SECRECY IN LONDON
Secrecy In London THE hopes and the yearning of the world for future peace and security based on international understanding and cooperation have suffered a crushing blow in the unbelievably...
...Lawrence.Seaway proposal will receive favorable action sometime before the end of the year...
...his public works program and will throw the full weight of the Administration behind the measure...
...He further pointed out that the Seaway "will make it possible to utilize our war expanded factories and shipping facilities...
...This time it can be won...
...The prospects for favorable action are further brightened by the announcement that Gov...
...Friends of the Seaway, who know what it will mean in terms of low cost electric power and cheaper transportation for the great agricultural and industrial areas of the Middle West and Northwest, must increase their efforts more than ever...
...Hope For The Seaway ONE of the most encouraging developments in this session of Congress is the increasing prospect that the St...
...It will mean, he said, the harnessing "of one of the greatest natural resources of North America, opening the Great Lakes to ocean navigation and creating 2,200,000 horsepower of hydroelectric capacity to be divided equally between the people of the United States and Canada...
...But through it all the people will have to grope blindly, guessing and clutching in the dark for some explanation, gome understandable reason of why this historic peace conference collapsed...
...Had we done so we would never have consented to a secret conclave...
...ONE of the reasons given for the failure of the conference was that America came unprepared, did not have a definite enough policy...
...Previously, it has been presented to the Senate as a treaty with Canada, which will share in the development program...
...There is greater hope too in the new strategy which has been adopted for presenting the measure to Congress...
...Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, George Aiken of Vermont, Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota, Homer Ferguson of Michigan, and William Langer of North Dakota are taking a leading part in pushing the measure...
...Thomas E. Dewey of New York favors the project...
...In a message to Congress last week he outlined the benefits the nation as a whole would realize from the St...
...can delegation to permit anything to get out if they could help it prevented even the most industrious correspondents from properly presenting American viewpoints, American efforts, and American ideals at this council...
...It is hard to believe that they would have been blamed much, except for their lack of preparation, as it would have been defeat in a good cause that could have been evaluated as a moral victory...
...And that, perhaps, is as much an explanation for its failure as anything...
...We could and did tell what happened every day but the information usually came from non-American sources...
...For this conference, as all the international conferences which preceded it, has been conducted in the strictest secrecy...
...It is our shame that American delegates, representing a nation which once stood for "open covenants openly arrived at," should time after time step behind locked doors and bar from the deliberations the people whose destinies are at stake...
...It can -•not be secured by procedural maneuverings...
...Lawrence development...
...The doubts, suspicions, fears, and confusion—the inevitable results of secrecy—are with us more today than at any time of the war...
...Secrecy In London THE hopes and the yearning of the world for future peace and security based on international understanding and cooperation have suffered a crushing blow in the unbelievably complete failure of the London conference...
...This required a two-thirds vote, giving the power trust and other opponents a chance to defeat it with a small minority...
...Present plans call for a joint resolution requiring only a simple majority in both houses for passage...
...Matthews wrote...
...All this does not mean, however, that the project will have easy going...
...The power trust and the other entrenched interests which have successfully tied up the program for the past 50 years will go all out to stop it again...
...Had American correspondents been able to keep opinion at home fully informed of American attempts to stand up for our ideals and to oppose what we felt to be wrong our delegation could at least have gone home knowing that the people understood their difficulties and appreciated their efforts...
...SECRECY clouded the London conference...
...Thus the titular leaders of both major parties are behind the Seaway...
...President Truman has indicated that he intends to make it the backbone of...
...Whether this is true or not only history will tell...
...The democracy which we are supposed to speak for is built on the principle that the truth, the facts, shall be given to the people to examine and make their own decision...
...Much has been said and much more will.be said about the whole miserable affair...
...will provide "new and increasing opportunities for production and employment by private enterprise," and is "the kind of useful construction which will furnish lucrative employment to many thousands of our people...
...If that conference succeeded in anything it is in the lesson that it teaches of the utter futility of secrecy in public affairs...
...In his radio speech last week, Secretary of State James F. Byrnes belatedly recognized the error of secrecy when he said, "Peace must be based upon mutual understanding and mutual respect...
...The secrecy and refusal of the Ameri...
...It is time that we tried the democratic way...
...America has denied that fundamental principle and the result has been abject failure...
...What this tragic policy of "secret covenants secretly attempted" has meant was well illustrated in a remarkable story filed from London by Herbert Matthews of the New York Times: "If ever the muzzling of the press proved a boomerang it is surely now in the United States, when for most readers the failure of this conference will come as a shock whose reasons they cannot understand," Mr...
...But what is true and can be judged now is that America did not go morally prepared—morally prepared to represent the principles of true democracy...
...which obscure from the people the real and vital issues upon which their peace depends...
...This bi-partisan support also carries down into Congress where such powerful Republican figures as Sens...
Vol. 9 • October 1945 • No. 41
