THE PATH TO PEACE

...And, because it gives a few powers with large empires, preferential access to the trade and raw materials of the rich colonial areas, it creates friction and jealousy among nations...

...The Alternative Plan The uncritical and unreserved applause for the Moscow proceedings in the American press and the overwhelming rejection by the Senate of the Danaher amendment, which would have placed the United States unequivocally on record in favor of all-around assertion of the right of peoples to self-determination and also in favor of implementing the promises of the Atlantic Charter about equality of economic opportunity for all peoples, are discouraging reflections of a muddled and confused state of public opinion about the necessary bases of enduring and peaceful world order...

...If not immediately corrected it should bring combined action by the peace-loving nations against the offending power...

...But now they have seen their young men go out to fight, some to die, some to return broken and shattered in mind and body, in two overseas wars...

...They would have cooperated more closely with other powers if their associates in World War I had not unceremoniously kicked Wilson's idealistic program out of the window, as soon as the war was won...

...Will Great Britain, in the interest of permanent peace, abandon an imperialist system that is becoming more and more a direct threat to peace...

...But if they cling to the old way, America, after twice entering global wars without territorial ambitions and twice failing to achieve its objective of bringing about a world order sufficiently equitable to promise peace, may well be disposed to consider seriously an alternative policy...

...Will Russia show as much respect for the independence and sovereignty of its neighbors, Poland, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Rumania, Turkey, as we show for the independence and sovereignty of Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela...

...It may be hoped that this process will lead in time to the emergence of a common European patriotism, expressed in a federated states of Europe...

...But only a people free from alien domination can achieve genuine progress and can deal resolutely with many of its own social and economic evils...

...Thomas Dewey, "Union Now," Walter Lippmann's "nuclear" alliance of the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China, and the Culbertson Plan...

...India and all other'countries where there is a reasonably strong nationalist movement should be set free unconditionally as soon as the war is over...

...I suppose the American pay-off is a share in Victory...

...One might, therefore, be justified in assuming that Great Britain, far and away the leading imperialist power, would not object to shaking off this burden, if a feasible alternative system could be devised...

...But some reciprocity is needed in this connection, even if this point is not recognized by certain groups of Americans who are more British than the British or more Russian than the Russians in their outlook...

...IN THE preceding article, I analyzed and discussed the shortcomings of a variety of proposals advanced for American participation in the postwar settlement, including the Anglo-American alliance proposed by Winston Churchill and Gov...

...This might and probably would cause some disorder and some deterioration in the quality of administration in the beginning...

...The two examples of the Soviet Union and of Switzerland, two countries profoundly different in political and economic institutions and in national psychology, show that respect for cultural autonomy can go hand in hand with close forms of political and economic association...

...Any political changes anywhere in the world that will bring governments more directly under the control of their peoples will automatically enhance the prospects of peace...

...Some Blunt Questions The establishment of international peace and order cannot be placed on a one-way Lend-Lease basis, with the United States assuming all the sacrifices in the shape of future commitments to repress aggression in distant parts of the world and our partners intent primarily on gathering the material spoils of victory...

...It would be a tragic irony if the victory, over the Axis powers to which America is making such an important contribution should impose on America the bad system of European militarism instead of making possible the adoption by the whole world of the good traditional American system of minimum armed forces, with all that this implies as regards personal freedom and higher standards of living...

...There must be an end of the cult of the leviathan-state, of the idea that has gained ground so alarmingly during the last generation, that the individual possesses no rights which the state is bound to respect...

...But nothing that was agreed on at Moscow would seem to remove scepticism as to whether the major powers are willing to make those sacrifices of selfish interests and those concessions to a general international standard of justice and equity that would warrant confidence in the permanence of the peace structure that will be erected after the end of the war...

...If the victorious powers eschew imperialism and show respect for the independence of small nations, a hopeful prospect of cooperation between nations will be opened up...

...Mounting armaments have always been a prelude to war, not a preventive of war...

...The Tripartite Conference at Moscow occurred after most of this article was written...

...The chances of peace will improve immeasurably if the world becomes an association of truly free states, and the free state must be based upon the free individual...

...tical rule...

...1The principles must be accepted that peace is ? dynamic, not static, and must be worked for all the time...

...Limitation of armaments should be enforced by periodic inspections carried out by international commissions...

...Now, as in the postwar years after the end of the last world conflict, events will probably bring their contribution of realistic enlightenment...

...Such a system can easily be envisaged...

...Those Fraudulent Myths But such a program requires honest all-around acceptance and implementation...

...Long before the barbed wire of warfare reappeared, peoples were living behind barriers to intercourse and exchange of goods and ideas in the shape of high tariffs, quota systems, rigid immigration restrictions, plus the censorship, espionage, and suspicion of the foreigner that are characteristic of all totalitarian regimes...

...A Faith In Freedom 8The crisis of modern civilization, of which the ? war is only the most tragic expression, is moral and psychological, as well as political and economic...

...What is needed is an all-around program to preserve the peace, a program that will meet squarely all the causes of war...

...There can be little hope of future peace, no matter what machinery may be set up to enforce it, unless there is a return of faith in the absolute, unconditional value of such things as freedom, humanity, reason, unless the doctrine, so characteristic of the totalitarian state, that the end justifies the means, is rejected for the damnable fallacy that it is...

...While aggression must be firmly repressed, a nation that is suffering from some genuine economic disability, such as overpopulation or discrimination in trade and supply with raw materials, should be able to present its case to an international commission which could investigate and recommend appropriate action to the governments concerned...

...the empires of the mind...

...Conditions for drastic arms limitation after the defeat of Germany and Japan should be favorable...

...In every country there should be a distinction between the national armed forces, which should be kept at the lowest level consistent with the maintenance of public security, and the special units of land, air, and naval forces, equipped with the most modern weapons and reserved for use against an aggressor or a violator of the armaments limitation convention...

...2No people should be placed under alien poli...

...Whether one prefers to call this alternative policy isolationism, Pan-Americanism, or hemisphere defense, no one can accurately say that it has already been discredited by failure...

...American public opinion is fully conscious of our vast stake in a peaceful world...

...The American people are amateurs in world affairs...

...It sows the seeds of national and racial clashes as the peoples of the East become more nationally conscious and better skilled in the use of what were once Western weapons and Western machines...

...Now the time for a new world settlement is approaching...

...Americans are willing to make their fair and reasonable share of sacrifices to achieve this end...

...Litvinov, placed itself on record as favoring total disarmament in 1927...

...War is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the handiwork of the governing minority who reap the glory, not of the governed majority who suffer the deaths and the wounds...

...7There should be an attempt to restore, so far as ? may be practicable, three freedoms of the 19th Century that contributed much to relieving strains and tensions...

...These freedoms disappeared during the interval between the two World Wars...

...Powers Must Shed Imperialism 6Imperialism should be liquidated, politically for ? the more advanced Oriental peoples, such as the Indians, economically for all subject countries...

...What Moscow suggests is not the laying of the foundation of a peaceful and orderly world, but a continuation of the old game of power politics, with Stalin underwriting the British Empire, Indian famine and all, the United States and Great Britain shutting their eyes discreetly to Stalin's land grabs in Eastern Europe...

...For imperialism carries a double threat of war...

...Wedges would be driven between the German people and the Nazi leadership, between the Japanese people and their military rulers...

...Essential functions of government and provision of social services should either be in the hands of an international civil service or should be taken care of through a mandatory system, in which responsibilities should be shared among many nations, large and small, and in which the element of economic exploitation by the mandatory should be excluded...

...5International peace preservation machinery ? should include far-reaching arbitration treaties between all countries, a world court to pass on disputed legal questions, outlawry, unconditional and absolute, of war except in elementary self-defense against attack or in enforcing a judgment against a proved aggressor...

...They cannot miss the unmistakable fact that it is we who contribute security to other peoples, not other peoples who contribute security to us...

...The Soviet Union, through its representative at Geneva, Mr...

...I believe that if the United Nations would pledge themselves to a program of the foregoing type immediately, instead of limiting themselves to the "Unconditional Surrender" slogan, so mouth-filling for the present, so negative and sterile for the future, the war could and would be immensely shortened...

...Winston Churchill recently spoke feelingly of "the vain pomp of earthly domination" and declared that "the empires of the future are be a strong concerted effort to provide for organized emigration from overcrowded regions to underdeveloped countries, to lower trade barriers, and to facilitate the international capital investment that would speed up the industrial development and raise the living standards of economically backward lands...

...And, if Abraham Lincoln was right in his famous phrase, they cannot all be fooled all the time about the implications of these wars...

...They cannot fail to see that our continental territory proved quite invasion-proof both in 1917-1918 and in 1942-1943...

...This alternative policy would aim at the more modest and limited objective of assuring peace and economic progress in this hemisphere and framing future military plans and trade and investment policies in line with this objective...

...Contrary to that other fraudulent myth, that we shut ourselves up in selfish seclusion and did nothing to help or cooperate with other peoples during the interval between the two wars, Americans have always worked, to the best of their ability, for world peace...

...Any proved violation of the limitation agreement should be regarded as a serious threat to world peace...

...There must be an end of the tendency of foreign powers to accept as a matter of course our contributions in men, money, supplies in war and at the same time to reject or sabotage our suggestions as to the basis of a just and enduring peace...

...Now it would be quite Utopian, in the chaotic postwar world where normal inequalities in living standards will be aggravated because the war will have hit some peoples much harder than others, to recommend completely free trade or migration...

...But, in the interest of a future peaceful and orderly world, there must The maintenance of law and order for the predictable future must be based on a cooperation of sovereign states...

...Will Russia refrain from encroachment in the frontiers of China...

...To get down to blunt and specific terms, will the Soviet Union give convincing guaranties of willingness to use its preponderant strength in Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia as moderately as we use our preponderant strength in this hemisphere...

...They are sometimes unduly humble in the face of the pronouncements of supposed experts...

...The best hope for a peaceful future in Europe, source of the two great wars of modern times, lies in the gradual surmounting of old national and racial hates through the development of regional patriotisms...

...For lands which are not yet capable of self-government there should be a system of international administration...

...For all experience, especially in modern times, tends to prove that the means determine the end, that an idealistic end, pursued by ruthless and brutal means, tends to vanish quickly and irretrievably from view...

...The Axis powers will be disarmed as a first condition of peace...

...These were all freedoms of movement, for men, goods, and capital...

...For it has never been honestly tried...

...The time will surely come when the fanciful thesis that we should be lost and sunk without protecting foreign alliances, like the equally fanciful view that we grew to national maturity under the protecting shield of the British Navy will be recognized for the fraudulent myth that it is...

...There should not be, at the present time, an experiment with an international army, in which some of the contingents might be exposed to, the intolerable strain of having to fight against their own country...

...Here would be a charter for a genuine people's peace, a blueprint for a world in which scientific knowledge and invention, now in many ways a curse to mankind, could be applied to its proper purpose of providing an ever more abundant civilization for ever larger numbers of people...

...A Peace Based On Cooperation 4Maximum all-around limitation of armaments, ? with abolition in the whole world of military conscription and forced labor service...

...But this last development cannot be reasonably expected to take place until the hates aroused by the present war have subsided...

...And it is a familiar contention of British publicists that the ruling of backward peoples is not a source of profit, but rather a burden...

...No one can estimate how many iives would have been spared and how much misery would have been averted if Hitler had been stopped cold in his tracks in 1935, when he openly violated the disarmament clauses of the Versailles Treaty...

...I believe that such a program, summarized in the following eight • points, would hasten the end of the present war and afford some reasonable assurance against the outbreak of another one...

...3While no people, however small, should be denied ? self-government and cultural autonomy (the use of its own language in courts, schools, newspapers, public business) regional political and economic federations should be encouraged, especially in Europe, with a view to reducing poverty by* creating larger areas of free trade and production...

...One hopes that its viewpoint has not changed since that time because of the building up of the powerful Red Army...

...Where, as in Eastern Europe, races are so intermingled that some minorities remain, no matter how the frontiers are drawn, the problem should be solved either through a federal system for states with people of many nationalities or through an orderly voluntary exchange of populations...