Peace without Platitudes

U.S. Protestantism's first formal comment on the eight-point Roosevelt-Churchill peace plan boils down to one main criticism: it is too full of pious platitudes. Since the statesmen were too visionary, the churchmen offered them some practical suggestions.

Fifty-three members of the notable church Commission to Study the Bases of a Just & Durable Peace--some of them pacifists, some interventionists--last week debated the peace plan for hours and then agreed to publish a declaration drafted by their chairman, famed peacemaker John Foster Dulles. Highlights of his comments on the Roosevelt-Churchill points:

1) England and the U.S. "seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other."

Comment: "Growth in itself is not something inherently evil. It is the peculiar genius of the Constitution of the U.S. that it could and did operate as an open-end instrument, bringing more territory and more peoples into federal union. That conception should not now be renounced. . . . All national groups [tend] to attribute self-righteousness to [their present] mood. This tendency, which violates Christ's precepts, creates much ill-will and is itself a major contributing cause of war."

2) Territorial changes should depend on "the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned."

Comment: "If Europe is to be reorganized as a federated Commonwealth . . . [perhaps] the present greater Germany should be disintegrated into several states . . . [even though the Germans] might prefer, through maintaining themselves as a single state, to dominate the Union."

3) "Sovereign rights" should be "restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them."

Comment: "Such promises" can be "a serious obstacle to durable peace," as were Wilson's "promises of 'self-determination.' " Europe's "old system of many sovereign states . . . has constantly and inevitably bred war."

4) Give to "all States, great or small, victor or vanquished" equal access "to the trade and to the raw materials of the world."

Comment: Quite inadequate, because "the U.S. has in the past . . . treated our foreign trade as though it were of no legitimate concern to anyone but ourselves." Unless Congress shows it has changed its attitude, this point "will be received with grave and warranted skepticism."

6) All nations should be able to dwell "in safety within their own boundaries."

Comment: "If boundaries are unnatural barriers to the movement of men, trade and investment, their maintenance inevitably becomes subject to attack."

All men everywhere shall have assurance that they "may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want."

Comment: This "can never be achieved except relatively, and there are positive dangers in holding out such an expectation to desperate and destitute masses."

7) All men should be able to "traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance" in time of peace.

Comment: "The real issue . . . relates to the right to close the seas in time of war."

8) Disarming the nations "which threaten, or may threaten, aggression"--i.e., unilateral disarmament.

Comment: "Peace can never be assured merely by seeking to reserve armament exclusively for those nations which are so satisfied that they seek only to maintain the status quo. This was the great illusion of Versailles." Since "the world is a living, and thus a changing, organism," the eight points should have proposed "the development of some international mechanism for effecting peaceful change."

Nearly all members were in substantial agreement with Mr. Dulles' analysis of the eight points, but opinion was much more divided on five specific post-war proposals with which he followed them up and also on what part America should play in the war, whether it should give up some of its sovereignty, and whether nations should be allowed to enforce sanctions on aggressors. Mr. Dulles' five proposals:

>Collect vast stocks of medicine, food and clothing for distribution to war-devastated countries when fighting stops.

>Organize "continental Europe as a federated commonwealth"--because "the world has so shrunk" that America will otherwise be drawn into every war Europe starts.

>Give Japan access to the markets and raw materials that will let her support her people. But free China from all alien domination.

>Place all non-self-governing colonies under international mandate, allow every nation free trade with them, prepare them for "ultimate self-government."

> Set up "an international federation for peace" that would include every country, to "eradicate . . . that immoral principle of national irresponsibility which the sovereignty system now sanctifies."

Concludes Mr. Dulles: "In its present form, the [Roosevelt-Churchill] Declaration seems to reflect primarily the conceptions of the old sovereignty system. It follows too closely the pattern of Versailles, without, however, any of the liberalizing international institutions which that treaty sought to bring into existence. . . . We are entitled to expect a bold approach to the problem of peace. It has been demonstrated, beyond doubt, that the old system of many disconnected sovereignties, each a law unto itself, inevitably breeds war. We must not keep humanity chained to such a wheel. Laying aside timidity, adding practicality to sentimentality, we must fearlessly plan a new world order. . . .

"Unless the leaders of the British Commonwealth and the U.S. start promptly to educate their people along such lines, they will find themselves the prisoners of a public opinion such as, following 1919, frustrated all efforts to place peace upon a stable foundation. We will have begun again the cycle which leads inevitably to new war."

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