Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

peaceful settlement of international disputes, and the advancement of the economic and social interests of the democratic people of the world. If properly implemented by the determination of free people everywhere, the charter opens the way to an era of prosperity for all people, which is the most lasting guaranty against war.

INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN'S AND WAREHOUSEMEN'S UNION,
San Francisco, Calif., July 12, 1945.

Hon. Tом CONNALLY,
Chairman, Senate Foreign Affairs Committee,

Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR CONNALLY: The executive board of the International Longshore men's and Warehousemen's Union in regular session adopted the enclosed statement of policy, urging the immediate ratification of the United Nations Charter. We believe with you that the ratification of this charter, without amendments or alterations, is the prime essential for the creation of effective world peace machinery.

We join with the President in urging ratification at once by the United States Senate.

Sincerely yours,

LOUIS GOLDBLATT, Secretary-Treasurer.

STATEMENT OF POLICY ON THE UNITED NATIONS CHARTER

As one of the great powers of the world, the United States will be watched with hope by the people of the world with respect to its participation in and contribution to the United Nations Organization.

It is therefore important to the effectiveness of the organization that the United States Senate waste no time in ratifying the United Nations Charter. We declare this matter to be the first political action concern of our union and call upon the members of the union to demand of their various United States Senators that they vote for ratification.

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF WOMEN LAWYERS,
Detroit, Mich., July 9, 1945.

The Honorable TOM CONNALLY,
Chairman, Foreign Relations Committee,

United States Senate, Washington, D. C.

MY DEAR SENATOR CONNAILY: I have the honor to submit to the Foreign Rela tions Committee the folowing resolution of the International Relations Committee of the National Association of Women Lawyers:

"Resolved, That this committee, by appropriate means urges that the Senate of the United States ratifies the Charter of the United Nations Organization, without any amendments, and promptly, before September first of 1945.

"This resolution is adopted in the firm belief that the peace of the world, and the safety of the United States and the enjoyment of peace requires that the United States be a member of the United Nations Organization." Respectfully submitted.

LULA E. BACHMAN, President.

THE AMERICAN COUNCIL OF CHRISTIAN CHURCHES,
New York 19, N. Y., July 17, 1945.

To the Committee on Foreign Relations, Senate of the United States:
On behalf of the American Council of Christian Churches I desire to submit
the following discussion of basic principles in the matter of the Charter of the
United Nations:

First, the Bible clearly emphasizes that Christians should endeavor to live in this world with their neighbors, so far as possible, peaceably. We are told to seek peace and pursue it, and any honest effort to secure peace and to prevent war should have the endorsement and backing of the Lord's people. This does not mean intelligent Christians imagine that such an organization can permanently keep the peace. We have little sympathy with those who tell us

that the United Nations Charter will forever and eternally banish war from the earth. That it simply will not do it is clear from the sinful nature of fallen man, and the plain teaching of the Bible.

The appeal, however, of President Truman and others is that this is the best that can be devised at this time, the only hope on the horizon for an organization to attempt to keep the peace. In the presence of such an appeal little can be said. It is a start; it is a beginning; it is an honest effort. The League of Nations failed and we have tried to profit by the experience. Had the League of Nations succeeded, Japan, Germany, and Italy might have been kept in their places. For these reasons we feel that Christian people should earnestly help in the endeavor to keep the peace.

The

Second, in favoring the United Nations Charter, Christian people fully recognize its limitations. To emphasize this is exceedingly important. It is not a panacea and cure-all for all wars. It has very, very serious limitations. most important, perhaps, is the arrangement in the Security Council where any one of the Big Five can prevent action-even action against itself. If one of the Big Five should decide to become an aggressor, nothing in the World Security Council could stop her, so far as legal action is concerned. If one of the nations in the Big Five should decide that it wants to set out to conquer the world, and it thinks it can do it, or, as the years pass by and it grows in strength and influence and thinks that world revolution can be accomplished, all it needs to do is to cast off the Charter and march to war-and it can do this without even being pronounced an aggressor.

Comparisons of the United Nations Charter with the Constitution of the United States of America are indeed odious. There is no real comparison. What would have happened to the United States, if, say, the three largest of the Thirteen Colonies had been given such "veto" power? Suppose Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York had each possessed such a veto power. How long would the Union have lasted? It is doubtful whether the Thirteen Colonies would have been able to hold together. The Federal Union of the United States is a different thing from this flimsy Charter, so dependent upon any one nation.

From the sheer logic of the situation, it is impossible to have an effective organization when one party to it can block all action. If it were possible from a logical standpoint to set up the United States of the World, with real world sovereignty and a relationship similar to that in the United States, it is conceivable that such a thing might work; but that surely is a far cry from that which we now have, or from what the world is at the present time able to produce. All that we have is the least common denominator upon which the nations could hold together, and that is not very much. But it may be effective in preventing smaller outbreaks from becoming general conflagrations, and also deter the larger ones from unprovoked action.

The second important limitation that Christian people recognize is that we still live in a power world, and for that matter, we will continue to live in such a world until Jesus Christ comes; and the conflict over the balance of power will continue. It works in and through the United Nations Organization, is operating constantly underneath it and will always do so. To attempt to say that we do not need to be prepared to defend ourselves because we have the Charter would be an illusion of the most disastrous proportions. Yet it is just here that a great deal of the propaganda of the pacifists in the country and the radical leaders who are pro-Russian in their ideology will put their emphasis. The Charter must not be an instrument to lead us to become soft and to rest in a false sense of security. In other words, the security offered the world by the United Nations Conference is limited by the imperfections and fallacies inherent in the set-up.

Another very serious limitation of the Charter is the incorporation of the Economic and Social Council into it. It is just here that the radical elements in this country hope to have an instrument which can be used for the Sovietizing of the entire world. Of course, that is not what is meant by it at this present moment, but it is an instrument which can be used to that end, and it will be if the forces advocating a "controlled economic" world have their way. We must, therefore, be aware of this limitation.

John Foster Dulles, the chairman of the Commission on a Just and Durable Peace of the Federal Council of Churches, announced to the Federal Council in December 1944 that the Dumbarton Oaks proposals did not meet the requirements of the six pillars of peace. In fact, only the first pillar was actually met by the Dumbarton Oaks proposals. This was exceedingly satisfactory to us. The last

five of the six pillars would give us a Soviet world! However, he has since announced, following the San Francisco Conference, that the Conference improved the Dumbarton Oaks proposals along the lines of the suggestions of the Federal council and the six pillars of peace. In other words, gains were made by the radical elements in San Francisco, and the left wing and radical elements certainly did attend the San Francisco Conference.

In mentioning these limitations, of course, it should be recognized that in attempting to set up a United Nations organization to operate in the interests of peace, the very attempt itself involves the creation of other possibilities and contingencies. This is true of any act that any man takes. Let us beware; and be fully conscious of the limitations of the Council and not expect too much of it. We can trust it only so far as reason will permit.

Third, Christians will be alert to note attempts of any group to use the security organization for its own interests. There will be in it the same old jockeying for position and vying for strength and power that the old world has always known. Russia will attempt to use it to get gain, as she is doing; and for this reason we are of the feeling that America, being willing to join such an organization, must assume the responsibilities of leadership which someone must have. You cannot have an organization without having leadership.

America is in a powerful position at the present moment, and in going into such an organization we must fully face the responsibilities which are ours and determine to use our place of leadership in behalf of our American conception of freedom-the freedom of the individual embodied in our American way of life. There may be many practical compromises possible, but we cannot compromise with freedom and still keep it. That is why the conflict between American idealism and the Russian concept of "freedom" will be the great conflict in the postwar world and the mighty conflict underlying the United Nations Charter. America must be strong in an understanding of and the defense and maintenance of our system of freedom and private enterprise.

An example, however, of the way in which the Charter is already being selfishly used to advance certain interests, is given by the Federal Council. When it announced that it approved of this Charter, it declared that now the churches of the nations and the world should unite in an ecumenical movement to furnish a substantial backing for it in all countries. In other words, the United Nations Charter is to be used as a lever with which to build a radical, modernist World Council of Churches. Even the Federal Council wants to use it for its own selfish ends. In the general popular sentiment for the United Nations the Federal Council attempted to use the publicity it would receive by indorsing the Charter to direct the minds of people to its own inclusivist, modernistic, ecumenical movement. Even a supposedly "idealistic" church group could not resist the temptation to use the Charter as a vehicle for its own ends! If the church does it, how much more nations?

The attempt to keep the peace by war is bloody and costly, and this attempt of the United Nations to keep the peace according to this plan will also be costly and perilous; but it is these perils that Christian people must be fully aware of and our leaders in the Nation must be prepared to meet as a part of the price of keeping the peace.

That there are to be wars and rumors of war unto the end we have the word of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our hope is that we may have longer intervals between wars and that many may be avoided-not by appeasement or the sacrifice of principle, but by the use of judgment, discretion, and better understanding. The final thought, of course, that needs to be emphasized is that in uniting and helping to promote world peace through such a Charter we must keep our eyes open and be aware of the radical program to push the Charter on to becoming the instrument for world revolution of the communist order.

Because of the smallness of our world, the instruments of invention, and the innate sinfulness of the human heart, we face the greatest crisis in all of our history. As the Christian faces it and endeavors to do his duty to God in the light of the teachings of the Bible and the commands of his Saviour, his heart and his eyes are lifted up to the heavens, and he yearns for the coming again of the Lord Jesus Christ. He alone can give this world the peace it cries for! "Even so, come, Lord Jesus." This is truly, and will be more and more, the "blessed hope of the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ."

H. MCALLISTER GRIFFITHS,
General Secretary.

(The following communications, opposing the Charter, were later received for the record:)

Senator Toм CONNALLY:

NEW YORK, N. Y., July 13, 1945.

Please read into the record that Senator Vandenberg is mistaken. The Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America does not speak for 20,000,000 Protestants. There are thousands of Protestants who oppose the political maneuvering of this so-called Federal Council of Churches, which is nothing but one of the Carnegie pressure groups.

Senator Toм CONNALLY,

DOROTHY T. FALES.

NEW YORK, N. Y., July 12, 1945.

Foreign Affairs Committee, Washington, D. C.:

I wish to have placed on the record my protest of the adoption of the San Francisco Charter because it violates the Constitution of the United States. You cannot legally place American boys under any world charter to be called at the discretion of five men appointed for life to be sent out for war or policing. You have no such authority under the Constitution. You have not been granted the power by the people to give away their money and substance. I demand that the Senators keep their oath of office and defend and protect the Constitution of the United States. We protest the false impression given by the highly financed pressure groups that the people are for this Charter. The wrath of the people is a rising tide and from coast to coast protest this the greatest betrayal of all time. I further demand this message be read in committee and on the floor.

DOROTHY G. FALES.

PATERSON, N. J., July 12, 1945. Senator Tom Connally and Members Senate Foreign Relations Committee,

Washington, D. C.:

As advocates since 1937 of universal federal democratic world government with enforcement directly on individuals rather than military coercion of member nations, we are naturally disappointed that the San Francisco Charter does not embody these principles. We believe that people the world over are anxiously ready to adopt these principles and deplore the hesitancy, shortsightedness, and selfishness of national leaders who have stood in the way. Thirty-five hundred people have signed our petition for a world legislature popularly controlled through elected representatives who would have power not only to talk but to decide questions of world-wide concern. These 3,500 people have also served notice through their signatures that nothing less than popularly controlled government on the world level will resolve the economic and political problems which menace This is what we want and this is what we will organize, and the sooner it happens the safer we will all be. Until it happens we are in constant danger because of forum under any name is incapable of protection the charters difficult amendment and veto provisions are so undemocratic as to amount to a national disgrace. The Senate may be satisfied with this pitiful gesture of international cooperation but we will continue to demand and work for something more adequate and more worthy of our democratic Federal heritage.

us.

[blocks in formation]

Since 1920 I have exerted my every power to arrest the growing treason to our basic and traditional foreign policy, one indicted by the most famous names in American history-our Adamses, Jeffersons, Franklins, Jays, Marshalls, and a long line of envisioned statesmen. Years of research and writing, of service state and justice, entitle me, together with a tradition dating from the earliest royal governor and from Washington's staff to Pershing's, to be heard, and as of record

in final protest aginst the so-called United Nations Charter, a general treaty now before your committee. The engagements stipulated for are such as to implicate our foreign policy and treaty relations with those of Downing Street and the Kremlin in a manner either to compel to compromise upon what is basic in them, else to withdraw or fight. This Charter deprives war of its single honor, the defense of independence. It envisions a peace without independence, which is a peace with honor. It validates the monarchical principle of unanimity, and is utterly subversive of the principle of equality of states as between sovereign peoples, or such as should be free and independent.

The organization contemplated is in the familiar form of British Colonial administration. In its federative implications, and in the principles which it postulates, ratification of the United Nations Charter in my judgment is ultra vires the power or the Senate. The Constitution, said Marshall, established principles of perpetual and universal obligation which "relieve from clashing sovereignty and interfering powers.' Nowhere does the Charter authenticate these principles or bind to their pursuit.

[ocr errors]

As a citizen of the United States and of this State of New York and as an integral part of the sovereignty of America (vide Kennett versus Chambers) I protest the ratification of the United Nations Charter and respectfully request that as one long versed in the law of nations and so recognized by the highest authorities here and abroad that this protest be read to your committee and made a part of the file in your committee's hearings.

The effort to link our free economy to Europe's collapsing cartelized capitalisms and bend our independent sovereignty before a monstrous world embracing Communism has gone all too far.

It is a threat to the future of America and a deadly treason to the Constitution which we both have sworn, Senator, to support and maintain. If the Administration must have this impious thing, reserve in favor of the principles Marshall affirmed to have been established for ages to come under our covenant with the world's liberties. This Charter is a treaty of alliance and confederation with imperialism and tyranny. J. WHITLA NICHOLSON-EDEN STINSON.

NEW YORK, N. Y., July 13, 1945.

Hon. Toм CONNALLY,

United States Senate:

I am a Protestant. Please put on record I am not a member of Federal Council of Churches. Please see that 20,000,000 names of members for whom Bishop Oxnam speaks are properly filed on the record. Please check files of United States Naval and Military intelligence and FBI regarding this organization's unfriendly attitude toward private enterprise, our constitutional form of government, and national sovereignty.

E. FRENCH JOHNSTON.

THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR THE PRESERVATION OF
SACRED, PATRIOTIC, AND OPERATIC MUSIC,
New York, N. Y., July 4, 1945.

DEAR FRIEND: A careful perusal of the San Francisco Charter and its background along with world events during the past few years brings out the following facts:

1. The Charter is the fruit of anti-Christianism.

2. It attempts to bring the whole world into one big slave state dominated by anti-Christians.

3. In its logical conclusion it seeks to destroy Nationalism, Patriotism, and Christianity.

4. The treaty delegates power to the Security Council to declare war. Under our Constitution only Congress can declare war for the United States. 5. The Security Council would regulate the kind and size of armaments for our national defense.

6. Since we would have only one vote out of seven our sovereignty would be in the hands of European and Asiatic nations whose interests are hostile to those of the United States.

7. Our foreign policy would be in the hands of foreign nations.

8. It destroys the Monroe Doctrine and scuttles the Pan American Union by subjecting them to the approval of European and Asiatic nations.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »