These are the most critical days of our years. At the end of World War I, the seeds were sown which led to World War II. At the present time, in Europe, seeds are being sown that may well result in World War III. A strong American foreign policy can do much to prevent this catastrophe.
My talk today is not intended to advocate any particular policy, but merely to give information on several matters and leave you to draw your own conclusion. The peace of the world depends on information; it is not ill-inspired policy, but ill-informed policy which leads to war. We must know before we can understand. We cannot predetermine our policy without reference to the facts.
We have gone a long way from those trying days of '42, '43, and '44 when victory and defeat lay in the balance. Those were trying times, but they did bring forth in the human heart certain instincts which had lain dormant through the years of peace: the realization of the interdependence between men, the necessity for mutual cooperation and unity. In the international field, the vicious pressure of events hammered out for the first time a collaboration and alliance between 'two irreconcilable philosophies of life.' That cooperation, that recognition of mutual interdependence, not only between individuals, but between nations, remained strong with us through the bitter days of the war.
Now the guns have cooled, the men are returning home, the catastrophic days of war are over, the grueling days of peace are ahead – one chapter has ended; another has begun.
But, with the joy in people’s hearts at the return of peace, doubts are already beginning to spring up, as the people measure, with anxious eyes, what we have sacrificed with what we have gained. The disillusionment that had such fatal results at the end of World War I is already beginning to show itself again. We are finding that the mutual cooperation and sacrifice between men, which were the products of our obvious interdependence during the war, are no longer with us. And, we are, also, seeing that the cooperation between nations was merely, to a great extent, the result of a common peril, and that it has disappeared in the same ratio as the peril has diminished.
It is with a recognition of these facts that I propose to discuss some of the decisions and problems with which we are now faced.
At the conclusion of the San Francisco Conference, I wrote my impressions in a diary. They were not optimistic impressions, as the area of agreement reached at San Francisco seemed to me tragically small, and limited merely to matters in which none of the Big Five had any basic interest.
The words of Winston Churchill seemed well adapted to the results: "The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are often no longer strong."
While writing about the possibilities of another war, I set down: "An eventual clash may be finally and indefinitely postponed by the discovery of a weapon so horrible that it would truthfully mean the annihilation of all the nations employing it, and thus science, which has contributed so much to the horrors of war, may yet produce the means of bringing it to an end."
Less than two months later, the atomic bomb smashed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The destructive potential of the atom is so tremendous that it has blown away completely all of the fundamentals upon which we formed our international decisions.
It is significant of the tremendous strain under which we live that this revolutionary discovery of power which may make coal and iron obsolete, a discovery that may eventually raise the standard of living of human beings far above what we may now imagine, a discovery that is probably the most important since man first made fire, that it should have brought with it such a feeling of hopelessness and the conviction that man has discovered at last the secret that will result in his own destruction.
Quite obviously, it is difficult to do much intelligent thinking about the atomic problem. The few men who had the scientific knowledge to create this bomb are not qualified by experience to make the political decisions on what should be done with it, nor do they have the basic responsibility for those ultimate decisions, for that belongs to the legislative and executive departments of the three governments who share the secret.
But our limited knowledge of the bomb brings us to three conclusions:
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Assuming that in the next few years all important nations will possess the secret of the atomic bomb, which is a fair assumption, we must recognize that the country which first employs the bomb in war, under present industrial conditions, will be victorious. This places the democratic countries of the Western world at a tremendous disadvantage. Past history has shown us that democracies do not go to war without first undergoing a period of conditioning to war. They have to suffer a Pearl Harbor or a Munich, or an invasion of a country whose independence they feel vital before they recognize that there is no alternative but war. This kind of thinking, it must be recognized, is inherent in a democratic government which depends on majority support, and thus a democracy in the atomic age, where a war may be over in the first hour, will be at overwhelming disadvantage.
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The industry in a country can be so diversified, though at tremendous cost – Time Magazine estimates 250 billion dollars – that it can resist the first atomic attack, and might be able, in turn, to attack the aggressor, bringing mutual annihilation.
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That the atomic bomb may be so destructive a weapon that it may force people to keep the peace.
This last possibility has been seized upon by those who feel that the only way to win lasting peace is to form amongst the nations of the world a strong world organization.
This world organization would be far stronger than the present United Nations organization. Each nation would be obligated to relinquish to the world organization its power of making war. The world organization would keep the peace by means of an international police force which would have under its control the atomic bomb. This would mean, of course, a great limitation on the sovereignty and independence of each nation. It would mean a limitation to a degree which was hardly discussed at San Francisco, but the proponents of the present plan feel that the atomic bomb has made such a federation the only solution. They frequently compare this world federation to the federation formed by the thirteen American colonies at the end of the Revolutionary War. The colonial states each kept certain privileges, but all gave up some of their sovereignty to a common authority.
There are, however, certain weaknesses in this comparison. The American colonists had a common language, they had, in general, a common descent, and they had a basic agreement on most legal issues with one exception – slavery. It is important to note that one exception because it nearly smashed the Union about eighty years later. It took a war to hold that Union together.
Now, at the present time in the world there is not a common language, nor a common descent, except from Adam, nor, and this is the most important factor, have we a basic agreement on any one important point unless it is on the necessity of abolishing war, and this is always qualified by the desire for security. There are two basic philosophies in the world: those who believe in the rights of the individual and those who believe in the rights of the state. Those philosophies appear irreconcilable. It may be, however, that the common horror of atomic war may be strong enough to cause a sufficient area of agreement.
In the past years, we have heard much about the horrors of war, but we have always felt that war was preferable to certain alternatives. There are certain things for which we have always fought. War has never been the ultimate evil. Now, however, that may have changed. We may be forced to make the sacrifices that will insure peace. We can only pray that man’s political skill can keep abreast of his scientific skill; if not, we may yet live to see Armageddon.
There is another problem that we must face and that is how to reconcile economic security with personal liberty. Other countries with other ideologies offer the security without the liberty. Some offer neither. If we are to make this victory complete, if we are to secure at home the victory won abroad, we must find a solution – on our peril, we must find it.
This summer, I had the opportunity of observing the British elections. It was an important election because it showed how a country with a long individualistic tradition could be persuaded by men and events to put security ahead of liberty. We, in America, may be faced in the not too distant future with the same decision. We have much to learn by England’s experience and so, as I discuss some of the reasons for the Conservative Party’s defeat, I will point out some of the errors that they made.
I think that first and foremost the Conservative Party was defeated because they had been in power during the most difficult times in English history, both at home and abroad. The Conservative Party was the majority party during the years of the Depression when poverty stalked the Midlands and the coal fields of Wales, and thousands and thousands lived off the very meager pittance of the dole. Where Roosevelt made his political reputation, the Conservative Party lost theirs. The lesson from that is obvious. People who cannot find employment must be given a living wage and not merely kept alive on a subsistence level.
After the depression, the Conservative Party was in power during the days of appeasement, when crises followed crises, and Germany slowly and inexorably spread over the face of Europe. Few seemed to remember that the opposition of the Labour Party to this policy of appeasement consisted principally of voting against armaments and conscription. The Conservatives were in power and they had the responsibility.
The great error made by Mr. Chamberlain and the Conservative Party was in their presentation of the policy of appeasement. Appeasement, that is, the sacrificing of objectives to win time to prepare, has been practiced by politicians and generals since the days of ancient Greece. Where Chamberlain brought it into disrepute was on that Saturday afternoon at the Heston Airport in September 1938 when he had returned from Germany. Waving the agreement with Mr. Hitler in the air, he said that he had "out of this nettle danger plucked this flower – safety." Every English politician reads Shakespeare, but this quotation from Hamlet was peculiarly unfortunate.
Mr. Chamberlain, also had a strong historical sense and he recalled that Benjamin Disraeli had returned from the Treaty of Berlin, nearly seventy years before, with the statement that he had returned "bringing peace with honor." So Chamberlain quoted Mr. Disraeli, and that was unfortunate.
We ourselves practiced appeasement – the appeasement of Japan, when we sent them oil and scrap iron. But Mr. Roosevelt explained it by saying that he was merely "babying them along." He thus gave the impression that he knew all along that the Japs were up to something – an impression that "Peace in our time" does not. And so Mr. Chamberlain lies in his grave in disgrace and Mr. Roosevelt lies at Hyde Park in glory.
The second contributing fact to the defeat of the Conservative Party was that England traditionally has been a country with tremendous contrasts between the very rich and the very poor. That arch Tory, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, once said that England was divided into two nations – the rich and the poor.
With the turnover caused by the war, the contribution made by the poor as well as the rich, the coming of the American troops with their high pay, with their stories of cars, refrigerators, and radios for all, a new spirit – a new restlessness – and a fresh desire for the better things of life had become strong in Britain. That obviously is not a firm ground on which to build any kind of democratic government. Daniel Webster once said, "A general equality of condition is the true basis most certainly, of a democracy."
The third reason for the Conservative defeat was that Labour made the most of the fact that it never had held office. It was relatively easy, therefore, to be all the things to all men. With higher wages and shorter hours, happy days would be here again. They attacked the Conservatives' pre-war foreign policy – attacked government by a privileged class. The day of the working man was to be at hand – and to the Socialists, virtually everyone was a working man.
All these arguments, which were put forward with vigor and cleverness, had their effect. The conservative Party met the attack with little apparent energy.
Instead of a vigorous campaign on the virtues of private enterprise, they offered a watered down version of blood, sweat, and tears for the years of peace. Blood, sweat and tears was fitted to the desperate days of 1940, but not to 1945 to a people whose chronic fatigue and exhaustion has brought them to a sharp-tempered dissatisfaction with life in England.
The victory was overwhelming. Labour with its far reaching plan for Socialization and for "the new foreign policy" swept into office. What are the prospects in store for the Labour Party? It faces tremendous problems, both at home and abroad. It has made great promises to the electorate – higher wages and shorter hours, homes for all, cradle-to-the grave social security, nationalization of the mines, the land, transportation, and many other basic industries and services.
All of these projects will cost great sums of money. England, also has an external debt of nearly five billion pounds. It has few natural resources to build up the great export industry upon which her life will depend. England faces problems more gigantic than even our own.
The Socialist victory was the result of difficult times. If the times become even more difficult, the trend toward all British life becoming regulated by the government will grow and the possibilities of an authoritarian regime holding power "in the interests of the people" will become increasingly strong.
Source: David F. Powers Personal Papers, Box 28, "United War Fund Appeal, 8 October 1945." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.