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Stokes: Peace force
By Thomas L. Stokes
Washington –
Deliberations of the Dumbarton Oaks Conference and a preview of the Senate’s forthcoming debate indicate that discussion of an international organization to keep the peace has reached a stage where skill is needed to keep it from becoming a political issue that isolationists can exploit.
Delegates of this country, Great Britain and Russia, having agreed on the use of force by an international organization to quash future aggressors, now apparently are in the delicate phase of deciding just how this force shall be applied.
The questions pertinent to this country, so far as a political issue is concerned, is whether the use of force must be approved in every individual instance by Congress. The American plan, for what has leaked out, presumably calls for submission to the Senate of the general terms and conditions under which force may be used but, once those have been approved, the American government, as an entity in the council, would act without coming back to Congress.
This was seized upon by Senator Harlan J. Bushfield (R-SD) and embroidered with extravagant fears in a Senate speech full od political implications. He attacked President Roosevelt, suggesting that under this proposal the President would become “the absolute despot of the American people: a true dictator in all sense of the word.”
It sounded like the opening gun of the isolationists.
Brassy political note obvious
The brassy political note was obvious in the South Dakota Senator’s question:
Do you, Mr. President, base the campaign for a fourth term upon this despotic power outlined in this so-called American plan?
Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R-MI), who joined the debate, seemed to be backing away from the forthcoming position he took a few days ago when he pledged his support to an international organization. He fervently proclaimed that he would never stand for an American delegate making a declaration of war without the approval of Congress. He made it sound rather horrendous.
The Senator argued that force might never be necessary, that other persuasive means might do the trick. Disarming of the aggressors, he contended, would take care of them, and he certainly did not suspect any of our Allies would kick up trouble.
This was too much for Senator Tom Connally (D-TX), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who asked the Michigan Senator how it would have done to send “nice homilies” to Hitler asking him not to bother the Poles and the Czechs, or asking Hirohito to desist.
Gentleness won’t stop aggression
You can’t stop such aggressors, he said, by “sending them Sunday school tracts, by reading them the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer.” Nor, he added, could you always wait to call Congress together, members might be out campaigning and, after you got them here, some fellow might speak for two weeks. If the United States had acted quickly, in concert with England and France, this war might have been stopped.
When Senator Bushfield launched into his political tirade, Senator Connally saw the danger signals. He pulled out a long list of cases in which Presidents had sent troops to put down disturbances, uprisings, minor wars, and the like, without the approval of Congress. He did not recall that it was just such use of Marines by President Coolidge in Nicaragua that raised such a howl of “imperialism” from Democrats, shouts of “dollar diplomacy” and the like.
It will take more than such arguments.
What is needed, apparently, is a bold and frank pronouncement of a new concept in the world – that the nations must get together for their mutual interest, as a union of nations, not as jealous individuals, and they must keep a policeman constantly on the beat who can be summoned at moment’s notice.