whole is utterly discredited because of its false foundations. The Charter is derived from misrepresentations of history and is so gravely at odds with current world realities and truth that it cannot be expected to endure.

I think it is going to be impossible, even by armed might, to enforce the decrees of a body that cannot command the slightest moral respect.

The San Francisco Charter is founded upon a notion that has originated in wartime propaganda; namely, that the present-day world is divided between two distinct kinds of nations. One kind, according to the propaganda, is peaceable, highly moral, constructive, democratic, devoted to human liberty, and eager to see all populations and groups governed by regimes of their own choice. The other kind of nations, according to the propaganda and the Charter, is the exact opposite-war-minded, bestial, despotic, destructive, and eager to enslave all others.

Of course, there are differences in the records of different nations. But these differences are neither of the kind nor extent represented in the propaganda and expressed in the Charter. In point of historical fact, every major nation today during the last 50 years has engaged in war upon extremely flimsy pretexts. The United States. is no exception. This historical fact is important now for the simple reason that falsehoods are the order of the day and they greatly influence pending issues of far-reaching importance, particularly the Charter.

This Charter, consciously or unconsciously, has been designed to punish culprits selected in advance, to keep in servitude for many years to come one set of nations, allegedly because of their war records. None of the leading proponents of the Charter, however, has sought to apply the same judicial standards to our allies, for example Soviet Russia whose territorial seizures lately have been enormous. Thus, the Charter advocates have forfeited all well-considered moral respect for it.

In his opening address at San Francisco, Molotov indulged in the mockery and pretense of saying, "You ought to know that as far as safeguarding the peace and security of nations is concerned, the Soviet Union can be relied upon."

Any instrument of justice which does not apply equilaterally becomes at once a device for vengeance and power politics. No amount of high-sounding phrases can long conceal the true character of any instrument, once it sets up exemptions on one side which it elects to punish with savage ostentation on the other. The San Francisco Charter is thus exposed to the ridicule of mankind, even before a single nation has signed it. Opponents, such as myself, are not responsible. Its own advocates by their words, deeds, and assertions of aims and methods have exposed the Charter.

I see nothing strange in the fact that some of us recoil in disgust when we contemplate the evil manifest in such hypocrisy and consider that our own country is about to become a party to such shame.

Proponents of the Charter appear to regard its injustices lightly because they assume its victims always will be the peoples they dislike. The power we are surrendering to this charter body, by some unforeseen political trick, some day may be used fatally against

our own country. That is not a phantasy. It is a forbidding probability. I wonder if we will hear the same chortles of glee when we are the victims.

When we say that our enemies are war-minded and that our allies are peace-loving, we ought to remember that two of our allies have been guilty of "treachery" and "sneak attacks" in our own times. One was the surprise raid by the British on Johannesburg in 1895 when they were about to grab all of Dutch South Africa, and the other was the officially ordered massacre of foreigners by the Chinese in 1900.

Prior to our entry into World War II, the British seized Iceland and much of Iran. Soviet Russia had annexed outright three previously independent nations-Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania-and had seized a portion of Poland, part of Finland, part of Rumania, and part of Iran. It is a tragic and shameful fact that as many nations were victims of our allies as of our enemies when we entered World War II.

Does any thinking man really believe our allies are sincere in the face of their double talk?

Can anybody of intelligence read the biography of Winston Churchill or Joseph Stalin and believe in his word or his peacefulness?

Winston Churchill was in the British Cabinet which sought to get America into the war in 1916 on assurances that Britain had no material aims. After the war was over, this same Winston Churchill proudly told in his book, The World Crisis, how he personally had negotiated the secret treaty of 1915, arranging for division of the territorial spoils. Thus, at the very time of the no-material-aims pledge, the secret territorial division treaty had been in Churchill's files for a year. That is a sample of his lifelong career. During the present war he repudiated the Atlantic Charter pledges which he made to involve the United States on the side of Britain. He repudiated them after we were safely in and pretensions of high aims were no longer important. Recently, it was disclosed that Britain's pact with Poland in 1939 carried a secret understanding that Britain was not obligated to aid Poland against Soviet aggression. That means the pretended grief of the British Foreign Office over Poland's frontiers in 1939 was callously insincere.

These facts are not trifles. They are not mere technicalities cited to discredit a worthy achievement. They control our entire estimate of our position under the Charter. They reveal the kind of men and the kind of politics to which our country's future will be committed if the advocates of the Charter have their way.

The program to halt aggression calls for having the foremost aggressor of this century, Soviet Russia, decide when aggression is to be resisted. If Britain gets the upper hand in the Charter voting, America will have to accept the hazards of war arising from British interests in countless corners of the globe. There is not the slightest evidence that our security will be improved by this proposed commitment. There is plenty of evidence that our security will be diminished. We shall accept war hazards far exceeding any that we face independently.

Publicity to stir up support for this preposterous commitment claims that our allies are the peace-loving nations. But there are no facts in their records to suggest that they abhor war. Britain's

decision to go war on Germany in 1939 was a policy decision, in no sense an act of self-defense under the accepted laws of nations. The then-proclaimed issue of sympathy for Poland later was proved fraudulent.

The majority of British wars, ancient and modern, have been for policy or for loot. Winston Churchill got his start in life in such a war in Britain's assault upon the tiny, independent Dutch republics of South Africa a generation ago. I do know, in South Africa at the time he used to write fine letters stating the British position, which I at that time sincerely believed. Young Churchill glorified this aggression in a series of enthusiastic newspaper articles.

In 1929 the Soviet Union invaded China and for months fought an undeclared war against Chinese forces on Chinese soil. Chinese Government appeals to the League of Nations and to Henry L. Stimson, then our Secretary of State, got an indifferent and even chilly reception.

Territorial seizures and other international offenses by Soviet Russia are not objected to by many of our commentators and columnists because these commentators and columnists are in numerous cases ardent Reds with known Communist program backgrounds. Dies committee files present total proof that innumerable OWI employees are supporters of one or another Red activity.

Note the individuals and organizations and newspapers that condone Stalin's territorial aggressions. They are the loudest advocates of America's subservience to the proposed San Francisco Charter. Under that Charter, Stalinist Red votes can call our country to war. We may definitely expect just that if we accept the Charter. Of course, there are various factions trying to get us under the Charter. But the loudest ones are those whose records show they place Soviet interests ahead of traditional American interests.

It is unfair to the American people to force a decision on this proposed Charter in wartime. Objections to it involve criticisms of the Roosevelt administration and of some of our allies. Many Americans hesitate to express these criticisms in wartime. So the advocates of the Charter, which purports to serve democracy, defy the very essential of free government by seeking to jam it through without full, free discussion.

Many of the foremost champions of this proposed Charter, right up at the top among our ranking generals and Government officials, do not themselves believe in its security features. That is proved by their demand for a colossal, peacetime conscripted army for America, after this war. Since the so-called aggressor nations will then be crushed and permanently incapacitated, it evident that the apprehensions of our generals and statesmen arise from their suspicions of our allies and fellow Charter members. That shows that many advocates of the Charter do not trust either the peacefulness of its members or trust the power of the Charter to protect us, in the event of a crisis. Thus the Charter is not expected to protect us. It is not expected to protect the remaining smaller nations, apparently, in any situation where their assailant happens to be Stalin, their chief threat. Britain and France are reported to be making plans for tremendous postwar military establishments. So, obviously they do not expect much protection from the Charter. What, then, is it for?

When so many of the main advocates of the proposed Charter show they have no faith in it, distrust of it is not strange in the rest of us. But if the protection it offers is nil, even in the eyes of its advocates, the menace it offers is grave. It invites us to take on the war hazards of the two most warlike nations in the world-Britain and Soviet Russia. An evil so heinous can be publicly proposed only because our country has suffered a total moral debacle-a total obliteration of all normal moral sensibilities and moral perspective.

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

Is Mr. Norman Thomas here?

This is Mr. Norman Thomas, gentlemen.

STATEMENT OF NORMAN THOMAS

Mr. THOMAS. Gentlemen, what I have to say is my own argument, but in the major contentions I happen to represent the Socialist Party and its official position; and also, because the two organizations are not connected, it is the position of the Postwar World Council, of which I am chairman.

I think that the United States Senate should ratify the San Francisco Charter, not because I believe it an adequate basis for lasting peace, but because I believe that the United States will be in a better position to lead in the establishment of such a basis if it should ratify the Charter and in good faith use its constructive provisions for an increase of world cooperation. I agree with Senator Vandenberg that the world is even more at the mercy of the Big Three "without the San Francisco Charter than with it." I should add that the conflicts of interest between the Big Three can probably be dealt with more easily within the framework of the United Nations than without it.

Certainly there are positive advantages in the Assembly as a forum of the nations. The Economic and Social Council is an instrumentality that may go to the roots of war. The international trusteeship system can be used, if there is the right attitude, for the abatement of imperialism.

Nevertheless, it would be very dangerous should the American people derive a false confidence that this machinery will itself guarantee peace. Part of your recommendation to the Senate should be a warning on this point. Moreover, while it is not now practicable for the Senate to make reservations or amendments which will throw the whole Charter back for reconsideration by the nations, there are safeguards which Congress can and should adopt in the interest not only of our own country but of peace. These I shall later discuss.

I begin by insisting that the deep underlying interest of the American people is not with any machinery; it is with peace and security against the unimaginable horror and destruction of a third world war. There is nothing in this Charter to guarantee that peace. It perpetuates in words the false and dangerous myth of absolute national sovereignty, while in deeds it recognizes the dominant power of five big nations. While it contains provisions which may make a little easier the abandonment of imperialism, there is no sign whatever that the three Great Powers will use it. On the contrary, power politics were never more rampant in the history of the world.

Wars spring from group prejudices and group rivalries for profit and power. The causes of war are to be found within nations as well as between nations, but within nations, especially the more democratic nations, we have achieved considerable success in avoiding civil war by establishing machinery which, however imperfect, gives men definite confidence that they can appeal to law for justice or in orderly fashion change law so that it more nearly approximates justice, without the hideous violence of war.

It is obvious that there can be no big war in the world in which the three great powers are not split. Indeed, I should go further and say that there can be no great war unless the Big Two, the U. S. S. R. and the U. S. A., are on opposite sides. It is inconceivable that either Germany or Japan, for example, will ever be in a position to initiate a new drive for power except as one or the other may be allied with one of the Big Two or Three, or at least openly or tacitly encouraged by one of them. There is nothing in the Charter to establish the rule of law over the power of the Big Three or to guarantee that that power shall be used in harmony with justice, or to make it likely that their present alliance, of which the Charter is an expression, will prove more enduring than other alliances since the dawn of history. One of the Arab delegates at San Francisco was quoted as saying: "If two small powers fight, the organization steps in and that is the end of the fight; if a small power and big power fight, that is the end of the small power; unless, of course, another big power steps in, and that is the end of the organization." One may hope that the growth of a different attitude aided by the constructive work of certain agencies of the United Nations will tend to modify the stark truth of this statement. It remains, however, a fair description of what will happen despite all the noble words in the Charter if the world provides no better provision than an alliance of the strong to secure the peace.

This is a point that your committee in the Senate should make clear to the American people in ratifying the Charter. It is a point which is grimly illustrated by conditions today in Europe and in Asia. Our own State Department cynically discounts the value of the Charter when Under Secretary of State Grew urges that we accompany ratification of it by establishing through peacetime military conscription an enormous reserve army. We are asked to believe that we are to celebrate progress at San Francisco by reversing our own historic tradition and by copying a method that contributed greatly to the ruin of Europe. I am not now discussing conscription as a military policy, but only the effect of its adoption in discrediting the Charter which you are now considering. Unless the United States is going in for an active imperialism with great occupying armies, the mass reserve army which conscription would give us would be useful, if at all, only against our present ally, Russia, which, by reason if its greater population, greater birth rate, and strategic position, would be more likely to win in a conflict of mass armies than we. To atify the San Francisco Charter and at the same time to stimulate a new race in armaments throughout the world, such as our adoption of conscription will certainly precipitate, is to make sure that the Charter will not avert new war. It is completely unintelligent or hypocritical to say that a conscript reserve will be either needed or used for any legitimate police work under the Charter. The condition of success

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