five resolutions and two bills pending before the committee. It is anticipated that the witness will discuss other proposals at the same time. The committee may terminate such hearings at any time.

The committee invites the sympathetic cooperation of those who appear to assist it in consideration of the important legislation, and of the public who are invited to attend the hearings. It is confident that it will have such cooperation.

With the approval of the subcommittee and a number of members of the full committee (and I know with the approval of the entire committee) the chairman has extended an invitation to Col. Henry L. Stimson, former Secretary of State, to be the first witness at this hearing.

I will state that the committee appreciates Colonel Stimson's coming down, because as I know and wish to announce that it was very difficult for you, Colonel Stimson, to be here, by reason of very important pending legal matters in which you were engaged in New York.

Now, Colonel Stimson, you may proceed in any manner that you desire.

STATEMENT OF HON. HENRY L. STIMSON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE

Mr. STIMSON. Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen of the committee, I have no illusions as to the difficulties of either your job or mine. There is only one thing, and that is that I have the wish to be assured that the committee understood that I come here in no dogmatic spirit. I am very fully aware of the tremendous responsibilities and the tremendous difficulties with which you are confronted at this momentous time.

For the purpose of clarity, I have jotted down an opening statement, trying to give an analysis of the situation as I see it from my rather isolated and narrow position and viewpoint, but if there is anything in that that might give you occasion to think that I am dogmatic in my view, it is an error of statement and not of purpose, and I hope that you will be therefore kindly in your judgment, and after I have made this statement, if there are any questions or any further angles that you wish my opinion on, I should be only too happy to try to give it.

I do not mean to say that I could adequately cover it, but I will begin with this outline of what seemed to me to be the analysis of the situation with which we are confronted and the problem which that involves in your approach toward your duty in regard to the neutrality law.

When your chairman honored me with this invitation to come before you, he said that the committee was to consider the general landmarks of foreign policy at the present time and particularly the Neutrality Act. But when I came to reflect upon his invitation I realized that the problem of the present moment to which he referred is perhaps not so much a problem of normal foreign policy as it is a problem of national defense of the United States in a very novel emergency. It seems to me that that is what it really is. We are not sitting down to draft peacefully and philosophically a code of behavior for normal times but to consider how we can best make the United States safe or as safe as possible-in a totally novel and critical situation.

When I call it a "crisis" I do not mean to imply that it is merely a brief emergency. It may last for many long anxious years or even decades. But its essential characteristic is that it is novel and revolutionary as well as extremely dangerous, and so it has necessarily upset many of the standards and rules by which we have been accustomed in times past to chart our course and to guide our conduct in international relations.

I think a very few words can make this clear. For nearly four centuries mankind has been trying to build up a code of behavior within what they call the family of nations. The code has been based upon the foundation stone that every state in the family recognizes and respects the independent sovereignty of every other state. That has been the foundation of what we call international law. That has been deemed to be the principle upon which the world had the best chance of living in peace.

And it is in our Western Hemisphere that principle and practice has reached its fullest flower of consummation. In every Pan-American conference of the states of the Western Hemisphere, I think from the beginning of their relations over a century ago, the smallest and the most insignificant state in size and power has been accorded an equal vote with the largest state, and the disapproval of any such small state is sufficient to protect it from the corporate action of all the rest. Of course, throughout the world controversies have periodically arisen which have caused nations to fight with one another. But the underlying principle of their conduct in the absence of war has been this principle of mutual respect. And the code of behavior for carrying out their relations one with another in normal times has been aptly likened to the code of mutual respect and courtesy which prevails among gentlemen in ordinary life.

I have only to remind you of this long existing theory and standard to indicate how it has been shattered by present events. Today three of the seven most powerful nations in the world have rejected this code of behavior with open scorn and contempt. They have adopted as their most conspicuous foreign policy a system of aggressive action against their neighbors. To that end they have developed a very skillful technique which during the past few years they have been practicing with great success.

Under the name of unilateral action they have proceeded to tear up all the net of promises, treaties, and codes which had been adopted under the old system of mutual respect and which stood in the way of their own aggrandizement and purposes. Threats, aggression, and treaty violation have gone hand in hand as the interlocking elements of this, their system. In succession, the attacks, all in violation of former treaties and of international law, upon Manchuria, North China, South China, Ethiopia, Spain, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Lithuania have made clear the revolutionary and widespread nature of the change with which we are now confronted.

I think they have shown to even the most reluctant critic that this new system is not a matter of domestic government among the states which practice it or "ideology," as we now call it, but is a reversal of the whole system of international practice in the world. It is thus a matter with which the foreign policy as well as the national defense of almost every nation in the world is immediately

concerned. I have weighed my words when I say that I believe that our present Caucasian civilization is threatened by the gravest danger with which it has been confronted for four centuries.

And the problem is further complicated by the fact that these three powerful nations occupy strategically very favorable positions for their attacks upon most of their peace-loving neighbors. If there were only one of them the problem for the whole world would not be so serious. But the three are acting skillfully together, and geography has placed them with such relation to the lines of communication and the consequent national defense of the other nations as to make common action in such defense practically imperative if it is to be successful.

This is the novel situation which confronts the world today and I think the mere statement of it will indicate how it has affected some of our former customs and traditions. For example, take our old attitude toward the question of aggression in war which has been the basis of our attitude toward neutrality. In the former World War we had a doctrine that in considering the controversies of our neighbors across the Atlantic or across the Pacific we could entirely disregard the question of aggression and treat both sides with perfect impartiality without trying to make any inquiry into the rights or the wrongs of the origin of their conflict. But today the fact of systematized aggression stares us in the face and we know only too well who the aggressors are.

We pick up our newspapers every morning with apprehension to read of the most recent evidence of their policy. They boast of it. It is the life and breath of their principal policy to which they have applied the appropriate name of an "axis." We also know only too well who their victims are, both present and potential. We have only to read about some of the occurrences to the south of us to realize that even we are within the zone of their orbit.

All this suggests another ancient form of tradition which begins to look a little shopworn in the present situation; that is, the isolation of the United States. Too many Americans have been brought up to think that in case of trouble in the world it would not be necessary for us to do anything but sit still quietly and let nature take its course, but it looks a little differently now. The "axis" is moving much too rapidly, and the world has become far too small and interconnected.

I have had official occasion in my life to study the protected position of our country, its superb natural resources, its unmatched opportunity for self-containment in the maintenance of its defense. No one is more keenly alive than I am to this great advantage or to the present comparative security of this country. But the real question before us today is one of method. How shall these great advantages be most effectively used, not only with regard to our own safety for this present year of our Lord 1939, but for the future, for the protection not only of ourselves but of our children and our children's children and of our institutions? Shall we be content to sit idly in this present security, which may be only momentary, or shall we use these great advantages carefully, moderately, but firmly and above all intelligently to help protect the world, which includes ourselves, from its imminent and continuing danger? By reason of our present security we can do this more safely than can any other nation. And the fact that we are known to be ready to do so will not only tend to slow down the "axis”

in my opinion, the members of which know very well that language— but what is even more important, will at the same time encourage their intended victims not to make surrenders which will ultimately endanger us.

For myself I agree with the President that there are methods which are "short of war but stronger and more effective than mere words". I have taken occasion to study and ponder over possible methods. This country is said-I think it was by one of the members of this committee to supply about one-third of the known raw materials of the world and to account for more than one-third of the known economic and industrial life of the globe. For the past 2 years or more we have been busy using these matchless resources in very large part to stimulate the activities and aggressions of our potential enemies. That I am bound to say does not strike me as a very intelligent behavior. Now I know that it is sometimes said that an economic weapon is a dangerous one. In the case of ourselves, I have been rather inclined to doubt its truth. If it is, we are certainly in a safer position to use it than any other country in the world. And when it comes to the danger of irritating aggressor nations, why the very fact that we are a democracy irritates the "axis." Economic action would do no more, and it has the possibility of most effective restraint, for, after all, the chief hope of today lies in the fact that each of the three members of the "axis" are in a notoriously vulnerable economic condition.

So, briefly touching upon this question, I simply say I do not wish to be dogmatic; but here is a critical emergency; here is an enormously effective weapon at our hands, and a secure place in which to use it; our opponents would be extremely vulnerable to such a weapon; also, there is absolutely no danger of alienating any existing friendship.

Now, the foregoing is a very cursory statement of the conditions of today bearing upon our neutrality law and in the light of which it must be considered. The first act was drawn nearly 4 years ago and events have traveled more rapidly during those 4 years than ever since the Great War. Their rapidity today is greater than ever. On its face that statute was evidently drawn under the influence and traditions of the past rather than to face conditions as they exist at the present moment. On its face it assumed that it would never be in our own peremptory interest to distinguish between an aggressor and its victim. On its face it assumed that it would never be in our own peremptory interest that an ill-prepared foreign nation should be able to defend its liberties by purchasing arms from us after it had been aggressively attacked. And, incidentally, by this assumption the act violated one of the oldest traditions of the United States; and you have only to look at the statement which the Secretary of State of Woodrow Wilson made during the World War upon that very policy, when he called attention to the fact that our country, because we did not like to live armed ourselves, has always been in favor of preserving freedom of commerce, so that a nation like ourselves could, if it were attacked, secure the necessary arms at the right time with which to defend itself. That was a statement which Mr. Lansing made during the war to illustrate and defend our policy then; and he pointed out that that had been the nature of our policy ever since the beginning of this country, and it has been since repeated in many, or, in some, at least of the histories of our international practice, notably that of Mr. Hyde, in which I have seen it.

Furthermore, on its face this act was evidently designed to curb narrowly the discretionary power of the President in dealing with foreign conditions by making the operations of some of its chief provisions automatic and inflexible. In all these respects it apparently assumed that the Congress in 1935 and 1937 was able to know exactly the course which the people of the United States would wish their Government to follow under the conditions of 1939. Now, too meticulous foresight is often perilous, but particularly in the drafting of unchangeable commitments. I think every one of us who is a lawyer is familiar with the fate of a client who insists on having his will drawn as if the Lord Almighty had vested him with exact information as to what the condition of the world would be and what his estate would be at the time of his death. And we all know that the Lord Almighty has an embarrassing habit of bringing to confusion such rigid efforts. So it is this rigidity of the act which seems to me its chief danger.

In my opinion it is basically wrong in foreign affairs to attempt to legislate rigidly in advance exactly what we should do as to neutrality when the time comes; that we cannot possibly tell what we ought to do in such a vital matter as that until we know the whole set-up, and by so doing this is one of the chief dangers-we give the initiative to the other nations, while we remain tied hand and foot. It is a little like playing poker with your own hand open on the table, while all the other hands remain concealed.

I believe that in all such laws the President should have more discretion. I am a Republican and the present administration is Democratic but I have always tried to limit my partisanship in the zone of foreign affairs. I am a strong believer in the system of representative government and from my observation I have come to the belief that in no sphere of government action is representative action so essential, so effective, or so safe from abuse as in the conduct of our foreign relations. So that I am not myself impressed with the fear that in that zone Presidential discretion is likely to be abused.

It has been my observation that in no sphere of political action is the sobering effect of terrific responsibility upon one man so marked as in the sphere of our country's relations with the outside world. Certainly in the case of the two wars in which we have been involved within my lifetime the presidency was the most cautious and conservative element in the country, clinging to every effort for peace until it was clear either that the people were determined upon war or that no other course than war would preserve our safety.

Today we find that this act has automatically placed in the hands of foreign nations, some of them possibly our future enemies, the decision as to with whom this country shall carry on its trade and commerce. Today we find that it compels us to treat alike the peaceful and suffering people of China and the militaristic enemies who by conquest are trying to turn China into a reservoir of potential future aggression against the rest of the world. We find that it compels us to be an effective party to this aggression on the pain of otherwise depriving China of the means for her own defense.

Recently we found that by depriving the Loyalist Government of Spain of the right to buy arms for defense against the rebels who were being supported by Mussolini and Hitler it made us a strong factor in the overthrow of the very government which the United States