known, we have spent a larger proportion of our national budget on arms than the Soviet Union. The military men themselves cannot agree in this country on the minimum level about which Secretary Marshall so glibly talks. In the effort to get peacetime conscription and vastly increased expenditures, advocates of this preparedness, with a few honorable exceptions, have united to create a virtual hysteria in America. They have beaten the drums about imminent war; they have proposed a policy of being firm without any analysis of how we could successfully save democracy by undertaking wars in Europe and Asia; they have refused to consider the moral and economic costs of victory; still less, how we could successfully police the vast territories of a Soviet nation beaten to its knees by the horrible means of atomic bombs and in them create democracy. Secretary Marshall's insistence that all this militaristic talk is directed to strengthening the United Nations is a preposterously unrealistic description of its effect upon public opinion in America and the world. Actually, if we were to grant all that the military are asking or contemplating for a minimum level, we should be committing ourselves by 1952 to an armament budget of 20 or 30 billion dollars or approximately the entire governmental budget for the current fiscal year. This statement is one bit of additional evidence of the fact that neither on the basis of logic or history is there such a thing as balance in an armament race between strong nations or blocks of nations. The relatively small-scale armament races of the past never saved the peace between major powers, or guaranteed one of them victory. In order to support that race with its enormous costs, the minds of the people must be filled with fear and hate; the Military Establishment must grow ever stronger and more dominant in the control of affairs of the country. That in itself has always jeopardized democracy. The people, even in a fortunate country like the United States, must forego homes, hospitals, schools, a higher standard of living, in favor of breathtaking expenditures for ever more deadly means of destruction. What we are doing here, with our comparative wealth, must be imitated not only by the Soviet Union, but by nations far poorer in population and natural resources. Right now, in every nation not forcibly disarmed after defeat, a proportion of the budget goes for military expenditures, including French and Dutch colonial wars which, to put it conservatively, cancel the benefits we American taxpayers are giving them under the excellent European recovery plan. It is exceedingly unlikely that the Soviet dictatorship will be mad enough deliberately to risk a war by frontal attack on us. American opinion overwhelmingly agrees with Henry L. Stimson's statement that war in an atomic age would not result in one Rome and one Carthage, but two Carthages. New war will come, as it has come so often before, by bluffs, bluster, threats; by miscalculation; by human blunders under intolerable tensions; by incidents in the various parts of the world in which armed rivals confront each other. The kind of tensions through which we are now going, if continued indefinitely, will result in war. The act of war will be an escape from intolerable psychological strain. One thing only will save the United Nations and make it of interim use until we are ready for a better approach to limited democratic world government. That one thing is a transfer even of conflict from the realm of preparation for ever more deadly mass production; it is the end of the armament race; it is universal-not unilateral-disarmament down to what I have called a police level. That means the universal abolition of peacetime military conscription; the demilitarization of narrow waterways and island bases; the adoption of the principles of the Baruch plan for the international control of the development of atomic energy; the prohibition, not only of atomic bombs, but of other weapons of mass destruction; and the reduction of arms and armed forces to a level necessary to maintain the internal order and meet any quota provision for international security. We cannot, of course, have a repetition of the horrible fiasco of the Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war. We cannot rely merely on national good faith to keep agreements on disarmament. There must be inspection; there must be a capacity to judge and to act in cases of aggression, or threatened aggression; and there must be an international security force. Such a force is necessary to deal with confused conditions as they exist in the Near East and elsewhere. No international force can be safe the mobile part of which is composed of components of the military forces of rival powers; neither is an international force safe which is smaller than forces of member nations. These are ideas that can be patiently and persuasively explained, if not to governments, then to the peoples of the world-even if at first sight they should be suspicious of a program which our own administration has so thoroughly misunderstood. Again I say that I should not present every detail of the program as an ultimatum; I am aware that democratic procedure requires conference. Nevertheless, critics of the Culbertson plan embodied in the Judd resolution will have a harder time than some of them think to propose a better plan in the light of present-day realities. In the same mail I got letters, one from a pacifist organization criticizing this resolution as being just some more power politics, in the way the security force was set up, and another one denouncing the resolution because it ruined American power in the world. Now these two do not absolutely answer each other, but I think the writers of both letters would do well to reexamine realistically the practical possibilities of the situation. We do not live in the ideal world we would like and it seems to me this resolution has carefully considered the practical conditions-progress toward disarmament. The one important thing is effective agreement on ending the armament race. Only if that is assured can we get far with more constructive policies. I share the universal fear that the Soviet dictatorship would refuse the necessary controls to an international disarmament to which it would probably assent in principle. Even this is not certain in the light of the hope that Mr. Molotov has raised. The confused peoples of the world will never believe that the Kremlin only is responsible for the approach of war unless and until a workable proposal of universal disarmament has been persuasively presented and refused by it. It is not I, but Mr. Henry Wallace who has a patent on the approach to the common man, but I do happen to know something of public opinion in this country and it is positively dangerous, the growing bewilderment that people have as to what is our program and who is responsible for what. We can clear it up by making the sensible pro posal that no matter how much we hate each other, the peoples of the world ought to agree on the principle that there is no victory in a universal graveyard and there are other ways of carrying on a conflict besides mass murder. Stalin's refusal of our proposal might not be permanent. The Soviet dictatorship before this has changed its mind on important questions. It cannot be altogether unmindful of public opinion. It could not possibly exploit among its own people our honest proposal for ending the armament race as it exploits our intervention in Turkey across the mountains from its oil fields, or as it would exploit those military alliances which apparently are Secretary Marshall's substitutes for disarmament. Ideas march on. No iron curtain is impenetrable and no particular dictator is immortal. A genuine proposal of effective disarmament would change for the better world opinion concerning the United States. Partly as a result of our own blunders and the shortcomings of our democracy, especially in the field of race relations; partly as a result of unscrupulous and effective Communist propaganda, the reservoirs of good will for America in Asia and much of Africa are running low. An honest proposal for universal disarmament; the end of a competition that imposes poverty on masses of men and threatens our civilization, if not our race, with extinction, would help to restore good will for America. Victory of the idea might be delayed; it would not be postponed forever once the peoples of the world are aroused out of the nightmare of their fatalistic fears. There is a general assumption that the answer to Communist aggression requires some kind of league for security. If that is so, what better basis is there for such a league than general agreement by the nations comprising it that their goal is peace and universal disarmament, that the league they set up is not for military aggrandizement but for common defense against aggression? Surely that is a far better basis than American military support to an indefinite number of regional associations, all of them frantically arming in a neverending search for an impossible balance of arms. The moral as well as the physical power of a league built on this clear basis of defense. and eager aspiration for the end of the armament race would do more to deter the realistic Russian rulers than any other form of alliance. I am not opposed to regional alliances. I have long favored a United States of Europe. I am, however, opposed to the idea that you can solve this problem as Walter Lippmann seems to suggest, by some kind of natural, geographic division of the world. The main fact about communism and I speak from the long experience of a Socialist—is not that it is Russian; it is that it is Communist. The drive is for world and not regional power and the effort to check that power ought to be primarily in terms of ideology. It ought to be in terms of proposals that appeal to all peoples everywhere. It is perfectly consistent to favor, for legitimate purposes, regional associations, and yet to say that the basis of any security league should be the attitude of nations to a proposal for international universal disarmament under effective international control. It is in this spirit and with these qualifications and explanations that I commend Resolution No. 163. The ultimate guaranties of an abiding peace will go beyond the Judd resolution. But the passage of that resolution might well be the first step on the road to peace with security for all nations, great and small. Chairman EATON. Thank you. Are there any questions? Mr. VORYS. Mr. Thomas, you as well as many other witnesses, have brilliantly stated the question before this committee, but I wonder whether the answers you proposed do not beg the question. For instance, you criticized very vigorously Secretary Marshall's words as follows: Steps necessary to bring the National Military Establishment to the minimum level to restore the balance of power relations required for international security. You say: Those words spell death and only death for all our hopes of peace and the salvation of our civilization. In my judgment, that is precisely the approach of Resolution 163 by its system of a demand for a 10-man security council rather than one of 12; a shift in the balance of power there, and its proposal for an arbitrary division of the balance of military power. Now, I am like the man who wrote you about this resolution. It is based on balance of power and a balance which strikes me as not particularly more effective or just than the one we have now. What would you say is the difference between the ABC proposal to shift the balance of power, to restore the balance of power relations required for international security— that is in the Judd resolution-and General Marshall's proposal— To bring the National Military Establishment to the minimum level to restore the balance of power. What is the difference between General Marshall's statement and yours? Literally, General Marshall describes the proposal of resolution 163. Mr. THOMAS. I was opposing the process now being followed by the administration, of the unilateral increase of power without discussion of the possibility of universal disarmament. That cannot be sanctified as strengthening the UN. Mr. VORYS. I happen to agree entirely with you, that universal and not unilateral disarmament is the key and that conscription must be abolished as well as the atomic bomb or we will merely have oldfashioned war instead of new-flangled war. There have been steps taken toward disarmament. Mr. THOMAS. But not in the light of Secretary Marshall's testimony, which I would like to discuss as I saw it. You will notice that in my testimony, I have expressly said that I favored the resolution, but not as an 'ultimatum. I think it is a reasonable proposal which could be expounded to the nations of the world; in the light first of the aspiration for a better world and second of realities of power. I think both are very carefully considered and I think they could be explained on a far more rational basis than any unilateral attempt of America to redress balance of power by the increase of its own armaments in competition with others. That is the enormous difference. Also you will remember that Secretary Marshall in taking this position opposed the limitations of veto power, which put us really on a moral level with the Soviet in its attitude to our international control of the atomic energy. The difference as I see it is the difference between saying, "Listen, peoples of the world, we know what kind of a world we live in and we know we cannot get perfection at once, but we are now saying that our goal is the end of a burden of arms so grievous that people who cannot give bread to their children are buying bombs. "It is our only pattern of safety, there is no hope the other way. "We believe that the imperfect machinery of the United Nations could be made efficient for international security. In order to do it, we suggest these changes in the voting structure and this rather logical system of the composition of a security force, carefully worked out so that no commander of an international force can easily run berserk, so that no nation will feel it is stripped of all possible defense. It is this arrangement that we want to argue." The opposite, as far as the administration has made clear is simply our going ahead, our building up our forces, our making our own individual commitments as we see best, and I think that is a road of enormous danger. I, who say that, am no appeaser, as you well know, of Russia. Chairman EATON. Mr. Gordon. Mr. GORDON. No questions. Mr. COLMER. While you do not regard this resolution as satisfactory, complete, or perfect, you do feel it is a movement in the right direction! Mr. THOMAS. Yes, Mr. Congressman. Thank you for putting it that way. The reason I do not regard the resolution as satisfactory or perfect is largely because of the imperfections of the world which the authors of the resolution did not make. As I see the resolution, it is an honest attempt to take account of very great difficulties and to take the next possible forward step. If somebody can show me a better way to take account of those difficulties, I will be interested for I realize that there are objections. What I object to is that so far in and out of this hearing I have heard no alternative. There is no humble person in any distant part of America who believes there is a reasonable hope for peace in the United Nations as it is now going. Or in the United Nations, plus the armament race to which we are contributing. Mr. COLMER. Thank you for putting it that way, because that pretty well sums up my views. We know that after 2 years of attempting to deal with Soviet Russia, we have gotten no place. It is an obstruction, it is a hurdle, there is always something wrong from their point of view. Now if we take this action, we at least have taken the lead away from them and carry the ball for a moment anyway. Unless they can offer something themselves of a definite, concrete nature, it seems to me that they are left holding the bag, so to speak. |