3. I think you will agree that the National Commission recommendations are bold and constructive. It is the opinion of the National Commission, according to its report, that "the responsibility of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in the present crisis is so great and so pressing that the Organization should not hesitate to employ any proper means, however novel or however costly, which give promise of success. The Organization is itself a new agency, daring in purpose and novel in structure. The means it employs should be appropriate to its nature. It must serve as the cutting edge for international action." The Commission received with appreciation your message urging UNESCO to help clear away the barriers of suspicion and mistrust which divide peoples. The Commission called upon President Truman who told them that the Commission could make the "greatest contribution in the history of the world to the welfare of the world as a whole, if it really goes at it in the spirit that is intended". He told the delegates he thought they were on the road to doing the job. In my opening address to the Commission, I warned the members that their actions would be closely followed and often severely criticized, and that many demands would be made upon their time and energy. I dedicated the Commission to hard work. I have attended many conferences, but I have never seen as sincere and hard working a group as this Commission proved to be this week. Many བ་Pད་པ པས ne special Committee on Refugees and Displaced Persons. London, April 8 to June 1, 1946. U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1946 diverse viewpoints were represented, yet out of this diversity grew surprising unity. The Commission gives every promise of becoming, as you and I had hoped, the collective brain to the whole nervous system of American culture, science, education and means of communication. In addition to the obligation imposed by Congress on the Commission, to advise the United States Government on its participation in UNESCO, there is a second role for its members of which they were deeply conscious. This is to act as liaison with the thousands of organizations in this country, and their millions of individual members, in carrying out the UNESCO program within the United States. Many of the members present and organizations represented are already proceeding energetically to fulfill this responsibility. For example, the General Federation of Women's Clubs proposes to devote the entire November issue of its magazine, which goes to three and a half million members, to the meeting of this National Commission and to the opportunities for achieving peace through understanding, for which UNESCO was created. If UNESCO is to be in fact "the spearhead of the United Nations", as the Ambassador from France told the members of the Commission at its dinner, then this grass-roots activity, sponsored and promoted by the 100 members authorized for the National Commission, will help the American people achieve an understanding of the aims of the United Nations and its specialized agencies, and the aims of American Foreign policy. 4 You will be surprised, perhaps, as were the members of the Commission, at the statement by one of the members that a new Gallup Poll showed that more than 30 percent of the people of the United States do not know that the United States is a member of the United Nations. This illustrates both the domestic need for the National Commission and its opportunity. Perhaps of greatest interest to the so-called practical men of the world, as well as to their political leaders, will be the attitude unanimously expressed by this group towards the proposed UNESCO budget. The Commission stated that even if the program were to cost a billion dollars or more annually, it would be "cheap insurance" against another war. I may say that no such budget was contemplated because the Commission is fully aware that it is impossible to develop a sufficient number of hard-headed projects, with sound administration and with reasonable hope of success, to warrant any such sum in the near future. However, General Sarnoff estimated for one of the round tables that it would cost $250,000,000 to develop the worldwide communications system required by the United Nations, capable of laying down a strong and consistent radio signal, in all major areas of the world, comparable to the signal now received from a local radio station. General Sarnoff says that such a world system is today technically feasible. Such a worldwide radio network is one of the proposals unanimously endorsed by the National Commission. U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1946 The Commission elected the following as its officers: CHAIRMAN: Milton Eisenhower, President, Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science, Manhattan, Kansas. VICE CHAIRMEN: Edward W. Barrett, Editorial Director, Newsweek, New York, New York. St. Louis, Missouri. Waldo G. Leland, American Council of Learned Societies, Outstanding in leadership and energy among the members present in Washington this week was Mr. Archibald MacLeish, who acted as Chairman of the Committee which drafted the attached report. Mr. MacLeish's long interest in UNESCO, and his contributions to the UNESCO Constitution when he acted as Chairman of the American Delegation in London last fall, are well known to you. I may say that no experience I have had in my thirteen months in the State Department has moved me more deeply than the meeting this week of this new and unique organ created by Congress to advise the Department. As your representative at these meetings, I have been deeply stirred by the passionate desire of these distinguished private citizens to devote themselves to the same cause to which you are devoting yourself in Paris-the dispelling of the ignorance, mistrust and misunderstanding which is prevalent throughout the world today—and the substitution in their place of that moral and intellectual solidarity of mankind which is the goal of the UNESCO constitution. Respectfully, U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1946 |