of appropriations to technical-assistance programs. It is our conviction that effective technical assistance is a long-range undertaking. The time required to develop our own American rural areas indicates that improvement is a slow, tedious process. Patience for this long pull in our effort to improve underdeveloped areas will be needed. The peoples in those areas require time to be conditioned to improvement and also time in which to assimilate and make their own the new techniques. It is our conviction that the peoples in underdeveloped areas will find assurance to sustain their hopes when they know that America is determined on a long-range program of cooperation.

We believe that the ambassadors of technical assistance can be ambassadors of good will and interpret the best America has to offer. Many of the countries in want desire people to work with them to develop their own resources. Programs of training involve funds for trainees brought to this country as well as the development of training at many levels in the receiving country. Carefully developed workand-learn centers in the cooperating countries will produce the leadership essential to effective use of the trainee from this country. When such leadership is provided it demonstrates that the science of improvement is being taken to the people at the village level in terms they can understand. We believe that the success of the point 4 program depends more on the selection of the finest type of Americans than on any other factor including funds.

We believe in the constructive role our country has to play in the United Nations. Through its activities in this field the United Nations is becoming associated, in the minds of needy people around the earth, with freedom, justice, and social improvement. We have supported the United Nations' program of technical assistance and the point 4 program of our Government. We recognize that in the present emergency certain of the technical-assistance projects now financed by our Government serve both humanitarian interests and the cause of national defense. In order that assistance programs may serve the humanitarian purposes for which they are primarily designed, we think it desirable that whenever and wherever possible, such programs should be carried forward under the auspices of the United Nations.

The Government, having put its hand to the plow, should not turn back from the concrete expression of good will to peoples in need. As Christians we believe that the strong should help bear the burdens of the weak. This is not only good religion but sound foreign policy. The needs to which point 4 addresses itself are great. It is a bold effort to do something constructive about world unrest. We believe this program of technical assistance is a major deterrent to the spread of dictatorship and will lessen the threat to our own security. Such effort is in line with the best in the great American tradition. The CHAIRMAN. Do you have additional views?

Dr. HENRY. No, sir; that is it.

The CHAIRMAN. All right, thank you.

Dr. JOHN COLEMAN BENNETT.

STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN COLEMAN BENNETT, CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, COUNCIL FOR SOCIAL ACTION

Dr. BENNETT. Mr. Chairman, I am appearing before your committee today to testify on behalf of the council for social action of the Congregational Christian Churches with respect to the program for mutual security. My position with the council for social action is chairman of the committee on international relations. The council is composed of a board of 18 persons elected by the general council of the Congregational Christian Churches, which is the representative body of our 6,000 churches and 1,100,000 members. The council for social action has been given the responsibility by the general council of helping the individual churches make the Christian gospel more effective in society in the areas of international relations, race relations and economic affairs. I should like to make clear that according to our form of church government each individual church and each national board speaks only for itself. In my capacity as a witness today I am, therefore, speaking only for the council for social action. This council is set up to speak to the churches rather than for the churches but there are occasions when we do speak for ourselves, outside, to the community.

SUPPORT FOR TECHNICAL AND ECONOMIC ASSISTANCE

The council for social action, which I represent, has long supported programs of technical assistance to underdeveloped areas and various other forms of nonmilitary aid to nations that are now tempted by communism. The council has consistently recognized the need of military preparations to offset the military power of the Soviet Union and its satellites but it believes that successful resistance to communism requires a careful balancing of military and nonmilitary

measures..

For this reason I am asked by the council to urge your committee to give full weight to the claims of the nonmilitary forms of aid, and that response depends on a considerable measure to the degree of misery in the country.

I was chosen to come before your committee because a year ago I was sent by the International Missionary Council to various countries. in Asia, including India and Pakistan, to hold conferences with Protestant leaders concerning the problems created by the advance of communism. I had an opportunity to see at first hand some of the conditions in those countries that make for communism and to sense the attitudes of many of the people. I returned with the strong conviction that if communism should move into India and several other countries it would be primarily because of the desperate problems of poverty and hunger in those countries and not primarily because of external military threats. The military threat is always in the background and there may develop moments of crisis when it would be decisive but whether or not such moments of crisis come will depend upon the extent to which the country involved has been softened up internally by a Communist movement which has found wide response to its propaganda.

The surest way to prevent the spread of communism in India and in some other countries is to help kindle the hope that a constructive, democratic alternative to communism can be found. I say "some other countries" because I think there are some countries like Thailand which can be overwhelmed by sheer military power but India and Pakistan would probably be examples of this.. That hope needs to be backed in the near future by tangible gains in terms of the peoples' welfare. If that hope should cease to exist, Communist propaganda would be likely to destroy the will to resist Communist power. People resist communism successfully only when they have hope in a possible alternative.

ECONOMY OPPOSED ON TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE

The Council for Social Action fears that the desire for economy, which is laudable in itself, may lead to the attempt to cut the proposed appropriations for nonmilitary aid because among our people there is a widespread tendency to think of the present world conflict almost exclusively in military terms. We believe that any such view of the conflict is dangerously false. It is likely to prevent us from doing the constructive things that can be done to undercut the appeal of communism. This would have the effect, this failure to undercut the appeal of communism by constructive measures, of making general war more likely with all of its destructiveness and moral horror. And if we have economy in mind this would be likely to make necessary far greater military expenditures in the future. If by this expenditure for nonmilitary aid it is possible to neutralize in a significant measure the real power of communism, then to refuse that expenditure would be very poor economy. At best, all the military power in the world can only deter overt Communist aggression. It can do nothing to solve the problems of a Nation that make it ripe for communism as a false panacea or to remove the hopelessness that undercuts its resistance to communism as a military threat. Military power can do little more than help us to gain time for constructive action. If we fail to use that time for constructive action it is likely that the Communists will win more countries through propaganda and conspiracy and in doing so add greatly to their military potential. We will lose this struggle in the end if we trust to military power alone. I want to emphasize the conviction that while there may be countries that can be saved from communism by our having sufficient military power to act as a deterrent to military aggression, India is not one of those countries; and India is the country whose fate will determine the course of history in Asia more than that of any other country that is now free. If this conviction is sound, the overwhelming importance of this appropriation for India should be clear.

I am speaking in behalf of a church council. As churchmen the members of this council feel bound to urge the claims of nonmilitary aid, first of all, because it is in itself constructive. It meets the needs of people. We believe that this Christian concern for the welfare of people in other countries coincides with the requirements of our well-being and security as a nation. We seek American security and a world delivered from the threat of totalitarian aggression. We believe that a policy based upon military preparations alone will neither give us security as a nation nor help the people of the world

to find their way to peace and freedom. The cost of nonmilitary aid is small in comparison with the cost of military preparations. We believe that it is both grievously mistaken policy and very poor economy to reduce the appropriations for nonmilitary aid at this time. We hope that this committee will come to agree with these judgments.

I am very grateful to you, Mr. Chairman, for this privilege to appear before you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, sir. Are there any questions? All right, Dr. Paul Robinson.

STATEMENT OF DR. PAUL M. ROBINSON, PASTOR OF THE CHURCH OF THE BRETHREN, HAGERSTOWN; ACCOMPANIED BY DONOVAN R. BEACHLEY

Dr. ROBINSON. Mr. Chairman, gentlemen, I am Paul M. Robinson, from Hagerstown, Md., the minister of the Church of the Brethren. Mr. Donovan R. Beachley here is the president of the Beachley Furniture Co., of Hagerstown, Md.

The CHAIRMAN. You are a member of what church?

Dr. ROBINSON. The Church of the Brethren of Hagerstown. We are speaking for the Brethren Service Commission, which is the social welfare agency of the Church of the Brethren but more particularly as two citizens.

The CHAIRMAN. What particular denomination is the Church of the Brethren?

Dr. ROBINSON. It is one of the denominations which is a member of the National Council of Churches, whose testimony you heard a few minutes ago.

The CHAIRMAN. Is it a Quaker church?

Dr. ROBINSON. It used to be called the Dunker Church. Perhaps you have heard it mentioned?

The CHAIRMAN. It is not Quaker?

Dr. ROBINSON. No, sir; it is not Quaker. It has no connection with Quakers at all.

We are speaking as two citizens, touched by a particular part of this bill, namely, the Middle East. It is to this one portion we want to address ourselves. We are very much impressed by certain things we discovered there ourselves.

The CHAIRMAN. All right.

ATTITUDE OF ARAB MIDDLE EAST TOWARD THE UNITED STATES

Dr. ROBINSON. Last summer it was our privilege to spend several weeks in the Middle East. We were traveling not just as tourists but as representatives of the Brethren Service Commission, the social welfare agency of the Church of the Brethren, and we were interested in studying social and economic conditions.

As laymen in the political picture we knew very little about the problems of the Middle East. We knew, of course, that the ArabJewish conflict had been settled with the partitioning of Palestine and we believed that relations were reasonably peaceful and harmonious.

However, we were shocked to discover that throughout the Arab world, with the exception of Turkey, there is a growing distrust of American foreign policy and an actual hatred of Americans. Since we knew that not many years ago the Arabs considered America their greatest friend we made every effort to discover the reason for this radical change of attitude.

Because we have been associated with the YMCA we had many contacts in Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel, primarily, where we were permitted to talk with the natives as well as American personnel. We went into the refugee camps, where, incidentally, it is impossible for any American to go; I know an American who was hit by sticks and stones at a particular camp, where Arabs who were displaced from their homes in the recent fighting are now quartered in deplorable conditions. Traveling with YMCA officials who had proved themselves friendly to these Arab refugees, we were permitted to enter without any violence to our persons although we knew of other instances when Americans were threatened with stoning when they attempted to enter these camps. After gaining the confidence of the people they talked quite frankly about their attitude toward America and the west.

The events which led to the partitioning of Palestine are too well known to this committee to repeat here. However, the truth of the matter is that the American people know very little about the basic reasons for the Jewish-Arab war and until recently at least have shown very little concern about the plight of the Arab refugees. The American Zionist movement has publicized well the case for the new State of Israel and has succeeded in securing huge sums of money for the development of that country. The Arabs, on the other hand, having few of their race in this country and no political influence, have had no opportunity to let their story be known to the American people.

PROBLEMS OF THE ARAB REFUGEES

It is a well-known fact that the people in the Arab world, particularly the refugees, have nursed a growing resentment against the United States and other western powers because they feel that we have cast our influence with the side of Israel and supported a political program which has taken from them their homes. They have not been blind to the obvious favor in which Israel is held in our foreign policy. While we were in the old city of Jerusalem four Congressmen visited the city, remaining on the Jordan side for about 4 hours and spending several days in Israel. Another high Government official paid a token visit to Jordan of less than half a day and also spent approximately a week visiting Israel where he was entertained royally by the officials of that country. This, we discovered, is a very common pattern. In the eyes of the Arabs this is clear evidence that we are not really concerned about them or their welfare but have only an interest in Israel.

Whatever injustices may have been done in the past in this part of the world, the very serious aspect of the whole problem today is the growth of communism among these Arab people. In talking with the refugees in the D. P. camps we soon discovered amazing evidences of Communist propaganda. This was particularly true in Lebanon and in Jordan. Many of the young university men with whom we