Senator WILEY (interposing). You will not let your French ancestry influence your judgment, will you? [Laughter.] Mr. WEIL. No, sir. I would like you to read, Mr. Chairman, what Admiral Mahan said about the matter. Senator WILEY. Well, Admiral Mahan was a French Irishman. I must go into the Senate now. I am sorry we could not hear you longer. STATEMENT OF HON. CORDELL HULL, SECRETARY OF STATE (The following letter from the Secretary of State was ordered incorporated in the record:) MAY 16, 1939. MY DEAR SENATOR HATCH: I refer to your letter of May 5, 1939, regarding S. J. Res. 84 proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States for a referendum on war. When a similar proposal was receiving consideration in December in 1937, I stated to the press than "from the standpoint of promoting peace and keeping this country out of war, I am unable to see either the wisdom or practicability of this proposal." Further reflection on the subject has confirmed me in the view I expressed at that time. The statesmen who founded this Government were acutely aware of the paramount importance of keeping our Nation out of war. They concluded that this purpose would best be accomplished by vesting in the representatives of the people the power to declare war. In my opinion, the experience of a century and a half has proved the wisdom of the statesmen who established our representative form of government. The preservation of peace is the cornerstone of the foreign policy of the United States. I am convinced that the present constitutional provision, under which the power to declare war rests with the Congress, is far more satisfactory from the standpoint of keeping the Nation out of war than would be the plan contemplated in the proposed amendment. It is my belief that this plan would seriously impair the ability of the Government to safeguard the peace of our people. Referring to your suggestion that I might desire to appear before the subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee during hearings on S. J. Res. 84, that course seems unnecessary as my attitude toward the proposition under consideration is set forth in this letter. However, you may be sure that I appreciate your courtesy in offering me an oportunity to appear during the hearings. Sincerely yours, CORDELL HULL. (The following statement of the War Department was ordered incorporated in the record:) Hon. CARL A. HATCH, WAR DEPARTMENT, Washington, June 9, 1939. Chairman, Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate. DEAR SENATOR HATCH: Further reference is made to your letter of May 5, 1939, concerning Senate Joint Resolution 84, proposing an amendment to the Constitution providing for a referendum on war. Reference is also made to my letter of recent date, which stated that a written statement of my views on the subjection legislation would be submitted. Careful consideraion and study of Senate Joint Resolution 84 convinced me that the adoption of a constitutional amendment as set forth in that resolution would materially hamper and restrict the War Department in carrying out its primary mission of defending the United States and its possessions, and might in some cases even jeopardize the successful accomplishment of that mission and thus result in a national disaster. Accordingly, the War Department is opposed to the enactment of Senate Joint Resolution 84. This proposed legislation, with report thereon, was submitted to the Bureau of the Budget, which reports that there would be no objection to the submission of this unfavorable report to the committee. Sincerely yours, HARRY H. WOODRING, STATEMENT OF NATIONAL LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS, WASHINGTON, D. C. (The following statement of the National League of Women Voters, Washington, D. C., was ordered incorporated in the record :) Opposition to a war-referendum legislation was voted by the Council of the National League of Women Voters, meeting in Washington April 25-27, 1939. Since 1923 the league has been concerned with study of the causes of war and possible cures. Members of the league have concentrated in the last few years on the study of the conduct of foreign policy by the United States, the respective responsibilities of the Executive and the Congress in the conduct of foreign affairs, and of possible legislative safeguards against involvement in war. The action of the council, a representative body of the league, is an accurate statement of the sentiment of the membership of the organization and a logical development from the total experience of the league, not only in the study of foreign policy but in its activity in the whole field of government. Disagreement between those groups advocating delegation to the people of the decision on a declaration of war and those who oppose such a move comes on method for achieving an objective, not on the objective. There are always efforts to solve difficult problems by an easy formula, when they can only be permanently solved by continuous, earnest, and tolerant effort. To members of the League of Women Voters the proposal to delegate to the people the final decision on a foreign war comes into this category of too easy formulas for difficult problems. In the day-by-day, year-by-year conduct of the relations between the United States and other countries is found the only adequate safeguard of this country. War situations do not develop overnight; they brew over a long period of time. It is probably inevitable that the Executive and the Congress will occasionally err in making these daily decisions. The tariff policy of the United States after the World War; racial discrimination in immigration laws; refusal to assume international responsibility commensurate with the inescapable influence of the United States on world affairs have been contributing factors to the present war situation. The existence of a war referendum would not have affected these decisions. Neither would anyone admit or believe that these decisions were meant as war-provoking ones. Yet proponents of the war referendum proposal argue that the existence of such a measure would deter the Government from pursuing a policy leading toward war, assuming that it is always possible to know without question whether a policy is war-provoking or in the direction of peace. Until the people of this country are willing and prepared to take into account effects of national actions on the international situation, to subordinate their special immediate interests to the long-term public interest, this Nation will continue to contribute to international situations that may lead to war. When war exists in the world, keeping this country out will not be accomplished by a mere repetition of "We want to stay out of war" or reliance on a vote of the people, but on the day-to-day conduct of foreign policy. It has been pointed out in the hearings on this proposal that it does not take away from the power of Congress but simply shares this power with the people. Shared responsibility frequently leads to failure on the part of one or both of the groups concerned to make decisions with sufficient seriousness. Dictatorships have developed through the failure of legislative bodies to meet situations that confronted them. Detracting from the responsibility of the legislative body weakens it; it is a disservice to representative democracy. Proponents of the war referendum claim that it would be more difficult to stampede the whole citizenry into a war than it would be to stampede Congress. This argument is based on the assumption that the elected repre sentatives of the people are indifferent to the welfare of the country and tends to undermine the confidence of the people in their Government at a time when fear and hysteria are especially dangerous. History fails to show that such distrust is warranted. Proponents argue that the necessity for referring the final decision to the people would act as a check on the conduct of foreign policy. Opponents argue that it would encourage aggressor nations, thus making more certain the eventual outbreak and spread of war which would jeopardize the security of this country. In conclusion, the war-referendum proposal offers no sure and certain safeguard against the involvement of this country in a foreign war. There is grave danger that through the lessening of the responsibility of the legislative body and through the false sense of safety that a war-referendum measure might give to large groups of people the chances for involvement in a foreign war would actually be increased. STATEMENT OF DR. HARRY D. GIDEONSE, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, CHAIRMAN OF THE ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY DEPARTMENT AT BARNARD COLLEGE Mr. GIDEONSE. The proposal for a war referendum has taken many forms, and my observations will be addressed to the idea in general. It is proposed to amend the Federal Constitution and to take away from Congress the power to declare war which it has had during the past century and a half, and to confer that right upon the people themselves. Fortunately, we do not have to discuss this idea in the usual atmosphere of partisanship. When the proposal came up in Congress last time, former Governor Landon and Colonel Knox supported Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Hull in flat opposition to the idea, and the Secretary of State under President Hoover, Mr. Henry Stimson, joined them in support of President Roosevelt's opposition to the proposal. The idea of a war referendum is based upon the practice of the good old days when wars were officially declared. Nowadays wars are not declared. They are only fought. It is rather unlikely that the world will return to the pretty old custom of yesterday just because we choose to amend our Constitution Czechoslovakia certainly did not have the time to manage a referendum. In general, it takes two to keep the peace-and it takes only one to make a war. The general idea behind the proposal is that it is only democratic to have the people settle this question by themselves. After all, the argument runs, the people elect dog catchers, why shouldn't they decide upon a question of life and death? But it certainly should be clear that, while the people do elect dog catchers in some of our communities, they would not be very wise to have a referendum every time a mad dog was loose on the question of whether the dog catcher should catch this one. If such a policy were adopted, half the community would have rabies before the vote was counted. It is wiser in such a case to leave the individual decision as to which dog to catch to the judgment of the dog catcher, who would be well advised to act before the dog made his first bite and not after. The same thing holds for the officials we elect to handle our foreign affairs. If their powers are to be vitally limited in the final, and possibly violent, stages, it is extremely unlikely that their job will be well done in the early, and possible preventive, stages. At present, we rely on three lines of defense: The first is our diplomatic defense-the State Department and the Foreign Service. The second is the Navy. The third is the Army. If we adopted the proposal for a war referendum, we would cripple the first and the second of these defense lines. Warnings of our Presidents have been a powerful defense in the past. President Monroe's warning against European designs upon this hemisphere set a classic example. It did not even have a resolution of Congress behind it. French imperialist adventures in Mexico were stopped by a Presidential warning in 1866. The Panama Canal has frequently been defended by such purely diplomatic measures. The very name of Venezuela suggests Cleveland's warning against Great Britain in 1895 and Theodore Roosevelt's later action against Germany. Throughout the 150 years our diplomatic defense lines have preserved us against encroachment in its early stages. Behind the diplomatic defense warnings was inevitably the implication of force-if the warnings were disregarded our military force might back them up. All of this would now be upset. The diplomatic arm of the President would practically be crippled, for the aggressor would know that only actual invasion would provoke armed resistance, and that any use of force in cases in which actual invasion had not taken place, would be subject to a referendum. Encroachment in its early stages—where it would be easy to resist if the President had a free hand-would now be difficult to resist. Later foreign aggression-following the nonviolent encroachment-would be harder to resist because the enemy would be more deeply entrenched. It is perhaps not necessary to add that encroachment of a not immediately violent type has been developed into a science in recent premilitary stages of international conflict. The same thing holds for the Navy. Its chief purpose has been to keep the enemy at a safe distance from our shore. Under the war referendum no action could be taken against a foreign navy until actual aggression or invasion took place. In that case it might be able to strike a sudden blow at some of the most populous cities on our coast line by sea and air power. Incidentally, one of the results of that possibility would probably be huge increases in the Army and coast defense with careful provisions for swift mobilization along European lines, if the referendum were adopted. I need hardly add that the groups that support the proposal did not intend such a result. In fact, some of them talk about disarmament as a result of our adoption of this policy. Like our so-called neutrality legislation, this proposal isn't all that it's cracked up to be. The fundamental thought behind the agitation for the war referendum is that Congress and the President cannot be trusted. It is argued that the President may be selfish, and that Congress may be light-headed, but that the people will remain cool and sober, and, it is, of course, clever to flatter the people. In other words, it is believed that the President and Congress can somehow be bamboozled by foreign propaganda, but that the people will preserve their independence in the radio propaganda war preparing for the referendum. There is nothing in our history to prove this-in fact, the reverse is more frequently true. Fundamentally, the advocates of the war referendum assume that the people in a normal peace atmosphere are incapable of electing representatives in Congress or in the White House who can be depended upon to represent them in an emergency, while it is at the same time assumed that the people themselves in the midst of the panic and the emergency will analyze the detailed and technical reports, and interpret conflicting war propaganda in a more sober and detached spirit than their representatives in Washington. To state these assumptions is to reveal their weakness. In the present situation in world politics, the adoption-and even the discussion-of the war referendum proposal encourages aggression. No one studying even the headlines today can doubt that uncertainity as to American action is a major handicap to Germany, Italy, and Japan. When we tied our neutrality policy down to rigid rules, we favored the aggressors as is very clear from the story of the Spanish Republic. The result-which supporters of the legislation did not intend-is that Spain now has a government that will help flood Latin America with Fascist propaganda which will have inevitable repercussions upon American interests, and ultimately upon American policy. If we tie our hands in foreign policy by adoption of this referendum policy, we will encourage future aggressors to believe that they can get away with it before we take a vote. Perhaps I might add that the supreme tragedy of this agitation probably lies in the fact that while it will encourage aggression, it will probably not stop us from getting into war because there is nothing in the referendum proposal that deals with the causes of modern war, that curbs the operation of the sense of justice of the American people in the face of the fruits of aggression, or that provides alternative methods for the settlement of international disputes. Wars cannot be stopped by wishful thinking-or by wishful legislation. Individual nations like the American one, cannot "keep out of war" by prayerful repetition of the statement that they "do not want war, any more than individual persons can keep themselves free of typhoid if the community in which they live has an infected milk or water supply. In the case of typhoid, only a community effort at prevention of disease will ultimately protect individuals. In the case of war, only a common effort to eradicate the causes of international disputes and a common will to carry the cost and the risk of alternative methods of settlement of disputes will reduce the risk of war to all individual nations. In a more narrow perspective, it might also be considered that there is nothing in the referendum proposal to limit the President's constitutional power to get us into war through the conduct of foreign policy-and its conduct in his privilege and duty-and through his powers as Commander in chief of our armed forces. In other words, the only result of the adoption of the proposal is likely to be encouraged optimism on the part of aggressors who plan war-and ultimately no security whatsoever that war will not come anyway. Practically-if I may risk a prophesy—it would probably mean a referendum after the event in which we would be allowed to approve the things that had already happened, more or less in Hitler's style after he had begun to digest another of his small neighbors. We live under representative government. It is silly to call this proposal democratic, and its opponents undemocratic. Any policy which we discuss democratically, and settle democratically after the discussion, is democratic. It is just as democratic to elect dog catch |