The year 1945 brought with it the final defeat of our enemies. There lies
before us now the work of building a just and enduring peace.
Our most immediate task toward that end is to deprive our enemies
completely and forever of their power to start another war. Of even greater
importance to the preservation of international peace is the need to
preserve the wartime agreement of the United Nations and to direct it into
the ways of peace.
Long before our enemies surrendered, the foundations had been laid on which
to continue this unity in the peace to come. The Atlantic meeting in 1941
and the conferences at Casablanca, Quebec, Moscow, Cairo, Tehran, and
Dumbarton Oaks each added a stone to the structure.
Early in 1945, at Yalta, the three major powers broadened and solidified
this base of understanding. There fundamental decisions were reached
concerning the occupation and control of Germany. There also a formula was
arrived at for the interim government of the areas in Europe which were
rapidly being wrested from Nazi control. This formula was based on the
policy of the United States that people be permitted to choose their own
form of government by their own freely expressed choice without
interference from any foreign source.
At Potsdam, in July 1945, Marshal Stalin, Prime Ministers Churchill and
Attlee, and I met to exchange views primarily with respect to Germany. As a
result, agreements were reached which outlined broadly the policy to be
executed by the Allied Control Council. At Potsdam there was also
established a Council of Foreign Ministers which convened for the first
time in London in September. The Council is about to resume its primary
assignment of drawing up treaties of peace with Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria,
Hungary, and Finland.
In addition to these meetings, and, in accordance with the agreement at
Yalta, the Foreign Ministers of Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the
United States conferred together in San Francisco last spring, in Potsdam
in July, in London in September, and in Moscow in December. These meetings
have been useful in promoting understanding and agreement among the three
governments.
Simply to name all the international meetings and conferences is to suggest
the size and complexity of the undertaking to prevent international war in
which the United States has now enlisted for the duration of history.
It is encouraging to know that the common effort of the United Nations to
learn to live together did not cease with the surrender of our enemies.
When difficulties arise among us, the United States does not propose to
remove them by sacrificing its ideals or its vital interests. Neither do we
propose, however, to ignore the ideals and vital interests of our friends.
Last February and March an Inter-American Conference on Problems of War and
Peace was held in Mexico City. Among the many significant accomplishments
of that Conference was an understanding that an attack by any country
against any one of the sovereign American republics would be considered an
act of aggression against all of them; and that if such an attack were made
or threatened, the American republics would decide jointly, through
consultations in which each republic has equal representation, what
measures they would take for their mutual protection. This agreement
stipulates that its execution shall be in full accord with the Charter of
the United Nations Organization.
The first meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations now in
progress in London marks the real beginning of our bold adventure toward
the preservation of world peace, to which is bound the dearest hope of
men.
We have solemnly dedicated ourselves and all our will to the success of the
United Nations Organization. For this reason we have sought to insure that
in the peacemaking the smaller nations shall have a voice as well as the
larger states. The agreement reached at Moscow last month preserves this
opportunity in the making of peace with Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary,
and Finland. The United States intends to preserve it when the treaties
with Germany and Japan are drawn.
It will be the continuing policy of the United States to use all its
influence to foster, support, and develop the United Nations Organization
in its purpose of preventing international war. If peace is to endure it
must rest upon justice no less than upon power. The question is how justice
among nations is best achieved. We know from day-to-day experience that the
chance for a just solution is immeasurably increased when everyone directly
interested is given a voice. That does not mean that each must enjoy an
equal voice, but it does mean that each must be heard.
Last November, Prime Minister Attlee, Prime Minister MacKenzie King, and I
announced our proposal that a commission be established within the
framework of the United Nations to explore the problems of effective
international control of atomic energy.
The Soviet Union, France, and China have joined us in the purpose of
introducing in the General Assembly a resolution for the establishment of
such a commission. Our earnest wish is that the work of this commission go
forward carefully and thoroughly, but with the greatest dispatch. I have
great hope for the development of mutually effective safeguards which will
permit the fullest international control of this new atomic force.
I believe it possible that effective means can be developed through the
United Nations Organization to prohibit, outlaw, and prevent the use of
atomic energy for destructive purposes.
The power which the United States demonstrated during the war is the fact
that underlies every phase of our relations with other countries. We cannot
escape the responsibility which it thrusts upon us. What we think, plan,
say, and do is of profound significance to the future of every corner of
the world.
The great and dominant objective of United States foreign policy is to
build and preserve a just peace. The peace we seek is not peace for twenty
years. It is permanent peace. At a time when massive changes are occurring
with lightning speed throughout the world, it is often difficult to
perceive how this central objective is best served in one isolated complex
situation or another. Despite this very real difficulty, there are certain
basic propositions to which the United States adheres and to which we shall
continue to adhere.
One proposition is that lasting peace requires genuine understanding and
active cooperation among the most powerful nations. Another is that even
the support of the strongest nations cannot guarantee a peace unless it is
infused with the quality of justice for all nations.
On October 27, 1945, I made, in New York City, the following public
statement of my understanding of the fundamental foreign policy of the
United States. I believe that policy to be in accord with the opinion of
the Congress and of the people of the United States. I believe that that
policy carries out our fundamental objectives.
1. We seek no territorial expansion or selfish advantage. We have no plans
for aggression against any other state, large or small. We have no
objective which need clash with the peaceful aims of any other nation.
2. We believe in the eventual return of sovereign rights and
self-government to all peoples who have been deprived of them by force.
3. We shall approve no territorial changes in any friendly part of the
world unless they accord with the freely expressed wishes of the people
concerned.
4. We believe that all peoples who are prepared for self-government should
be permitted to choose their own form of government by their own freely
expressed choice, without interference from any foreign source. That is
true in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, as well as in the Western Hemisphere.
5. By the combined and cooperative action of our war allies, we shall help
the defeated enemy states establish peaceful democratic governments of
their own free choice. And we shall try to attain a world in which nazism,
fascism, and military aggression cannot exist.
6. We shall refuse to recognize any government imposed upon any nation by
the force of any foreign power. In some cases it may be impossible to
prevent forceful imposition of such a government. But the United States
will not recognize any such government.
7. We believe that all nations should have the freedom of the seas and
equal rights to the navigation of boundary rivers and waterways and of
rivers and waterways which pass through more than one country.
8. We believe that all states which are accepted in the society of nations
should have access on equal terms to the trade and the raw materials of the
world.
9. We believe that the sovereign states of the Western Hemisphere, without
interference from outside the Western Hemisphere, must work together as
good neighbors in the solution of their common problems.
10. We believe that full economic collaboration between all nations, great
and small, is essential to the improvement of living conditions all over
the world, and to the establishment of freedom from fear and freedom from
want.
11. We shall continue to strive to promote freedom of expression and
freedom of religion throughout the peace-loving areas of the world.
12. We are convinced that the preservation of peace between nations
requires a United Nations Organization composed of all the peace-loving
nations of the world who are willing jointly to use force, if necessary, to
insure peace.
That is our foreign policy.
We may not always fully succeed in our objectives. There may be instances
where the attainment of those objectives is delayed. But we will not give
our full sanction and approval to actions which fly in the face of these
ideals.
The world has a great stake in the political and economic future of
Germany. The Allied Control Council has now been in operation there for a
substantial period of time. It has not met with unqualified success. The
accommodation of varying views of four governments in the day-to-day civil
administration of occupied territory is a challenging task. In my judgment,
however, the Council has made encouraging progress in the face of most
serious difficulties. It is my purpose at the earliest practicable date to
transfer from military to civilian personnel the execution of United States
participation in the government of occupied territory in Europe. We are
determined that effective control shall be maintained in Germany until we
are satisfied that the German people have regained the right to a place of
honor and respect.
On the other side of the world, a method of international cooperation has
recently been agreed upon for the treatment of Japan. In this pattern of
control, the United States, with the full approval of its partners, has
retained primary authority and primary responsibility. It will continue to
do so until the Japanese people, by their own freely expressed choice,
choose their own form of government.
Our basic policy in the Far East is to encourage the development of a
strong, independent, united, and democratic China. That has been the
traditional policy of the United States.
At Moscow the United States, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and
Great Britain agreed to further this development by supporting the efforts
of the national government and nongovernmental Chinese political elements
in bringing about cessation of civil strife and in broadening the basis of
representation in the Government. That is the policy which General Marshall
is so ably executing today.
It is the purpose of the Government of the United States to proceed as
rapidly as is practicable toward the restoration of the sovereignty of
Korea and the establishment of a democratic government by the free choice
of the people of Korea.
At the threshold of every problem which confronts us today in international
affairs is the appalling devastation, hunger, sickness, and pervasive human
misery that mark so many areas of the world.
By joining and participating in the work of the United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration the United States has directly recognized and
assumed an obligation to give such relief assistance as is practicable to
millions of innocent and helpless victims of the war. The Congress has
earned the gratitude of the world by generous financial contributions to
the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
We have taken the lead, modest though it is, in facilitating under our
existing immigration quotas the admission to the United States of refugees
and displaced persons from Europe.
We have joined with Great Britain in the organization of a commission to
study the problem of Palestine. The Commission is already at work and its
recommendations will be made at an early date.
The members of the United Nations have paid us the high compliment of
choosing the United States as the site of the United Nations headquarters.
We shall be host in spirit as well as in fact, for nowhere does there abide
a fiercer determination that this peace shall live than in the hearts of
the American people.
It is the hope of all Americans that in time future historians will speak
not of World War I and World War II, but of the first and last world wars.