TOWARD A MORE POSITIVE PEACE PROGRAM
Johnson, Byron
Toward A More Positive Peace Program by BYRON JOHNSON Consider the paradox of peace. For many years it has been popular to say: To have peace, prepare for war. Certainly in the last decade we have...
...Our own commercial trade policies for imports and exports should adhere to a pattern which expands freedom for both producers and consumers to trade profitably across national boundaries...
...And the Church of Christ has been with us 1,900 years, through every kind of political, economic, and social system...
...We want freedom and strength at home...
...The Council said we "must choose to wage peace and to do all in our power to prevent war . . . National armament can never bring any permanent peace...
...we have been timid about conBYRON L. JOHNSON, Democratic Congressman from Colorado, is one of the leaders of the band of House liberals fighting for a more creative American foreign policy...
...As stewards of abundance, owing all to God, we must with simple justice and brotherhood share with those in need...
...The President, in his seventh (1959) State of the Union message, proposed a national commission to set forth our national goals...
...and suppose that the self-interest of each nation were being expressed through all joining hands in an increasingly interdependent world...
...We should seek a universal reduction in arms budgets in order that every nation may be freer to pursue the works of peace...
...Knowledge and appreciation of this history are healthy antidotes to the temptation to equate virtue, morality, progress, truth, and beauty with Twentieth Century American capitalism...
...Or, placing his faith in constructive and positive programs, he can bring peace, prosperity, and undreamed-of opportunity to every human being on this earth...
...Suppose that our reliance on terror were replaced by a growing reliance on world law...
...Therefore, our investment in developing a peaceful world through law expresses, in fact, our first concern for the common defense...
...It is hardly likely that this Administration will in its closing days set forth such imaginative and constructive goals...
...By the same logic, the only way we can make effective our sovereign will to create a peaceful pattern of international relations is to pool with the human race that part of our sovereignty involving world affairs...
...Yet in our haste, as well as in our anti-Communism, we frequently pursue a series of bilateral or other arrangements outside the United Nations...
...Our obsession with armaments has crippled the remainder of our own budget...
...The psychological foundation of a positive peace program must be sound...
...We must seek to compete within a framework of law and of order...
...We must develop a sense of history and an historical perspective adequate to the challenges of these times...
...The suggestion by Representative Leonard G. Wolf, Iowa Democrat, that our surplus food be shared in a Food for Peace plan underwritten for ten years and operated under the United Nations, is the right approach...
...As a result, we now live in awe and fear of weapons of fantastically destructive power...
...This must rest on four foundations: One...
...Certainly in the last decade we have prepared for war as never before...
...structive programs overseas...
...We must cooperate with other nations to help them achieve their best interests, because this will also be our own best long-run interest...
...No people can live in isolated plenty in the midst of a needy world and expect to avoid the withering of its Christian spirit...
...If our ultimate object is truly world peace, how much better this is than to create an exclusive club or fraternity outside the United Nations...
...We must be willing to cooperate with all nations who will join the attack...
...We must never hold any institution or system on a scale higher than human life itself...
...He never asked who they were, what they believed, where they came from...
...it has been given to us to launch scientific instruments in outer space...
...Until that can be accomplished, we must continue to operate through the United Nations as it is now—a league of states—each of which asserts sovereign power over international affairs...
...The economic foundations of peace must be sound...
...The cost of maintaining men and materiel of modern war diverts precious resources in poor countries to wasteful purposes...
...He is about seventy years old...
...As the meaning of "common defense" has changed, the time has come to reexamine the paradox...
...Our national survival—all human survival— is at stake...
...Assuming the world population includes about 2.5 billion persons, we will spend $18 for every man, woman, and child on the face of the globe in preparing for man's destruction by weapons more powerful and swift than any ever developed before...
...These things should be recorded not merely in occasional, pious speeches, but more fundamentally in government budget documents and appropriations acts, as well as in international conferences...
...Our present policy of military assistance weakens a poor nation's economy...
...How much better had he forthrightly announced as our goal worldwide cooperation in abolishing poverty in this generation...
...This requires that understanding be developed among the peoples of the earth...
...In that event, we will have missed our last chance in this century to influence world history conitructively...
...There are those who fear that the Communists would conquer the world if it were not for our military might...
...It can do no more than buy time in which to wage peace . . ." Adlai Stevenson has suggested that we must "confront as constructively as we can the vast revolution sweeping our planet...
...The short view is a snare, tempting us to surrender life, or destroy the race, for what are, in historic terms, only transient institutions...
...there was no arrogance in him and he disliked calling attention to himself...
...Not only this, he gathered together like-minded people...
...But the gentle teacher said: "This I cannot do for how can I turn over to you the names of those who came to me in trust and confidence, knowing that they would be brought before you and harassed and made afraid...
...Nor have we been saved through "pactomania...
...No one familiar with Communism or Communists is entitled naively to believe that peace in our generation means total absence of tension between the Communist and non-Communist worlds...
...It is our obligation to place threats to the peace before the United Nations...
...Our weapons of terror and massive retaliation have been powerless to contain it...
...It is common for American spokesmen to speak of our need to strengthen the United Nations...
...They said to the teacher, give us the names of your disciples, of those who come to hear you speak and those who talk peace with you...
...Under such circumstances we might reduce our military budget until it was no more than we would be spending constructively to advance human welfare around the world...
...The United States should offer to join the other nations of the world in an all-out assault on man's ancient enemies— hunger, misery, illiteracy, disease, and poverty...
...The consequences to the human race of the alternative choices are so devastatingly final that we must come to a civilized accord—even though it be no more than an agreement to disagree...
...The Man Was Dangerous by Robert Goldburg He was a meek man...
...We now have in our arsenal weapons which, if used, would prevent most of us from having any posterity who might enjoy the blessings of that liberty which our government exists to provide...
...A constructive and peaceful foreign policy must maintain the long view of history...
...I submit that our tools of violent power are unable to achieve these purposes...
...Unhappily, we are tempted by our rich material blessings and our technical accomplishments to develop a cultural and intellectual arrogance that is a stumbling block to our success in dealing with others...
...How much longer constructive options will remain available can only be conjectured...
...A man who says things like "turn the other cheek" and does so himself disturbs his fellow-man...
...Our bolstering of colonialism and our support of corrupt candidates in the name of anti-Communism creates the very revolutionary situations Lenin urged his followers to seek...
...There is mounting evidence that the Communist offensive now is one of economic aid and penetration...
...The time to act was yesterday...
...Stevenson suggests "we must address ourselves to this problem with the same urgency as our national defense...
...The negative program will not do...
...Whatever the reduction, whether $10 billion or $30 billion, as it might become, I suggest it be divided three ways—the first portion to underwrite a world-wide assault on poverty, with emphasis on the uncommitted nations...
...All of these things that I have related happened not in Judea of long ago, but on Monday, December 14, 1959 of the Christian era, in the State of New Hampshire in the United States of America...
...that unselfish friendship will conquer enmity...
...Man today faces an unprecedented choice...
...A sustained longterm effort to draw the underdeveloped peoples through the portals of modernization to give them an alternative to the Communist method of forced development must be the central objective in any Western policy toward the uncommitted third of the world...
...Such a man was dangerous...
...We have properly criticized fascists and communists alike for this very error...
...These have not stopped the Communist advance...
...The United States should patiently pursue not merely an end to bomb testing, but an end to the arms race itself...
...The philosophical base of a positive peace program must be sound...
...He really had only one theme—but people misunderstood him...
...It must build toward a rule of world law through an expanded or otherwise revised United Nations framework...
...Yet no one can deny that the ordinary American, like the common citizen of every land, sincerely seeks peace...
...Clearly we need an affirmative peace program...
...There were a few who lifted up their voices, and some went quietly to the place where he was sentenced...
...The safest and most prudent time to move forward in a constructive program for peace is right now—today...
...When he spoke, he spoke softly—and he believed with a sure conviction that he spoke the will of his Father in heaven...
...Our power has been so badly used as to retard, if not destroy, our purposes...
...Rather, it is an edifice that must patiently be built brick by brick and stone by stone...
...Great as are the difficulties and risks of working through the United Nations, even greater are the rewards...
...A few hundred million dollars a year is not enough...
...Thus, in the name of anti-Communism, we appear to prove basic Marxist allegations that the capitalist state is the sole possessor of the instruments of violence for oppressing the masses...
...These resources might better be employed in building the educational plant, the highways and harbors, the water works and power plants, vitally needed in many such countries...
...From a sermon prepared by Rabbi Goldburg of the Congregation Mishkan Israel, New Haven...
...How shall he find it...
...It has been given to us to conquer the secret of the invisible atom...
...At least He is beyond their reach...
...While this averages $8 for each American citizen, it is only 50 cents for every man, woman, and child on earth...
...it has invited and supported dictatorships...
...The long view of history assures us that others will change their institutions even as we have changed our own...
...Many United Nations activities operate now without full participation by Communist nations, but the door remains open...
...Simple prudence, if not genius or wisdom, should cause us to read more carefully the works of our adversary, and to understand that his behavior is designed to tempt us into paths which serve his purposes, not ours...
...Its conquests have come largely from within each nation...
...They can sing hymns in His name, but woe to those in any generation that walk in His paths...
...Then they tried to persuade him, and offered him reward if he would say "Yea" and threatened him with punishment if he should say "Nay...
...A small portion of what we now spend annually through our military budget would be sufficient as our contribution to that end...
...A man who believes we should love our enemies is asking too much of any generation...
...In its place we need a positive peace program...
...Peace will be built by the gradual realization in the minds of men that they can live with each other, and accomplish their valid objectives without war or violence...
...It would be supreme tragedy if we should now embrace the view that the genocide of nuclear war was preferable to having part of the race living under institutions we do not fully understand or accept...
...The church of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has been with us twice as long as the Church of Christ...
...The Pittsburgh Conference of the National Council of Churches stated in 1956: "As we look beyond the borders of our own country we find a world where millions of people are hungry or ill fed...
...We have reason to believe that they are guilty of treason and are a danger to our State's majesty...
...They stood on the outside in silent prayer...
...Membership in the United Nations must be truly universal...
...They questioned him, but finding no malice in the man and no basis to judge him guilty of any crime, nor harboring any evil intent, they bethought themselves...
...We encouraged but did not join the Bagdad Pact...
...Extension of those constructive programs already in operation would be sufficient, but they must be made adequate in amount, continuing in time, and multilateral in operation...
...With growing populations the poor get poorer...
...This requires us to remove one by one the barriers to such contacts...
...There are difficulties in this course of action, but there are greater difficulties in refusing to accept it...
...Some speak of extending the rule of world law...
...Organizing for world law would not be a denial of our sovereignty, but an exercise of it...
...Every nation should be welcomed, even the dictatorships and Communist states...
...The remaining portion should be used for debt reduction and tax reform...
...Recognition of this fact may account for the thaw now taking place in both East and West...
...He just said to them: "Come, and let us talk peace...
...We seek to build a stronger international community through international organization...
...Perhaps the most important consequence of the increasing visiting now going on between East and West is the rediscovery that people are essentially the same everywhere...
...We should provide our own with more of the blessings our technology makes possible...
...For the crime of not turning over the names of the guests of the World Peace Fellowship in Conway, New Hampshire—the State exacted the penalty...
...The final effectiveness of power is measured by its ability to accomplish the purpose sought...
...He is dead and threatens them not...
...Tomorrow may be too late...
...We would create a stronger position for ourselves if we would urge United Nations consideration of threats to the peace early, not after foreign ministers' conferences have become evident failures...
...The prodigal may return when he chooses to do so...
...If we allow ourselves to copy our adversary's methods as a means of combating him we may have lost the battle before we start...
...Our common defense can be insured only by waging peace, because there will be no military victories in this nuclear age...
...This generation has it within its power to attack these enemies successfully...
...George Kennan has offered sober counsel that "our policies must take into account the interests of the people under Communist rule as well as those of their governments . . . not even the greatest conviction of righteousness in our purposes absolves us from the obligation of a decency in method...
...We have bilateral treaties with Nationalist China, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines...
...But he said: "My conscience which is from God prevents me from doing such a thing as this," and although the punishment frightened him—for he was a meek man—he said: "I believe with a perfect faith that as God is my witness, you are committing an injustice, but I ask His forgiveness upon you...
...For Communism is a kind of new "religion" with a fanatic zeal...
...Only as we develop maturity of understanding, under wise leadership, can we hold steadily to such a course of action, confident that it is right, and will win in the end...
...The tragic truth is that the Communists have conquered a significant portion of the world since World War II, notwithstanding our military might...
...Does our power, through armaments, achieve our peaceful purpose...
...The United States cannot do this alone, but it could make a significant contribution and set a compelling example...
...The State can tolerate people of this kind only when it feels secure, but the State must look to its security, and a man like this must be made a lesson—lest others learn his ways...
...We must build our policy on faith rather than on fear...
...The success of our own United States is a witness to an earlier triumph of hope and faith over fear and doubt...
...I submit that nuclear war between the major powers would be an infinitely greater risk and can be indulged in only at infinitely greater cost...
...For in a violent age, the theme of peace if repeated enough makes a man suspect...
...Four...
...When we do, we demonstrate our own lack of the virtue of humility and suffer spiritual arrogance...
...Yet our own budget for economic aid, technical assistance, refugee programs, educational exchange, atoms for peace, donations of agricultural surpluses, and the Development Loan Fund, is little more than $1.4 billion...
...Creative opportunities have already been missed many times in recent years...
...Its legal foundation must be sound...
...These and many other voices in recent months call for a reexamination of our policies...
...The proposal to put the Development Loan Fund on a five-year basis is also the sort of tangible demonstration that would transfer our fine words into constructive deeds...
...Three...
...Even worse, military assistance tends to promote to power those who possess the means of violence...
...The accomplishments of the World Health Organization, in wiping out typhus in large areas, illustrate how a small amount can go a long way...
...The time we are buying is running out, as General Omar Bradley has warned, "with the speed of a Sputnik...
...We have trimmed essential programs at home...
...Our military support has often increased graft and corruption abroad...
...He notes that a portion of the human race in pre-indus-trial economies has little means of expanding to meet the rising flood of population...
...As sovereign citizens, we can exercise our sovereignty over interstate affairs only by operating our federal government...
...We must never so demean our opponents as to assume they lack a common humanity...
...We do not feel secure...
...The United States now has eight security treaties in force, including ANZUS, SEATO, NATO, and the Rio Pact...
...Within a few days those who sentenced him attended their churches and celebrated with proper pomp and ceremony the birthday of their Savior, whom they call Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace...
...Indeed, our dogged reliance on these weapons as a policy of containment may have contributed to Communist success...
...We must recognize that the world family cannot banish its prodigal sons forever from the household...
...By reducing taxes, we would return to the people a greater measure of sovereignty over their own consumption patterns...
...Such understanding can be built only by constructively increasing contacts among all people...
...The continued existence of mankind on earth is a value far greater than a transient devotion of a given generation or nation to its own political or economic system...
...And it came to pass that all these things were brought to the ear of the State and the great authorities—and they commanded the teacher of peace to come before them...
...No people can call itself Christian, if, possessing the means of abundance, it fails to exert every effort within its power to relieve want wherever it exists...
...If we would be true to our own heritage, then we must give evidence of our confidence that among peoples as among persons, a generous and self-giving love will conquer hatred...
...By strengthening the United Nations, we draw each nation more closely into the family of nations...
...and time to modernize, he says, is as much a condition of survival as is avoiding war...
...The difficulties that will exist along this course must be met with patience and calmness...
...We may be sure that, if we do not launch this attack, it will be launched within the next decade by the Soviet Union and the Communist bloc...
...The history of the human race did not begin with capitalism, nor will it end with Communism...
...Yet this man was a danger, and an example must be made...
...For this is, after all, what is most essentially at stake...
...We are told in the book of Genesis that Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden because they had eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil...
...Institutions, like law, are made for man, not man for the law...
...we want to preserve and extend freedom and democracy abroad...
...Some of our bilateral agreements have in fact embarrassed and led to the downfall of those friendly administrations that have become partners in them...
...So they devised a way to entrap him...
...We must offer to underwrite our portion of this program over an extended period of years...
...The rest of the world is spending a similar amount...
...Then the deed was done, sentence was pronounced, all in accordance with the law and all its formalities— and they led the teacher away...
...Another portion of the saving should be applied to the unfinished business at home—adequate schools and colleges, adequate transportation systems, adequate correctional, charitable, and health institutions, adequate park and recreational facilities...
...Surely this generation has eaten of such a tree in its atomic discoveries...
...It has been given to us to live at once in a technological, a scientific, an economic, a social, and a political revolution...
...Patiently, we must remove the present sources of tension, fear, and hatred between peoples...
...Has he the patience, the courage, and the wisdom to make the right choice...
...We are building these instruments of terror out of fear of Communism...
...Sometimes we cannot remove tension, but here one can lessen its chances of erupting in violence...
...Our stated national purposes are clear and laudable...
...Placing his faith in atomic weaponry, he can precipitate the total destruction of every living thing...
...Peace will not break out like the dawn over the eastern horizon...
...In our generation we can only hope that the balance of terror will cause both contestants to prefer co-existence to co-extinction...
...Hopefully, that competition will one day be no more violent than today's competition between Republicans and Democrats, or perhaps between Catholics and Protestants...
...If we help others for purely short-run selfish reasons, our purposes will be defeated...
...We seek to strengthen the so-called free or uncommitted nations in order to contain Communism...
...As a nation we do not lack good counsel...
...The United States will spend some $45 billion this year "to provide for the common defense...
...We must contend for loyalties in a manner which preserves our capacity to go on contending...
...The teacher, the Reverend Wil-lard Uphaus, was taken to the common jail for a year of his life...
...Two...
...It will be said that such a course is too risky, or too expensive...
Vol. 24 • March 1960 • No. 3
