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peace authority. This international contingent, equipped with the heavy armament of the collective quota, must be recruited exclusively from the citizens of the smaller member states. In this manner, the 400,000,000 people which comprise the population of the forty-odd smaller sovereign states, which like the United States seek to survive and not to conquer, will furnish a powerful, organized armed force against any aggressor.

The only effective way to prevent rearmament and to suppress future aggression is by amending the Security Council of the Charter into an effective international peace authority that will act by a simple majority vote within the scope of two delegated powers; one, the power to enforce the agreed quota limitation of the production of heavy armament; and, two, the power to move the international contingent against any state guilty of actual invasion of the defined territories of another state.

All three of these minimum requirements are indispensable for America's and the world's security. None of them is present in the United Nations Charter. That is why so many thinking Americans who are sincere internationalists from Norman Thomas to Dorothy Thompson are so profoundly perturbed by the Charter as it is.

The Charter violates every essential provision of the Connally resolution itself. The resolution speaks of the sovereign equality of nations. But the General Assembly of Nations, as provided for in the Charter, is an assembly of mice presided over by a few cats.

The Connally resolution also speaks of an international authority with power to prevent aggression. But the World Security Council is paralyzed from the state by the right of any big power to veto any action or use of armed force against any aggressor. Thus the so-called "teeth" in the Charter turn out to be a set of false teeth that can bite no one except the little fellows.

There is nothing in the Charter to prevent any of the Big Five from rearming with impunity or attacking a divided world with chances of success. There is nothing in the Charter to prevent any of the Big Five from rearming defeated Germany or Japan, or from expanding through satelite states into gigantic spheres of influence. The Charter abounds in good intentions. But the road to war is paved with good intentions. The perfectionists of the State Department and the innocents at home entrust the destiny of the United States to the wildly utopian assumption that the great sovereign states, each with its own economy, ideology, and national interests, will reverse the entire trend of history and blissfully cooperate in the future, more than they have cooperated in the past.

Based on this naive assumption, the Charter is a system of collective security which is neither collective nor secure. It is not the beginning of a new era of lasting peace. It is a continuation of the ever-recurring, ever-disastrous peace of power politics, where the United States has nothing to gain and great peace to lose. The Charter is not a step forward; it is a step backward into the same blind alley of history out of which came the First and the Second World Wars.

Emphatically and sadly I predict that the Charter, unless amended, will collapse like a house of cards within 2 years after its adoption, and for the same reasons that the League of Nations collapsed. The League of Nations did not collapse because of the absence of the United States; but because of the presence of fatal defects in struc

ture defects which are even more insurmountable in the present Charter for the second league.

If the Senate adopts the Charter as it stands, we will fritter away innumerable conferences, vain hopes, and America's most precious commodity-time. Time is no longer our ally. History has imposed on the United States a fateful timetable. Today the United States is the mightiest military nation of all time, and has the active good will of four-fifths of the world. But we will have this enormous power for only a few short years. In another 15 years Russia, for instance, with her population growing at the rate of 30,000,000 every 10 years, her vast spheres of influence in eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Communist China, will become a strongly industrialized giant state of more than 500,000,000 people, and a much stronger military nation than the United States. This I say now as a solemn warning to the Senate and the American people.

The United Nations Charter leaves the road wide open to one of two disastrous wars: Either we are facing within the next 5 or 6 years a preventive war by the capitalistic world to eliminate the threat of the rising Russian giant state. And if this war does not take place, then we are facing, in 15 or 20 years, a war for the control of the world by Communist Eurasia, led by Russia.

Either of these two wars will be a catastrophe of centuries. Faith healing will not prevent them. The only escape from both of them is to establish now, while the United States is supreme, an ironclad system of world security so designed that the United States could not threaten the destruction of Soviet Russia today and Soviet Russia could not threaten the destruction of the United States tomorrow. This system can be established only by adopting three indispensable amendments to the Charter, which I have previously explained-the permanent, world-wide limitation of heavy armament, an adequate armed force separate from the armed forces of the member states, and an international authority that can act quickly and efficiently not only against aggression by Greece or Bolivia, but against aggression by the Big Nations, which are the only ones that can make Big Wars. By incorporating these three amendments, the Senate of the United States has a God-given opportunity to transform the United Nations Charter from a timid, appeasing instrument of power politices into a ringing challenge to all the war lords of the future. This the United States must accomplish with the support of Britain and Russia if possible, without either of them if necessary. For today the United States Senate, with a plan which can effectively bar wars of aggression, is certain to have not only the overwhelming support of the American people, but the support of four-fifths of the world. Today the United States can do what no other nation has ever done before. It can declare peace on the world, and win it.

History has dealt the United States a "grand slam." The Senate is about to play this grand slam for a part score.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Culberston.

Are there any questions by the members of the committee or any other Senators? [No response.]

Thank you very much for your contribution.

At this point I want to read one or two telegrams and insert them in the record. We have about concluded our list of opponents of the

Charter, and we will hear testimony tomorrow of some of those who favor it.

I have here a telegram from the national commander of the American Legion, which reads as follows:

Senator Toм CONNALLY,

Chairman, Foreign Relations Committee, United States Senate.

Am releasing following statement here today. Hope you will make our views known.

"RICHMOND, VA., July 11-Declaring that the American Legion is wholeheartedly behind full authority for the United States delegation to commit our Nation in halting any potential aggressor through the use of troops, Edward N. Scheiberling, national commander, today urged support of Senate leaders holding this position.

"In Richmond on a tour of southern Legion departments and posts, National Commander Scheiberling said the San Francisco Charter is a test of whether our Nation intends to match its military might with courageous leadership for world peace.

"Senate leadership in the handling of the Charter is on a character that is most heartening,' said the Legion Commander, 'and it deserves the backing of our people.' He said the Legion's position is clear-cut as follows:

"An international association without the force to back its decisions would be useless. That theory is like trying to have law and order in a community through a town council without police. We know what happened to the League of Nations without the military prepared United States participating.'"

Our delegates to the International Association of Free Nations must be clothed by Congress to represent the United States instantly and effectively. This requires that they be ready to move at the outbreak on any international incident that might again engulf the world in war. It is the only experiment in the whole history of the world that has not been tried in the effort to prevent war.

EDWARD N. SCHIEBERLING, National Commander, American Legion.

I have another telegram here from Mr. Philip D. Reed, 570 Lexington Avenue, New York, reading as follows [reading]:

Senator Toм CONNALLY,

Chairman, Foreign Relations Committee,

United States Senate:

As chairman of the United States Associates International Chamber of Commerce and as one of the consultants to the United States delegation at the San Francisco Conference, I wish to record this organization's earnest and enthusiastic support of the United Nations Charter. We believe no finer nor more fruitful gesture could be made toward its success than for the Senate itself to ratify the Charter unanimously. I respectfully request that this telegram be made a part of the committee's hearings on ratification of the Charter.

I have a great stack of telegrams from various organizations. I will put them into the record tomorrow.

The next witness, favoring the Charter, is Miss Strauss, president of the National League of Women Voters. As all Senators know, this is a very representative group of women over the country, with considerable interest in public affairs and politics, and we are very glad to hear you, Miss Strauss.

STATEMENT OF MISS ANNA LORD STRAUSS, PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Miss STRAUSS. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, on behalf of the National League of Women Voters and its 550 local leagues, a nonpartisan group organized 25 years ago, I am pleased to have this opportunity to urge that the Senate proceed with all possible speed to ratify the United Nations Charter. The technicalities of

the Charter have been thoroughly discussed by Mr. Stettinius, Mr. Pasvolsky, and others who participated in the San Francisco Conference. I shall confine muself, therefore, to a brief statement of the compelling reasons for the United States to become a part of the United Nations.

The war has brought home to us in a way we are not likely soon to forget the fact that there is no such thing as "isolation" in the world today. The only alternatives are these: To participate in international decisions, to lead the way in developing cooperation between nations or to accept the results of the decisions made without us. Both economically and politically the latter policy might be disastrous.

In the face of this choice, members of the League of Women Voters all over the country are overwhelmingly agreed that there is but one reasonable decision: That the United States should work with the other nations of the world, putting all the great force of our physical and spiritual power on the side of right and justice in the society of nations and leading the way toward a better condition of international political and economic relations.

When large numbers of citizens recognize the necessity for a basic change in some policy of their Government, and when they make. their wishes known, it is then the responsibility both of Congress and of the executive branch to undertake a policy in keeping with the desires of the people. The desire for such a change in the foreign policy of the United States has been clearly evident among the thinking citizens of this nation during the past 2 or 3 years, and particularly during the past 9 months. The great interest shown in the Dumbarton Oaks proposals, the even greater interest in the San Francisco Conference and the Charter which came out of it have probably been unprecedented in recent history when an issue of international relations was concerned.

The United Nations Charter may not indeed be the best possible organizational structure for carrying out the deeply felt need for organized international cooperation. It is, however, a good start. The fact that it exists at all is evidence of a willingness to cooperate and to make concessions for the good of the whole on the part of all the 50 nations who participated in its creation. It is safe to say that whereas the League of Nations Covenant came about because a small group of men from a small number of countries were devoted to an ideal, the United Nations came into being because large numbers of people, and representatives of many nations, felt that the time had come when men must work together or become extinct.

At this crucial stage, when in half the world victory is already achieved, the returns from further negotiations about this or that particular point would not be worth the cost in lost time. The way to begin is to begin. The sooner the Charter is ratified, the sooner we can begin to translate words on paper into a living, functioning body, the better chance we shall have of achieving working arrangements among the nations of the world which will make peace possible. Mr. Chairman, in the interest of expediting the committee hearings we have made our statement very brief. The League of Women Voters is submitting for the record our memo, Fifty Nations Agree, which explains in some detail our reasons for thinking the United Nations Charter is a good start.

The CHAIRMAN. Your brief will be inserted in the record.

May I ask how many members you have?

Miss STRAUSs. We have about 56,000 in about 550 different communities.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any questions by any Senators?

[No response.]

Are there any other members of your organization who desire to be heard?

Miss STRAUSS. No. I was speaking for the entire organization.
(The brief referred to and submitted by the witness is as follows:)

FIFTY NATIONS AGREE THE UNITED NATIONS CHARTER
(National League of Women Voters)

SAN FRANCISCO AND THE JOB AHEAD

All over the world millions of men and women have paid with their lives because nations did not settle their international difficulties by peaceful means. War does not solve problems; it only increases them. Victory in war simply means that the nations of the world shall have another chance to try to live together in peace. But the two decades of tension between the World Wars are clear evidence that wishing for peace is not enough. There are certain frictions which inevitably lead to war unless constructive measures are taken to remove them. This, the nations of the world are now aware, must be done by international action. The Charter for a United Nations Organization is completed. In April 1945 delegates from 50 nations met at San Francisco to draft a Charter for orderly world relations. On the basis of the proposals previously agreed upon by the four great powers at Dumbarton Oaks and Yalta, they prepared the framework for an organization. The purpose of the United Nations Organization will be the maintenance of peace and the development of justice under law as a principle of international relations. Machinery was devised through which the representatives of many nations can work toward a cooperative solution of political, economic, and social problems. The Charter reaffirms the faith of the peoples of the world in fundamental human rights and freedoms.

Before any of this machinery can be set in motion, the San Francisco Charter, must be ratified by a majority of the nations who participated in the Conference, including the Soviet Union, Britain, China France, and the United States of America. For the United States this means that the Charter must be approved by two-thirds of the Senate.

Without us the Organization will never get started. Our responsibility is great.

The outlines of the Charter drawn up at San Francisco are basically similar to the proposals which followed the Dumbarton Oaks conversations. Many details of the plan have been altered, however. Some of the changes were suggested by the sponsoring powers as a result of public study and discussion of the Dumbarton Oaks proposals, and others came from nations at San Francisco who had not participated in drawing up the original proposals.

The aim of the Charter is not the use of military force but the substitution of justice for force. The Organization will work through four primary bodies, each with a separate task:

1. The General Assembly, an international forum and policy-making body. 2. The Security Council, concerned with military and political aspects of security.

3. The Economic and Social Council, concerned with the underlying causes of economic and social friction.

4. The International Court of Justice, concerned with the settlement of legal disputes.

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY

Of the five organs created by the Charter, the Assembly is the basic representative body. Each member nation may have five representatives in the Assembly and shall be entitled to one vote. The Assembly makes important decisions by a two-thirds majority vote of those present and voting. This body must be regarded as the parent of the parts. It is charged with the task of carrying out the larger

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