nations large and small shall be permitted to set up their own forms of government, without influence or demand.

3. These nations shall set up a new code of international law.

4. Present enemy nations shall not be barred from membership in such organization or association.

5. Each nation in association, to be acceptable to membership must adopt or write a constitutional amendment, waiving all right by power of their government to declare war, unless attacked by forcible arms. The association to decide what constitutes forcible attack.

6. All power to so declare war must rest with the peoples of each respective nation, by popular vote.

7. The armament of each of these nations shall not be in excess to that which will be necessary to maintain internal order. Size of each respective army to be determined by the association or union.

8. An international chamber of commerce to be organized with equal representation among these united nations, to create markets and guide in the fair distribution of raw materials and manufactured goods. The main object of such chamber is to eliminate competition among nations as much as possible. Tariffs of each member nation to be regulated by the association.

9. The principal of freedom of religion must be a point of adoption among these nations. This to be the constitutional right of all the peoples of these respective nations.

10. The principal of freedom of trade, of the seas, and in the air must be adopted.

11. Any nations not joining this association or union, by adoption of agreement as set forth in paragraphs 5, 6, and 9, shall be cut off from international trade, postal exchange, and diplomatic relations with all nations of this association. Citizens of the outlawed nation will not be permitted to enter the boundary of any of the associated nations.

12. Each nation of these united nations, both large and small shall have only equal representation in this association. Territorial claims and boundary disputes to be settled by the association.

13. A sizable international police force or army to be maintained in readiness to occupy any aggressing nonmember nation. Also to see that the laws of this association are justly maintained.

This plan presented to Congress, by Hon. Wirt Courtney, from Tennessee, as it appears in the Congressional Record, of July 1, 1943, House of Representatives.

STRUCTURE OF THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE UNITED NATIONS

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The committee convened at 10:25 a. m., in the Foreign Affairs Committee room, United States Capitol, Hon. Charles A. Eaton (chairman) presiding.

Chairman EATON. The committee will be in order.

Our first witness this morning is Mr. Cord Meyer, Jr., of the United World Federalists.

STATEMENT OF CORD MEYER, JR., PRESIDENT, UNITED WORLD FEDERALISTS

Mr. MEYER. Mr. Chairman, Mrs. Bolton, and gentlemen, my name is Cord Meyer, Jr., and I am president of the United World Federalists located at 31 East Seventy-fourth Street, New York City.

I appear before you as an official representative of the United World Federalists, an organization of American citizens working to obtain public support and governmental action toward giving the United Nations real power to keep the peace under binding and enforceable world laws. I wish to speak particularly in support of House Concurrent Resolution 59.

First. May I discuss the structure of the United Nations as it was agreed to in San Francisco in 1945. The United Nations was erected on the ruins of the Second World War in the hope that it would end the intolerable arms races and recurrent wars that this generation has endured. That hope has not yet been realized. And a close analysis of the United Nations reveals that the organization was not given in 1945 that legal authority and material power that it must have, if it is to be able to protect its members.

Criticism of the United Nations has concentrated on the veto provisions. Actually the defects of the Charter are more basic, and little or nothing would be gained by merely juggling the voting rules in the Security Council. For example, the United Nations was provided with no power to make, administer, and enforce laws binding both on individuals and national governments. Enforcement action by the Security Council can only be taken against an entire nation, its men, women, and children, the innocent and the guilty alike.

The only recourse against aggression under the United Nations is the collective destruction of entire peoples by war after aggression has

actually begun, since the United Nations lacks the authority under law to hold individual citizens and government officials within a country responsible for their acts. Moreover, no enforcement action of any kind can be taken under the Charter except against a small nation that is without the support of any one of the five permanent members. This means that small and weak nations are to be punished if they commit aggression, while the strong enjoy unfettered license, protected by their voting privileges.

In addition, the International Court of Justice established by the Charter is a wholly inadequate instrument for the judicial settlement of disputes or for the trial of those accused of initiating aggression. Only governments in their collective capacity can appear before this Court and they are free to ignore its recommendations if they see fit to do so.

Most significantly, the United Nations lacks any real international police force of its own. It relies on the willingness of the member governments to make available their national armies. Under the Charter, each nation is free to arm to the limit, and the final decision as to whether these armies will be used to support or oppose a recommendation of the United Nations rests with the separate national governments. This means that under the Charter each government can accumulate the modern weapons of mass destruction, and an attack with these weapons by one nation can only be met through a desperate counterattack by the victims relying on their own resources.

These considerations should make it clear that the United Nations does not now possess the power to defend its members. In 1945, the larger nations, including our own, were unwilling to shift the responsibility for national defense to a common authority. Therefore, each sovereign government has been condemned to seek its own security in national armaments and in the extension of strategic bases.

However, armed force is no protection to any nation unless it has more power than any other single nation or possible group of opponents. An ever more explosive competition for every element of military power is the inevitable consequence of this situation, as our Government and others seek protection from attack in the overwhelming strength of their national armies. That arms race and struggle for strategic position began shortly after the end of the Second World War and now causes fear, hysteria, and hatred throughout the world.

The Secretary of State warned before this committee on May 5 that the problems of peace "are not solvable merely by new forms of organization." All members of the United World Federalists would substantially agree with that judgment. Certainly Mr. Marshall was correct in calling for "a widespread improvement in the material and social well-being of the peoples of the world." We have warmly supported the European recovery plan and we hope for its success.

But dollars and goods by themselves give no assurance of peace, while growing fear leads the sovereign governments to devote an ever larger proportion of their national wealth to war preparations. Even now more than 20,000,000 men are under arms throughout the world and can perform no productive labor. Upward of 60 billion dollars is now being spent on the manufacture of totally destructive weapons. This fantastic waste and mutual suspicion must be ended, if economic recovery is to be more than a pious wish. And it is only by new forms

of organization, by the transformation of the United Nations into a federation with effective power to keep the peace, that cooperation can replace the present rivalry for the methods of collective suicide.

We of the United World Federalists would agree with the Secretary of State and with Mr. Austin that our country should not now destroy its weapons or weaken its military position in the hope that other nations would later follow our example. The policy of unilateral disarmament and appeasement is both futile and dangerous. It must be rejected. So long as every nation is free to prepare for and wage war, our Government must be prepared to defend its people as best it can. On the other hand, we respectfully but firmly differ with Mr. Marshall's suggestion that international security can now be maintained by restoring "the balance of power relationship," by staying ahead in the arms race.

National military preparations are necessary at the present time, but they no longer offer any real protection to us or to any nation. Even the most thorough preparations cannot defend our cities and. their people against a modern attack with atomic and biological weapons, nor is it likely that these preparations can prevent war. As we construct an arsenal with which we can annihilate the cities and citizens of our competitors, other governments are also taking the same steps. As we regiment our citizens, disperse our war industries underground, and transform this country into a military garrison state armed to retaliate even after our urban centers lie in radioactive ruins, other nations will attempt to defend themselves by similar methods.

Already these preparations and counterpreparations have set in motion a chain reaction of mutual terror and hate. Our national armament program is one part of the currrent policy of containment, which also includes the economic measures undertaken through the European recovery program and various political moves, such as military aid to Greece and Turkey, and our actions with respect to the Italian elections. This policy of containment is apparently predicated on the assumption that a contained and thwarted Russia will eventually suffer such internal stress as to cause the regime to collapse or at least to modify its basic policy.

If, however, we rely exclusively on containment and make no considered effort now to find a sounder basis for international security, I believe that the weight of military competition is very likely to force the Soviet Union and the United States into open conflict. To suggest that the negative processes of containment alone can be expected to effect a basic change in Soviet policy and thus to preserve world peace seems to me to be speculative in the extreme. Even now a minor incident or a mistake in judgment by a statesman could light the fires of the third world war. Civilization as we know it could not survive that war. There would be no victors, only starving and maimed survivors condemned for generations to a primitive and brutal existence.

A program of national preparedness cannot be an end in itself. It is only a stop-gap measure through which we can gain time, while we are seeking to give the United Nations real and effective power. Our Government has not yet defined what it considers to be the structure of an international security system capable of relieving us and

others of the necessity of war preparations. While we, of necessity, prepare for a war which we know would be mutually devastating, reason demands that we bend every effort to supplant international anarchy and the explosively competitive arms race with a world organization capable of enacting and enforcing world law. I believe that the most serious hazard which now confronts the American people is that our leaders will become so engrossed with the preparation for a war no responsible American wants that they will have no time or energy or imagination to devote to the organization of a stable peace. While there is still time, we must propose the changes that are necessary in the United Nations and demonstrate our willingness to accept the restrictions on sovereign independence essential to the common security.

The broad outline of the required transformation of the United Nations is clear. The details of structure are subject to compromise among the member governments once a convention to consider re· vision has been called.

The United Nations must be given the constitutional authority to administer and enforce world laws binding both on individuals and national givernments. This law-making authority must be clearly limited and defined in the revised Charter, so that only those matters found essential to the preservation of peace come within the jurisdiction of the world law. Each nation would reserve the right to maintain its own domestic institutions without. interference. At a minimum, the United Nations would have to be given the power to regulate and control by law national armament production and the maintenance of national armed forces, so that no nation is permitted to retain more military power than it needs for the maintenance of order within its own borders. A criminal code is required under which acts of aggression and preparation for aggression are clearly defined and made punishable as individual crimes. The United Nations would have to be granted the power to control by law the potentially dangerous aspects of atomic energy production, as the Lilienthal report pointed out, and of other scientific developments that are easily diverted secretly to the manufacture of the means of mass destruction. A certain direct taxing power would have to be conferred, so that the United Nations would not be dependent on the occasional generosity of its members in order to carry out its functions. Just how far the law-making authority should extend into the economic sphere is open to debate. Certainly world agencies to meet the problems of mass starvation and poverty will have to be developed as Mr. Marshall has suggested, if the peace is to be kept.

A system of United Nations courts will have to be established operating under a bill of rights to insure a fair trial to those accused of violating the laws. The basis of representation in the General Assembly will have to be changed if any legislative authority is to be granted that organ. The one-nation one-vote rule that now prevails gives equal voting power to every nation regardless of its size. A weighted system of representation taking into account such factors as population, literacy. and level of industrial development provides the ground for reasonab'e compromise. The Security Council would have to be reconstituted as an executive cabinet responsible for the administration of the laws, with the veto eliminated.

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