The Evening Star (April 17, 1946)
ON THE RECORD —
Open letter to U.N.
By Dorothy Thompson
Gentlemen:
You are sitting in New York with the support and consent of the people of the world, from whom alone you derive any authority whatsoever. You have been entrusted by them to found this earth on peace. You are failing in that function.
As I write these lines, the headlines tell me, “Sharp Fight in U.N. Expected on Iran.” When I turn on my radio this afternoon, I anticipate a heated fight on Spain. In fact, we can anticipate the discussion of almost anything except that for which we wait with caught breath, namely, what any or all of you are doing to stop war. That is what you are there for: To stop war.
We clearly see through the “issues” and “menaces to peace” that you raise. We clearly see that the fate of small nations concerns none of you who represent great nations. The small nations are but pawns in your own schemes. Your moves are directed, not toward peace, but against each other.
Each of you is afraid.
My country’s people, Mr. Gromyko, and those of Great Britain, have read the speeches of the Russian leaders. We watch as your country fights for exclusive control over vast non-Russian states and economies. We observe your delaying tactics on the peace conference. We take heed of the repeated cry that you are “surrounded by enemies.” We know that your armies are not diminishing, but growing, augmented by new armies of vassal states. And over every decision hangs the fact of 400 armed Soviet divisions.
Your country, however, also has reason to fear. You know that America has stores of atomic bombs, that Americans do not like Communism, especially expansionist military Communism. You justify expansion, secret plans, planting of agents to spy and confuse on the ground that you are not safe. And there is some truth behind your fears, as there is behind ours, and, as there is, above all, behind the fears of Great Britain.
Yet you hold the whole world between you. Your enemies are totally defeated, broken and disarmed.
Why, then, do you not disarm yourselves? Your government, Mr. Gromyko, once recommended to the League of Nations the abolition of all the armies, navies and air forces of the world. Mr. Litvinov was rejected then. Then Russia was weak. Today she is strong. Is that why you do not recommend it again? Then you are a hypocrite!
Your government, Mr. Byrnes, initiated a solemn treaty, signed by all governments, never to resort to force as an instrument of national policy. On the basis of that treaty you are trying the German general staff at Nuernberg. But if force is never to be used as an instrument of national policy, why armies, navies and air forces? Why, do not you, Mr. Byrnes, call for the universal abolition of armaments and U.N. inspection to support a single international law that not a tank or bomber shall be manufactured, nor a single ship or plane armed, nor a single laboratory given over to the production of bombs and poisons for the destruction of populations?
Do you think it is too early? Do you want to wait until after the next war?
Hypocrites!
Yes, gentlemen, I am angry.
Do you know anything of the anger of the mothers of this world?
Look around you on the destruction of this war and the continuing destruction of your miserable “peace”!
Your peace is murder. In Europe the very roots of life wither in the bodies of women; their children hunger; their infants cannot be suckled at famished breasts; they bury the stillborn, thankful for their death; they take the food from their own famishing mouths for their young ones, the images of innocence.
You think, perhaps, that barracks and laboratories are the representatives of history? You are wrong. History begins with life, and life begins with the mother. Life admonishes you, and obliges you, to live, which means to fulfill, which means to answer – to answer to the mothers of life, who know that the supreme end of creation is the creature, the human creature.
For what aim can you justify to the mothers the continuation of murder? Of war against races – if the race be of the enemy! Of war against classes, that affront to life which compresses the soul of man into his economic status; of war against ideas – while the very ideas you have fought, take possession of your own minds, and hate, lust, greed and the passion for power grind the bodies of men into the ground to poison the very fields.
Nature itself, gentlemen, will rise against you. Famine will confound your plans; hunger and heartbreak will stare at you from maddened eyes; communism will become banditry; democracy a word to evoke maudlin laughter, and U.N. will stand as the great negation – the UNpeace, the UNcooperation, the UNcivilization, the UNlife – unless you stop war.
This the mothers know. And woe, unto him, who is cursed of his mother; for he is cursed from the wellspring of life.