Hoover suggests peace based on actual victory
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
Foreseeing a long period of “disorders, uprisings, wars and passions” following this conflict, former President Herbert Hoover and Hugh Gibson, career diplomatist, today offered a:
…new and different approach to the whole machinery of peacemaking.
They have done it in a new book, out today, called The Problems of Lasting Peace. So objective and so thorough is the work of these two veteran statesmen that what they have produced is nothing less than a state paper and will be so regarded here.
They declare at the outset:
We must first win the war.
…but they quickly add that:
Only from a lasting peace can we hope to save civilization.
And with that as their thesis, they point out the mistakes of the past, recall historical blunderings to support what they say, and then blaze a trail for a durable peace.
The peacemaking, they suggest, should be divided into three stages:
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The settlement of certain problems that cannot wait.
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An intermediate period for rebuilding political life and economic recovery.
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A period of more or less indefinite duration for settlement of the long-view problems which require a cooling off of emotions, deliberation, and careful development.
The more immediate problems are these, according to the authors:
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Worldwide demobilization and reduction of armaments.
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Establishment of de facto governments to maintain order and restore national life within clearly defined, even if temporarily drawn, boundaries.
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Insistence that all restored states immediately elect freely chosen parliamentary bodies to replace de facto governments.
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The combating of famine and pestilence, and the restarting of industrial production, by the instant abolition of blockades and by provision of credits, food and raw materials through cooperational action pending eventual resumption of free enterprise.
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Provision for a whole series of parleys, not just one, to settle post-war problems after political life has begun to recuperate and emotions to cool off.
Among the problems to be dealt with at these recurring conferences, Mr. Hoover and Mr. Gibson mention the following:
Provision for the government of backward peoples which will arise from the dissolution of empires and the emergence of independent states. International trade. Boundary problems. Readjustment of international debts. Settlement of private property questions and damages from the war. Finally – and most important of all – the building of international machinery to preserve peace.
The authors warn Americans against assuming that we are going to be the only nation at the peace table. Britain, Russia, China and others will be there. And we can no more see now what their conclusions will be than we can foresee:
…the kaleidoscopic shots in the relations of nations which will probably take place during this war.
Nevertheless, we must begin to thresh out, in advance, the essential principles of peace.
Nations can blunder into war. They cannot blunder into peace.
Nor is it enough to discuss “peace aims” and “ideals.” These are useful as starting points, but a lasting peace will depend upon realistic definitions of a territorial, economic, political and military nature.
Peace, therefore, must be founded on out-and-out victory.
Many of its essentials would crumble with compromise.
And, when made, there must be provided some machinery for international cooperation to preserve it.
When the nations arrive at the peace table, we are warned, we will find seven guests already there, six of them unwanted and uninvited. These are the “seven dynamic forces making for peace or war” – ideologies, economic pressures, nationalism, militarism, imperialism, the complexes of fear, hate and revenge, and finally, the will to peace. They have been present at every peace table heretofore and, for the most part, have contrived to control the peacemakers because the peacemakers failed to control them. They must be controlled next time or the peace, as usual, will fail.
Another thing to be remembered is that:
We can have peace or we can have revenge. We cannot have both.
We must disarm the warmakers at the armistice. We must punish those guilty of having started the war.
Too long has it been assumed that there is something sacred about the heads of states who provoke war and wholesale murder.
On the other hand, the authors add:
Nations cannot be held in chains. In the end, there can be no trustworthy security except by giving the decent elements in a people a chance to cooperate in the world of peace.
Mr. Hoover and Mr. Gibson insist again and again that the American people must begin right now to think of the problems of peace and:
…think in a far larger frame of mind than ever before.
Such being the case, they can do no better than to start with this book.