Negative Test

Before the end of the Potsdam meeting, Harry Truman hoped to be able to tell Stalin and Churchill: the U.S. has kept faith, here is the signed pledge of our participation in world affairs.

Then a sudden switch was made in Senate signals. For Senate action this week, the Bretton Woods monetary plan and international bank was put ahead of the World Charter. Administration leaders hoped it would be approved before the week was out. Then, they hoped, would come quick action on the Charter. Last week it passed its first Senate examination --by the Foreign Relations Committee.

To the two-storied, mahogany-and-marble walled caucus room on the Senate Office Building's third floor came representatives of scores of national organizations, leaders of church, education and women's groups, leaders of the vanishing fringe of die-hard nationalists, many a listening Congressman, many a service man. They heard no rousing debates, no sharp claps of oratorical thunder. They heard very little that was substantial said against the Charter.

Foreknowledge. The Senate opposition --what little there was-- knew that they had been beaten before they started. They had no apparent strategy for concerted attack. But the Charter's proponents did. That strategy was: accentuate the negative. What the Charter would not do, rather than what it might hopefully accomplish, was their theme. Carefully and objectively, white-suited Chairman Tom Connally and Senator Arthur Vandenberg explained the Charter would not abridge U.S. sovereignty; it would not put war-won Pacific islands under international trusteeship; it would not impose some postwar schemes of disarmament upon the U.S. without U.S. approval; it would not, by itself, take away from Congress the right to declare war.

These were the chief points on which the opposition had trained its sights. But no heavy barrage was fired. Only one Senator took careful aim. Pointing a long, tobacco-stained finger, Colorado's big (200 lb.), bald Republican Eugene Donald Millikin lined up his target: the use of U.S. armed forces under the Charter. He asked: what control would the U.S. retain over its share of an international armed force? Could the U.S. reserve to itself decision over where and how to use its forces? Senator Millikin's close questioning of John Foster Dulles, the Committee's ' G.O.P. adviser on international affairs and the Charter, developed a point of surprise to several Senators, who had assumed that military agreements under the pact would be subject only to majority votes in the House and Senate.

Able Lawyer Dulles gave his opinion on the point: no, such agreements would have to be treaties, would thus be subject to a two-thirds Senate vote.

Millikin seemed satisfied.

"I'm No Crackpot." The hearings set off some fireworks, but even these sputtered and fizzled. They came mostly in one day, from some dozen witnesses who saw international bogeymen lurking under the Charter bed.

The noisiest: Mrs. Agnes Waters ("National Blue Star Mothers of America"). Her line: the Charter would "set up a world government for the Soviets . . . make of this nation a feeding trough for the have-nots."

Tom Connally was not amused when she yelled: "The real war criminals are sitting right in this room. . . . I name Mr. Stettinius, the former international banker." Finally, two guards escorted garrulous Mrs. Waters from the E-shaped hearing table. Cried she : "I'm not afraid of all the devils in hell. What this country needs is a good old-fashioned American revolution."

The witness who claimed to represent most territory was tall, lean David Darrin: he announced himself as representing "The United Nations of the Earth Association." This, it developed, was no more than a letterhead and David Darrin. He offered a charter of his own: "The Tentative Constitution of the United Nations of the Earth." It was not examined. The World Security Charter he dismissed as "godless . . . a monstrous crime against American liberties."

Among the other opponents:

P:Bridge Expert Ely Culbertson ("Fight for Total Peace Inc."). His plea for charter changes: "We are facing within the next five or six years a preventive war by the capitalistic world to eliminate the threat of the rising Russian giant state. And if this war does not take place, then we are facing in 15 or 20 years a war for the control of the world by Communist Eurasia, led by Russia." Ely Culbertson offered amendments for disarmament, a United Nations armed force.

P:Buxom Mrs. Helen Virginia Somers, whose theory was that the Charter implements a plot to make the Duke of Windsor "king of the world." Qualified Mrs. Somers: "I know whereof I speak; I'm no crackpot."

P:A mother of nine, Mrs. Grace Keefe ("Women's League for Political Education''). To her the Charter was "an instrument insuring our perpetual involvement in all future wars."

P:Mrs. Elsie F. Johnson. Snapped she: "This country is in the grip of a gigantic conspiracy."

P:Mrs. Cecil Norton Broy ("Americans United Inc."; membership: 25). To her the pact "provides for dirty Big Five domination."

Skimmed Milk. One to whom the Committee listened intently was chin-whiskered Rev. W. E. B. Dubois, an official of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He suggested amendments to clarify racial equality and treatment of colonies.

If these and a few others represented the cream of the nation's organized opposition, it was thin indeed. Many potent U.S. organizations went on the Committee's record in support of the Charter.

After five days Chairman Connally called a halt on the hearings, called for a vote. Result: 21 to 1 for approval (California's Hiram Johnson was the lone dissenter; Minnesota's Henrik Shipstead did not vote).

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