Now, it is true that the convention and the treaties were violated by the Soviet Union some years later. But what does this prove except the need for means of enforcement? And, of course, for a universal system of enforceable collective security?

The prohibition of "preparation for aggression" clearly implies some system of controlled disarmament. It is doubtful whether ever any state will entrust itself to live entirely without home defenses. Even Switzerland, which is unique in the world, being prohibited by its constitution to make aggressive war or ally itself with any external power for the purpose of war, has not neglected its defenses, but, on the contrary, has, for its size, the most formidable fortress of defenses of probably any state in the world. But among great powers the theory that "the only defense is offense" is gaining ground, in view of the development of new weapons with which, in a single blow, lasting only a few hours, a whole civilization may theoretically be laid low. Atomic weapons, new bombs of vastly greater power than any used in the recent war, bacterial weapons that can be aimed against human and organic life of all varieties, jet-propelled V-weapons, robot-radiodirected planes-all these constitute a Jules Verne nightmare, terrifying the people of the world. It is plain that if the United Nations Charter means anything at all about human rights, civilization, and renunciation of war, steps must be taken to remove from the control of sovereign states such instruments of mass murder.

But experience has shown only too vividly that prohibition of aggressive weapons, and competition in weapons of increasingly horrendous power, cannot be stopped by Hague conventions and mere treaties of disarmament.

Incidentally, in this last war, every country broke practically every Hague convention. History is paved with such conventions and disarmament treaties, along with the bones of men who suffered and died when the treaties were broken. Unenforceable disarmament only penalizes the sincere and honest in favor of the insincere and dishonest. It is therefore impossible to halt preparation for aggression, and accomplish the outlawry of mass destruction weapons, without inspection and control. It is true that the difficulties are great, but not, in my opinion, as great as have been claimed. For it is quite impossible for the largest nation to arm for a great conflict in secret, and, as it were, underground, unless it practically closes its border... I am extremely sorry that the United States dropped so easily, almost, it seemed, with an expression of relief, its own proposal for controlled atomic disarmament. For that proposal was far and away the most radical and noble gesture ever made by a great power to a fearful world. It was, incidentally, the greatest project of international socialization ever proposed. I think we should stick to it, but embody it in a general code of prohibition of preparation for aggression.

It is on these matters only, at this time in the world's development, that the nations, once having defined their terms, should abandon the veto. The process would require international control machinery, an international supreme court before which infringements could be charged, and penalities for the responsible persons found guilty of infringement.

And all of that is implicit in the Nuremberg trials which Mr. Robert Jackson said should be the basis of a new international law.

The idea of an international peace force to supplement the armies of the associated law-abiding states follows naturally, though the likelihood of its ever having to be used were the previous steps taken is small.

We have been very loose in our use of terms. Our leaders have spoken repeatedly of "peace loving" nations. We have made some remarkable interpretations of "peace loving." On the veto, for instance, of the Soviet Union, we have excluded Eire, from the fellowship of the "peace-loving" United Nations, apparently because Eire so loved peace that it refused to go into the last war.

However, gentlemen, the term is meaningless. We do not refer to "peace loving" citizens, but to "law abiding" citizens. And correctly, for it is quite impossible to "enforce peace. "The only thing that can be enforced is law. If our police were running around enforcing anything that any member of them, or the whole of the police force arbitrarily decided was peace, we would not have peace but a police state, with peace only for the police and no security whatever for the citizen. The United Nations to live up to its promises to the world's people must become a fellowship of law-abiding nations.

This, it seems to me, is precisely the aim of Resolution 163, which we are discussing today, and which has the support of a great many citizens' organizations in this country, among them the one which I speak for here, as well as for myself: Woman. The women of this world, gentlemen, are sick and tired of wars to end war; of leagues to enforce peace; of empty words about justice, the rights of peoples and nations. We want an organization of the world to prevent aggression and the repetition in every generation, or less than a generation, of wholesale mass murders.

We are not pacifists in the sense that we do not wish to offer ourselves as booty for the next aggressor. We wish security for ourselves on the exact terms we wish it for everyone else in the world and every other state.

We gave our sons in this war to defend the rights of human beings, and to found the world on enforceable law and justice, protective of the lives and liberties of all men and all nations. If there are any among you who have lost sons in this late war, you will know the bitterness that those of us feel, who look day by day upon a beloved face, smiling above the uniform of the United States, and think-not only that he died, in his unfulfilled youth, but that he died in all probability as the picture of the world is today-in vain. That is the bitterness that fills my heart, as I look each day upon the face of my stepson, who lies in France, as noble a youth, as devoted to the cause of freedom and peace as any youth who ever went through hell for it. We owe those boys something, gentlemen. We owe it to American boys, Russian boys, British boys, and, yes, German and Japanese boys, whose idealism was exploited for their countries, even though they themselves hated war.

What are the arguments, gentlemen, against trying, at least, taking the leadership at least, toward strengthening the United Nations, and making it perform what it promised to perform?

Are the arguments that it is quite adequate as it is? I have followed the hearings here and have heard no such arguments. No; all we hear is the same old argument: We must not attempt to do anything, because if we do, we will sabotage the peace. I must ask:

"What peace?" Only the other day, Mr. Beardsley Ruml said that we must count on spending a full half of the national budget for armaments. Is that peace? No. It is said that if these proposals are presented, or any form of them, it will break up the United Nations. It is said the Russians will leave it.

Why should they leave it? There is nothing in these proposals that is aimed against any state in the world. They would give the Soviet Union infinitely greater security than she is going to get any other way, if security within her established frontiers is what the Soviet Union truly desires. It is said that many other states would not join in. Well, suppose they do not. Is there any reason why, taking advatage of paragraph 51 of the Charter, those nations who do wish to go on the record before themselves and mankind, as desiring to live under enforceable law should not create within the United Nations, their own fellowship of the law-abiding, open at all times to all? Not a separate organization. Could these reforms be interpreted as an excuse for a preventive war against anyone? They could not. They precisely could not, for it is against aggression that they are aimed-whether aggression between the members or aggression against nonmembers.

Gentlemen, the world is waiting for a voice to speak, in behalf of men, women, and children, wherever they may be in this world. I can say with utmost honesty that although I detest the Soviet form of government and state, I would weep for the death of one Russian child. The protection of human life on this earth is in the hands of the United Nations, and how could any country suffer diplomatic defeat which rises to defend that life, to defend even the lives of our opponents, by proposing an enforceable system of international law against war? We suffer diplomatic defeats week after week, because we go on backing and filling, supporting a policy one week and reversing it the next, opening negotiations as we did last week, or certainly seemed to do, and slamming the door shut a week later; raising hopes and plunging the world into despair. Then we suffer defeats, in the eyes of the world. But if we raise a banner to which the just can repair, if we make doubly and trebly clear that our object is not to extend our power, but to find a substitute for power politics; not to win for ourselves, but to win for mankind; not to agitate the world, but to bring it to reason, then we need have no fear of diplomatic defeats. For those who mobilize the emotion of the ideal, which emotion slumbers in every human heart, will find allies where they least seek them.

Chairman EATON. Are there any questions? If not, the witness is excused.

(Witness excused.)

Chairman EATON. The next witness will be Mr. Norman Thomas.

STATEMENT OF NORMAN THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. I live in New York. I happen to be a Presidential nominee on the Socialist ticket but I agreed to come here before I knew that would happen and at a time when I hoped it would not happen.

I am appearing personally; that is, without specific authorization either of the Socialist Party or of the nonpartisan Post War World

Council from which, during the political campaign, I shall take leave of absence as chairman. With the major purpose of my appearance, that is, the advancement of universal disarmament under effective international control, both organizations would agree.

The party has not considered in detail, Resolution 163, which I appear to support along the lines I shall suggest.

In my statement, I shall refer to the Judd resolution. I mean the Resolution 163 and not the earlier Resolution 59.

I am concerned with the question before you less as a thing in itself than as a contribution to the international controls necessary for the end of the present enormously dangerous armament race. It is my own conviction that the Judd Resolution 163, properly introduced and properly presented to the United Nations and to the world, would provide a valuable mechanism for ending the armament race.

When I originally prepared this statement, it was in the hope that serious and definite conversations would be undertaken between our Government and the Soviet dictatorship. That hope has been dashed. Whatever Mr. Molotov's motives, his note and his handling of it have put him before the peoples of the world in a more reasonable and more realistic light than for many months. The joy that welcomed it in Europe and in America from all parties and all sections of society was highly significant. We Americans owe it to ourselves and the world to capitalize on it. The way in which the Russian action has been received by our State Department may have some excuse in the technical points Secretary Marshall has raised and in his trying experiences with Molotov, but it is nevertheless a serious error in policy.

It is quite true that conversations should be specific on points made known to the public and that other nations should be consulted and the United Nations brought in at appropriate times. It is, however, very unconvincing and disappointing that a man capable of Mr. Marshall's proposals for European economic recovery should fall back on the technicalities for not taking advantage of the opportunity Mr. Molotov has offered plainly to state an American program for peace. Part of that program must deal with peace settlements from which the United Nations was excluded. The peoples of the world do not follow Secretary Marshall's technical explanations, and our State Department is handling Communist propaganda an unnecessary victory.

Of course, conversations as conversations are not of any use. There should be a carefully prepared and definite program which must include the end of the armament race without which any and all agreements will become dust and ashes. The news in last Sunday's papers that even discussion of disarmament was to be dropped like the Baruch plan was enormously disquieting. It is not so that crusaders of the idea upon which the hope of the world depends should order their policy. It is on the basis of convictions like these that appear today to urge favorable consideration of the Judd resolution.

It must be presented to the United Nations and within the framework of the United Nations. It should not be presented as an absolute ultimatum concerning the particular reform in the voting structure of the Security Council. There is, however, no escaping the fact that in substance the limitation of veto power is an absolute essential, not only as the United States itself has insisted, on any effective control of atomic energy, but of armaments generally. There is no more dan

gerous fallacy than the notion that the United Nations can serve peace or pave the way for ultimate democratic world government if the veto power is to be continued unchecked.

Most of the arguments against the Judd resolution are couched in terms of concern for the future of the United Nations in the assurance that the Russian dictatorship will not permit a strengthening of it. Then the opponents of the resolution give their moral case away by implying what the New York Times editorially said bluntly:

It is more than doubtful that the United States could afford to forego its own veto.

That is, we also will not accept any judgment in the service of peace which we think may go contrary to our own interest, no matter how carefully organized may be the machinery for substituting the judgment of the world for the anarchism of great powers. This attitude will scare the little nations far worse than the Judd resolution if properly presented.

With specific statements by Secretary Marshall and Mr. Austin concerning the value of maintaining the United Nations, I should agree. Nevertheless, every criticism I made of the United Nations when it was in the process of formation, and in my appearance before the Senate committee, has been justified by the event. I urged ratification of the Charter rather than rejection, and I see real values in continuing to try to make some use of a very imperfect organization.

This position is entirely consistent with a reasoned effort to improve it. Mr. Judd and his cosigners have not proposed that the United States should withdraw from the United Nations if Russia should veto suggestions for certain revisions in the Charter in the interest of world peace. I cannot see that the situation would in any way be worse within the United Nations if it were made clear that Communist intransigence, and only Communist intransigence, blocks strengthening it so that it might remove from a hungry world the desperate weight of a race in arms which can have no other end but war. The argument that an attempt to improve the United Nations, if unsuccessful, will destroy that body, is, I think, the worst condemnation of its usefulness that I have heard. It is, moreover, quite contrary to the logic and the probabilities of the case.

My own appeal is for the absolute necessity of universal disarmament down to a police level if the world is to be rid of an economic burden that makes true recovery impossible and if the minds of men are to be free from a consideration of arms which prevents fair consideration of a constructive program for peace.

Secretary Marshall insisted that the hope of the United Nations, and incidentally of world peace, lies in the America's unilateral taking of "steps necessary to bring the National Military Establishment to the minimum level to restore the balance-of-power relations required for international security." Those words spell death and only death for all our hopes of peace and the salvation of our civilization. Who will agree on what is, in military terms, "the minimum level necessary to restore the balance-of-power relations required for international security"?

Most of the world lives now in respect, if not in fear, of our present strength. We Americans have the monopoly as yet of atom bombs, and infinitely the strongest Navy. Already, so far as figures can be

75921-48- -29