Mr. STIMSON. Yes; I think that is true. I think I still feel, although I recognize that this is a different question-I recognized that there are a great many different elements in a war between the outside nations than what was contemplated in civil strife, and a single nation, yet the best answer I can give to you is that I approach it with the predisposition in favor of the system that you mention. But please-I do not think it would be fair to quote me as having a closed mind on that subject at all.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. Colonel, I think that you have protected yourself against that four ways from the middle. Now, may I ask you another question?

Mr. STIMSON. I did not come down here, Senator, to draw a bill; I came down here to tell you gentlemen of my experiences, and that was the invitation, and now really, a great many of you have tried to put me in the position of drafting a particular bill, and it is not a very fair thing to do.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. You recognize, do you not, that one of the important controversies in this question is the question whether or not the statute shall be mandatory or whether it shall extend a limited discretion, or whether it shall be complete, and I assume that you came to discuss the subject matter under consideration. Now, I would like to ask you another question. Assume now that discretion has been conferred upon the Executive, and in view of the situation which you envision in your letter to the New York Times of March. 7, 1939, do you or do you not contemplate joint and common action by the Executive of this country with other nations in the exercise of that discretionary power?

Mr. STIMSON. Not unless and until this country through its Congress declared war. In that letter, I felt bound to take consideration of every possible contingency, and I made it perfectly clear. I did not want to be accused of having suggested a course of conduct that might not eventually result in an extreme situation, an extreme necessity, and in that condition I pointed out that under some conditions, which certainly had not yet become effective now, that in some conditions, a situation might arise so serious that our own national interests and the effective defense of our own country would require that our Navy should take action for our defense and in cooperation, as I hope, with the navies of the others.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. Then if I understand your answer, Colonel, it is that in arguing or recommending that discretionary power be conferred upon the Executive under a neutrality statute, you do not envision his exercising that power in concert with or in common or joint action with other powers except in the eventuality that Congress has declared war.

Mr. STIMSON. Oh, absolutely no; you are right about that. Certainly not. I had no intention of doing that.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. Then from your standpoint, you would have no objection or you would see no objection to providing in the amendments which you would favor, that the Executive could not exercise this discretionary authority in common and concerted action with other powers except in the event that Congress had declared a state of war.

Mr. STIMSON. Any such action as you have spoken of; no, certainly not.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. I have spoken of all kinds of common, joint, or concerted action.

Mr. STIMSON. An embargo by this country, as I have been speaking of it-we being connected with no other country which has any provisions for such joint action-would have to be taken as an action by ourselves and for our own interests.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. I understood that you have constantly reiterated that idea that our action should only be predicated upon a decision by the Executive that the vital interests of this Nation were imperiled?

Mr. STIMSON. Yes.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. But what I am trying to elicit from you now is whether or not you believe that it would be perfectly sound if Congress is to extend this discretionary authority and confer it upon the Executive, that it should provide that it should be utilized and exercised only and solely by the United States alone, and not after consultation and in concerted action with other powers?

Mr. STIMSON. I have not envisaged any other situation at all. I assumed that in acting as you suggest, with the President alone having discretion to impose an embargo, that he would do it solely with reference to the action of the United States.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. Of course, the reason I am asking

Mr. STIMSON (interposing). I do not suppose that the people of the United States, or he, or anybody else would be offended if somebody else independently did the same thing, but not by concerted action. Senator LA FOLLETTE. The reason I asked you the question is that there has been a great deal of discussion pro and con concerning this problem of collective security, so called, and I wondered whether your desire to have this discretion conferred upon the Executive was for the purpose of freeing him to act jointly and in concert with other powers, or whether you envisaged such action solely and alone for the United States.

Mr. STIMSON. Well, there was a time when such action might have been within the horizon of practical political action, international action, when there was an active League of Nations that was taking such steps, but anyone who has followed the course of the League of Nations lately has not got any such apprehension in mind—apprehension or hope.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. On the other hand, it has been my impression from reading articles that have been written that there are people in this country who hope to set up another group outside of any formal organization, and they are desirous that the President have sufficient authority so that he can act in concert with those particular nations, and I was anxious therefore to get your point of

view.

Mr. STIMSON. Well, I can answer in regard to that, and that is that my position was taken with reference to the present situation and that alone. Now, I do not want you to misunderstand me or to go into other fields in misapprehension. I believe always that the effort made after the war to establish law and order in this world, in the international sphere through a League of Nations, was an effort in the right direction and should be encouraged and helped.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. Yes; I understood that.

Mr. STIMSON. It has been a grave disappointment to me that that step has had a set-back which has reduced us pretty nearly to the anarchic position that we were in before, but I have not had any ulterior motives in what I recommend today in taking steps in regard to that situation.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. I hope that you did not think my question implied that you had any such motives.

Mr. STIMSON. I think if you ask me as an historian and looking a hundred years ahead, that we will never establish a permanent peace or anything like a permanent peace until we establish law and order in the outside world, just as it gradually came into effect inside of national boundaries, and that involves of course a certain amount and probably ultimately a very large amount of cooperation between the nations and a wiping out of some of the prejudices against other nations which are so prevalent today, but I do not expect to see it, Senator La Follette, and nothing I am doing now is intended to be other than an approach on this question that we have got now on the lines that I have approached it, and that is solely in the interests of the United States. Senator LA FOLLETTE. It is a little late historically and in the realities of this day to debate the League of Nations.

Mr. STIMSON. Yes.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. Mr. Chairman, I ask the unanimous consent that Colonel Stimson's letter to the New York Times of March 7, 1939, may be inserted in the testimony at this point.

The CHAIRMAN. Colonel, do you desire to comment on that letter or not?

Mr. STIMSON. I do not desire to comment, really, on anything just now, sir. It is a quarter past one.

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, the letter will be admitted. Mr. STIMSON. I think the letter will speak for itself.

(The letter of Mr. Stimson to the New York Times dated March 7, 1939, offered by Senator La Follette, is as follows:)

[The New York Times, Tuesday, March 7, 1939]

EX-SECRETARY STIMSON'S LETTER ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

(Following is the text of former Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson's letter on the foreign policy of the United States:)

To the EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES:

There is an increasing number of our people who feel that, in the face of the situation abroad, our Government should follow a policy of farsighted affirmative action rather than one of drift and negation. Their belief is that in the former lies the best hope for the prevention of war; while by the latter we should run the most serious risk of becoming ultimately dragged into war.

Recent actions indicate that this may be also becoming the policy of our Government. I refer for example to the action of the Secretary of State in persuading our airplane manufacturers not to sell planes to nations-notably Japan-which are engaged in bombing helpless civilian populations; the action of the Export and Import Bank in making a loan of $25,000,000 to China; the action of the Government in encouraging the sale of large numbers of airplanes to Great Britain and France in the emergency which confronts those nations; the very frank and outspoken answer which Mr. Welles of the State Department addressed to the German Ambassador on the subject of the provocative utterances of the Government-controlled Nazi press; and finally the January address of the President to Congress indicating that it was the intention of our Government to bring our influence to bear upon aggressor nations by methods which were "short of war, but stronger and more effective than mere words."

DANGER IN ISOLATION

I have long been in favor of such a policy. I believe that our foreign policy cannot with safety be geographically limited to a defense of this hemisphere or of our own continental boundaries. On the contrary, I think that if we should stand idly by without protest or action until Britain, France, and China are either conquered or forced to make terms with militaristic aggressors, our own hemisphere might become economically so affected and militarily so endangered that it would be neither a safe nor happy place to live in, for a people with American ideals of life. On this point I think that the statements of the President in his January address to Congress and of Secretary Hull last year are sound and timely.

These great and fundamental issues are now being widely discussed. The policy of the Government has been sharply criticized. It may not be inappropriate for me to attempt to analyze some of these criticisms and what seem to me to be the answers to them. By way of premise I fully recognize that this problem of war prevention has become much more serious and difficult by the set-back to world cooperation for peace and by the growth of international lawlessness which has taken place during the past decade. But that does not relieve us of the problem. We must still face it and solve it if possible.

One very common objection to such an affirmative policy of our Government is in substance that we are needlessly irritating and antagonizing nations with whom otherwise we might safely live in peace and that we are meddling with what really does not concern us. These critics say that democracies have lived in the same world with autocracies before; therefore they should be able to do so now. I think that the fundamental error involved in this objection is an imperfect appreciation of the basic aims and methods of the so-called Fascist governments, by which term I mean the three nations united by the so-called BerlinRome-Tokyo axis.

Recent history has thrown much light on these characteristics, but even now it is hardly appreciated what a complete reversal of the whole trend of European civilization they represent. If all that modern fascism meant were a system under which a nation voluntarily submitted itself to an autocratic ruler and under him was willing to live quietly and at peace with its neighbors, we might agree that it was a domestic matter which concerned that nation alone, and that it was not our business to meddle with it.

ATTACK ON DEMOCRACY

On

But it is becoming every day more clear that fascism is not such a system. the contrary, it is now evident that it is a radical attempt to reverse entirely the long evolution out of which our democracies of Europe and America have grown, and that it constitutes probably the most serious attack on their underlying principles which those principles have ever met.

We know now that the inhabitants of those countries from childhood up, by means of meticulous and absolute government control and by the skillful use of modern engines and methods of mass propaganda, are being taught to reject freedom; to scorn the principles of government by discussion and persuasion instead of force, and to despise the neighboring nations which practice such principles. We now know that those Fascist nat ons have created a skillful technique for foreign aggression and that they are in fact girded under virtual martial law for threats and, if necessary, for acts of force upon their neighbors. In succession the attacks upon Manchuria, North China, South China, Ethiopia, Spain, Austria, and Czechoslovakia have shown us the error of likening modern fascism to a domestic system with which the rest of the world could live in peace.

Furthermore, fascism has involved a serious moral deterioration; an increasing and callous disregard of the most formal and explicit international obligations and pledges; extreme brutality toward helpless groups of people; the complete destruction within their jurisdiction of that individual freedom of speech, of thought, and of the person which has been the priceless goal of many centuries of struggle and the most distinctive crown of our modern civilization. Such a loosening of the moral and humane ties which bind human society together gives powerful confirmation of the basic unfitness of such a system for organized international life.

It strongly suggests that in our modern interdependent world Lincoln's saying holds true, that a house so divided against itself cannot permanently stand. Today the neighbors of a fascist nation are compelled to live in anticipation of immediate forceful attack. Such a situation is obviously the reversal of all

civilized international society as we have known it in the past. Today, instead of the family of nations being composed only of states whose individual sovereignty is mutually recognized and respected, it also contains a powerful and united group of states armed to the teeth which is continually threatening and attacking some of its neighbors.

SOFT WORDS INEFFECTIVE

Does any thoughtful man believe that inaction or soft words from us would prevent similar attacks being made against the United States today if a fascist government believed that such attacks would be useful and could be carried through with success? On the contrary, it is now clear that we are confronted with serious danger which will exist until the liberal movement regains its faith, its courage, and its momentum, and until the people of the Facist nations themseives become convinced of the futility of their systems and compel the necessary changes.

Today those people are so shackled by censorship and controlled by government propaganda that no early change can be anticipated. It may be delayed until economic or military disaster compels it, but in the meanwhile the danger of a general war hangs over us. The prospect is as somber as it is without parallel in our experience. The danger is as formidable as it is imminent. In my opinion it can be successfully resisted only by the far-sighted readiness and cooperation of the nations which are opposed to such a system.

Another objection to an affirmative policy by our Government is that it will drag us into war. This is an objection which seems to me to be based partly on confused thinking and partly on emotion-or, to speak plainly, on undue timidity. It is true, as history has shown, that if a general war actually takes place we shall very probably be ultimately dragged into it. When war has once begun, the combatant nations become so desperate and so reckless that, however cautious we may be, our rights and interests will eventually be so trampled upon that our people will insist on defending them by force.

But that is not the present question. What we are discussing now is the prospect of preventing such a general war from actually breaking out. That is an entirely different matter. Even if they are impervious to moral reasons, these aggressive Fascist nations understand very well the possible dangers as well as the possible advantages of force, and they may be deterred from beginning a war by timely and vigorous warning of the dangers which they will thereby certainly incur. Even more important, peaceful nations may be encouraged not to make surrenders which will ultimately endanger our safety, if they now receive from us in advance encouragement and actual assistance which it lies within our power to give them.

No one realizes more strongly than I do the uniquely secure position, geographically as well as in the possession of vital natural resources, which the United States occupies today. Today we are more nearly self-contained than any other nation in respect to the raw materials necessary for making war, and today we are also practically safe from that new terror of war-the bombing of large cities from the air.

A CHOICE FOR US

But the question now is: Having these unique and powerful advantages, how shall we use them? Having this present security from attack, how shall we conduct ourselves in this threatening world? Shall we bury our heads in the sands of isolationism and timidly await the time when our security shall be lessened and perhaps destroyed by the growing success of lawlessness around us? Or shall we use our present strength and security from attack to throw our weight into the vacillating scales in favor of law and order and freedom? Today our Government can with safety speak unwelcome truths to a dictator or do unwelcome acts, which it might be extremely hazardous for a weaker European neighbor of the dictator, either to do or utter. Recent events have indicated that such activity by us may produce extremely wholesome reactions in the cause of peace. On the other hand, it is far from inconceivable that a threatened or devastated France or Britain or Holland might be forced to cede to a Fascist nation some of its possessions in the Western Hemisphere or in the Orient or make commitments to that nation which would be even more dangerous to our safety. Would our position be bettered by idly waiting for that to occur?

There is a flood of reaction and violence overrunning the world today. Our faith is that this is temporary; that the great progress of many long centuries will not be permanently lost but that after the social and economic dislocations caused by the Great War are readjusted the progress in freedom and in the