Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

1

into a single army. These great projects should become realities in

1952.

We should do all we can to help and encourage the move toward a strong and united Europe.

In Asia the new Communist empire is a daily threat to millions of people. The peoples of Asia want to be free to follow their own way of life. They want to preserve their culture and their traditions against communism just as much as we want to preserve ours. They are laboring under terrific handicaps: poverty, ill health, feudal systems of land ownership, and the threat of internal subversion or external attack. We can and must increase our help to them.

That means military aid, especially to those places like Indochina, which might be hardest hit by some new Communist attack.

It also means economic aid, both technical know-how and capital investment.

This last year we made available millions of bushels of wheat to relieve famine in India. But far more important, in the long run, is the work Americans are doing in India to help the Indian farmers themselves raise more grain. With the help of our technicians, Indian farmers, using simple inexpensive means, have been able since 1948 to double the crops in one area in India. One farmer there raised 63 bushels of wheat to the acre, where 13 bushels had been the average before.

This is our Point IV program at work. It is working not only in India, but in Iran, Paraguay, Liberia-in 33 countries around the globe. Our technical missionaries are out there. We need more of them. We need more funds to speed their efforts, because there is nothing of greater importance in all our foreign policy. There is nothing that shows more clearly what we stand for and what we want to achieve.

My friends of the Congress, less than one-third of the expenditure for the cost of World War II would have created the developments necessary to feed the whole world so we would not have stomachcommunism, and unless we fight that battle and win it we cannot win the cold war or a hot one either.

During the coming year we must not forget the suffering of the people who live behind the iron curtain. In those areas minorities are being oppressed, human rights violated, religion persecuted. We should continue to expose those wrongs. We should continue and expand the activities of the Voice of America, which brings our message of hope and truth to those peoples and other peoples throughout the world.

I have just had an opportunity to discuss many of these world problems with Prime Minister Churchill. We have had a most satisfactory series of meetings. We thoroughly reviewed the situation in Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East. We both look

[blocks in formation]

forward to steady progress toward peace through the cooperative action and teamwork of the free nations.

10. PROGRESS

TOWARD

INTERNATIONAL PEACE AND

UNITY: Address by the Secretary of State, April 19, 1952 (Excerpts)1

There is a temptation to look at the day-to-day events as a kind of verbal badminton game, in which some sort of poppycock goes back and forth across a net until someone scores a point. But the recent events I want to talk about are much more meaningful than moves in a propaganda game. They grow out of large policies and large purposes, both on our side and on the Communist side. And the stakes are still high: Whether there will be peace or war; whether our cherished values will survive.

Among other things, this spring has brought a whole series of Soviet moves which some people-mistakenly, I think-have grouped together and called a Soviet "peace offensive."

I think a better name for these procedures might be the "golden apple" tactic. You may remember a story in Greek mythology, in which all the gods were invited to a wedding except one, and that was the Goddess of Discord. She was upset about this, and she threw a golden apple over the fence, hoping to cause a ruckus among the guests and break up the party.

Several apples have been tossed over the Iron Curtain this spring. Happily, they have not produced discord. The reason why this is so must be sought against the background of the great constructive purposes we and our allies have been carrying forward and the persistently destructive actions of the Communist movement.

We have arrived at a climactic moment in the development of the community of free nations. From the end of the war, we have been part of a vast constructive effort to create an organization of society in the world which would be stable, enduring, and strong.

In place of the shattered and fragmented world left in the wake of the Second World War, we and others who share the same aspirations have been trying to create conditions in the world in which our principles of the worth of the individual and the unity of society could survive and could flourish. These are not merely pleasant evangelistic ideas which we think it would be nice to propagate.

These efforts grow out of the urgent necessities we face in the world and out of the basic fiber of American life.

No free society can exist-neither our own, nor any other-if there are large areas of instability and weakness in the world. And so we have sought to help create a fabric of international society which

1 Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington; Department of State Bulletin, Apr. 28, 1952, pp. 648-651.

would be made up of nations who may represent great diversity in their traditions but who have in common a dedication to freedom, who are healthy both economically and politically and whose common strength is such that they need not live in fear.

What has been the role of the Soviet Union in this period? You who have reported the successive events of this story know only too well the long string of broken promises, the consistent blocking of our attempts to settle problems, the long record of noncooperation and hostility. The Soviet rulers have demonstrated that they seek to perpetuate chaos. Their fundamental aim has been to block the constructive efforts of the non-Communist states and to exploit weakness and discontent.

I think perhaps the most revealing indication of this intention was the Soviet rejection of the invitation to participate in the European Recovery Program.

Here, as late as 1947, was an offer by the United States to aid in the reconstruction, not only of Western Europe, but of all Europe. The Soviet refusal, and Soviet-compelled rejection by its Eastern European satellites, revealed more clearly than any other single gesture the direction of Soviet policy.'

The Soviet answer was not only a flat "no" but a countertactic: The establishment of the Cominform 2 for the express purpose of defeating the Marshall Plan; and the Molotov Plan,3 designed to bring the economies of Eastern Europe more firmly under Soviet control. When we sought to pull down barriers to trade and mutual assistance among all European nations, the Soviet answer was to raise still higher the barriers along the Elbe and the Danube.

But despite these obstructions, and despite even the Communist use of force, we have been making progress. This progress has not been even in all parts of the world, because the needs and possibilities have varied greatly from one area to another. But, taken together, the results have been encouraging enough to demonstrate that we are on the right track and must persevere.

In Europe, we have come to a very large and exciting conception, which is on the verge of being realized. This is unity in Western Europe within the framework of the Atlantic community.

I would like to talk about this at greater length in a moment. First, I would like to sketch the world setting in which this movement has been taking place.

In other parts of the world, our efforts have taken an almost infinite variety of forms but have been directed to the same purpose-to create a fabric of international life in which there can be freedom from

See vol. I, "General Report," of the Report of the Committee of European Economic Cooperation (Department of State publication 2930; 1947), pp. 8-9, and Documents on International Affairs, 1947-1948 (London, 1952), pp. 30-58.

2 For the text of the declaration on the establishment of the Cominform drafted at the conference of Russian and East European Communist Party representatives meeting at Wiliza Gora, Silesia, Sept. 22-23, 1947, see ibid., pp. 122-125.

What is here referred to as the "Molotov Plan" consisted of an intensification of the Russian effort to conclude a series of economic agreements between the Soviet Union and the countries of eastern Europe, a development already partly completed before the initiation of the Marshall Plan.

domination and opportunity to achieve individual and national fulfillment.

In some areas, this has meant primarily efforts to develop the underlying conditions of the life of the people, so that there could be an orderly development toward freedom and progress. In other areas, this has meant dealing with outright aggression by force of arms.

And over all this, there has been the creation and development of the United Nations, in which we have taken a leading part. We believed, and still believe, that a system founded on harmony of the great powers and the rule of law offers the best framework within which this diverse development could go forward.

Despite the fact that, at every step of the way, we have met nothing but obstructionism and hostility from the Soviet Union, we have been moving steadily, doggedly, and with a good measure of success, toward the fulfillment of our purposes.

The United Nations' success in halting and throwing back the aggression in Korea is a tremendous advance for collective security, which should not be obscured by the long and difficult negotiations to bring the fighting to an end.

Soviet obstruction has blocked great-power harmony but has not been able to stop the powerful advance of a collective-security system based upon the growing strength and unity of nations who believe in the Charter of the United Nations.

Despite Soviet efforts to obstruct, Japan is being restored to the community of nations. Without benefit of any assistance from the Soviet Union, many states have achieved their independence including Indonesia, the Philippines, Ceylon, Burma, Pakistan, and India.1 We and the nations associated in the Colombo Plan,2 again without benefit of any cooperation from the Soviet Union, are giving practical assistance to the peoples of South and Southeast Asia who are energetically striving to meet their own needs in their own way.

And that, indeed, is the touchstone of all our technical-cooperation programs and our policies throughout the Middle East and in all of Asia and Africa-what we seek to do is to help the people of these areas to fulfill their aspirations for self-government and individual freedom and material progress in a responsible way, in a peaceful and orderly way.

I think there is a growing understanding among the leaders of the people in these areas, despite the agonizing conflicts that arise as an inevitable part of this process of growth and development, that our purpose and our record is one of genuine help toward responsible and peaceful solutions. They have learned to be suspicious of the Communist Pied Piper who strides through this troubled area with a bag of tricky slogans and a pretty propaganda tune which leads only to the drowning of their hopes in a new imperialism.

1 Indonesia achieved its independence Dec. 28, 1949; the Philippines, July 4, 1946; Ceylon was granted dominion status in the British Commonwealth, Feb. 4, 1948; Burma became independent Jan. 4, 1948; Pakistan and India became separate dominions in the British Commonwealth Aug. 15, 1947, India becoming a sovereign republic Jan. 26, 1950.

2 See infra, pp. 2338-2344.

With this setting in mind, I come back to what has been happening in Europe. Here all that has been going on since 1945-the programs of relief, of economic recovery, of bold and courageous action to build stable governments free from foreign domination, and the growth toward vigorous military establishments capable of deterring attack all these things have brought our friends in Europe to the threshold of the larger conception of the unity of all Western Europe. European unity has been a goal for which men have striven for centuries, by diplomacy and by force. What is important about this effort we see before us now is that it will bring together, in free and voluntary association, in practical institutions growing out of the urgent necessities of the times, much of Western Europe.

There is a kind of unity, perhaps, east of the Iron Curtain-but it is the unity of the cemetery. This is an abomination against man's nature; it is contrary to history and it cannot endure.

What has been going on in Western Europe is a totally different thing. It will have strength because it meets human needs and desires. It has been a process of practical growth, moving haltingly at times, because it has sought to accommodate real conflicts by negotiation and peaceful persuasion.

The margin between success and failure in this operation has sometimes been a narrow one. The difficulties are deep and real. Our allies have been grappling with critical economic problems. They have wrestled with ancient rivalries and painful memories of recent conflicts.

Despite all this, they have come now within sight of the goal, and the thing that is at stake at this moment is whether they and we will be able to go forward to the realization of this conception. That is the issue.

Soft music has been coming out of Moscow, about peaceful coexistence, about peaceful trade and German unity. This line to Western newsmen and others would be more persuasive if the Soviet propagandists were not at the same time, out of the other side of their mouths, engaged in one of the most vicious and savage episodes. in their hate campaign against the West.

The Communists have trumped up a monstrous charge that the U.N. Command has used germ warfare in Korea. This charge has been denied categorically and repeatedly by the U.N. Command in the field and by the Government of the United States in Washington. I deny it again here.

Not only this; but General Ridgway has offered to the International Red Cross every facility to investigate this charge behind our own lines. Although the Red Cross asked for similar facilities from the Communists, they received instead only defamation and abuse. Again, when the World Health Organization offered to help combat any epidemics which might exist, they were ignored.

American newspaper enterprise has exposed the falsity of the alleged "proofs" of these charges advanced by the Communists, and the Voice of America and our other information media have been

« ÎnapoiContinuă »