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JX 2353

no.66

DEPARTMENT OF STATE

PUELICATION 2239

CONFERENCE SERIES 62

Copies of this publication are for sale by the Superintendent of Dccuments, Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D. C. at 5 cents a copy.

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Dumbarton Oaks Proposals

Address by

Joseph C. Grew1

"Army and Navy leaders are agreed that, if any aggressor again attempts world conquest, this nation will be attacked first of all. We shall be hit suddenly, by surprise, and hard. We can never again expect that other nations will take the first shock and hold off the enemy until we can arm.

"The reason is plain. We have twice shown the world that we have greater war power than any other nation on earth when given time to mobilize t. So a future aggressor's first goal must be to rush us before he attacks anyone else; and not give us what we have always needed in other emergencies-time.

"Such a blow has become possible. We are no onger out of reach. Today's airplanes cross oceans on routine operations. Tomorrow the B-29-which can drop a big bomb load on targets 1,000 miles distant and come home-will be superseded by planes with much longer range, dropping more powerful bombs. Planes dragging gliders laden with airborne troops will be able to fly from Europe or Asia and land men to seize Pittsburgh steel mills or the Mississippi River bridges. In the foreseeable future are improved invasion craft which could land troops and supplies on our coasts. There will be robot bombs of greater accuracy, launched from planes, from carriers, from islands-perhaps even from other continents. We may be struck out of the blue by lightnings we did not know existed.

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"Our geographical position can no longer be

1 Broadcast over the Columbia Broadcasting System.

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considered a protection,' says Secretary of W Stimson."

The foregoing quotation is from an article in tl December issue of the Reader's Digest by Thom M. Johnson, who has been a close student of mil tary affairs since the last war. I think it deserv the most thoughtful attention of our people. T article is entitled "The Military Essentials for Ou Postwar Safety", and it contains proposals fo America's preparedness in the years ahead.

I believe implicitly in the importance of mil tary and naval preparedness. I have always be lieved in it and have fully and frequently gone o record to that effect. I believe in it now more tha ever. But I believe in two kinds of preparednesspreparedness for war and preparedness for th maintenance of peace. If history has taught u nothing else, it has shown us beyond peradventur that, if human nature is allowed to run its norma course uncurbed, peace cannot and will not b maintained. Preparedness there must be, and curbs there must be, if world peace and securit are to be insured. Throughout history, mankin has tried to set up effective peace machinery China tried it some 500 years before Christ; Greec tried it; Rome tried it; William Penn proposed in effect a United States of Europe in which all state I would submit their differences to a world court of arbitration and would promptly act together to crush an aggressor. Yet all failed, and finally even the creation of the League of Nations and the Kellogg-Briand pact failed to prevent war Why did they fail? They failed because these peace plans were superficial. They were like poult tices prescribed for cancer. This time we canno afford to fail.

Now in erecting our future peace structure, w must have in mind two fundamental considera tions: First, the structure must overcome the flaw and weaknesses of the ineffective machinery oft the past; second, we cannot hope to erect effective machinery unless we, as a nation, are willing to make what in the past has been considered sacri

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