FISH OR CUT BAIT!' SENATE CHALLENGED

...Fish Or Cut Bait!' Senate Challenged BOB LA FOLLETTE'S major foreign policy address before the Senate, on which the series of 3 articles in The Progressive was based, was interrupted frequently by other Senators agreeing, challenging, or just commenting on various points in the speech...

...Fulbright made it clear he did "not disagree with the Senator respecting the fact that they (the Russians) have not concerted as they should have under the Yalta agreement," and that he too thought they "are justly open to criticism in that respect...

...La Follette...

...but my point is that if in trying to make this organization universal, we pay too high a price in the form of imperialistic settlements, transfers of peoples and populations against their will, we shall be repeating the same mistakes which occurred at Versailles and Paris, and history proves they are bound in the end to have the same consequences...

...Barkley responded, "So far as I am concerned, I am ready to fish...

...Fulbright and Alben Barkley, Majority Leader, when he denounced the Dumbarton Oaks-Yalta provision now approved at San Francisco which enables any one of the Great Powers to veto a charge of aggression against itself and hence paralyze the operations of the proposed international organization...

...So am I," replied Sen...

...So far as I am concerned, I will say to the Senator, I would much prefer to see worked out a practical democratic organization which would be able to enforce a just peace than I would to go down the road of imperialism and power politics, involving prodigious military expenditures for generation after generation and involving the certainty of future war...

...AT another point in the speech, Bob La Follette was reviewing the record of Soviet Russia in failing to live up to commitments at Yalta when he was interrupted by Sen...

...La Follette replied: "I think the Senate must choose between a workable organization in which it really has faith and to which it is going to give effective support, predicated upon a just treaty, or if we become a member of an ineffective organization, we shall have to be forearmed and set up our own imperialistic form of security, just as it seems to me Russia is already doing, because apparently she has no faith in the efficacy of the organization which is being created...

...I am ready to 'fish or cut bait' on this issue," said Bob La Follette, "and I think everyone else should be...

...La Follette was challenged by both Sens...

...but I think that up to and through Yalta, there has been too much of an attitude of believing that we had to pay a price to get her in and that we voluntarily offered too big a price...

...SEN...

...I am not at all convinced it was necessary____ "We cannot again [proclaim idealistic peace aims such as the 14 Points and the Atlantic Charter and then proceed to acquiesce in their violation by Allies] and expect to have the support of the American people for the kind of continuous international cooperation of a deep-going character which is essential if we are to have peace in the world...

...Barkley, Fulbright, Morse, McKellar, Willis, and Bushfield...

...Later on in the speech...

...It has creeping paralysis congenitally if veto power of one nation remains...

...La Follette's attack on the veto provision and then appeared himself to concur in the need for its modification or elimination...

...At one point, for instance, when Sen...

...I think those are the alternatives...

...Barkley challenged Sen...

...La Follette as that phase of the discussion ended...

...The record shows rather conclusively that after the last World War England and France actually sold most of the war machines to both Germany and Italy, just as the United States sold most of Japan's war machines to Japan...

...La Follette: "I think it is very essential to have her in...

...Replied Sen...

...Barkley added...

...Asked by Sen...

...Fulbright wanted to know was whether his colleague believed "that it was not essential to have Russia in his organization...

...William J. Fulbright, Arkansas Democrat and a leading internationalist...

...I believe that when the Members come to this question, they will be forced to take one or the other of the horns of the dilemma...

...I understand the Senator's reference to 'fish or cut bait," Sen...

...I am not going to cut bait," Sen...

...Very well," said Sen...

...I am as anxious as is any man to have Russia in this organization, and I think she will come in...

...I believe that we need to keep in mind the problems ahead...

...I think we should stop this double talk about creating a world security organization when creeping paralysis has been injected into it before it is even born...

...Wayne Morse, progressive Republican from Oregon, came in with this comment: "I think the Senator's statement is a distinct contribution...

...Among the participants in the running discussion were Sens...

...Fulbright if he would approve U. S. entry into an organization "without that veto power," Sen...

...But Russia having declined to accept our interpretation of Yalta, what Sen...

...La Follette was developing his argument that Britain and France, in the period after the last war, "actually aided in the growth and development of brutalitarianism which was to plunge the world into the bloodiest war of all time," Sen...