Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History Read online

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  WE ARE HERE to make a choice between the quick and the dead. That is our business.

  Behind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope which, seized upon with faith, can work our salvation. If we fail, then we have damned every man to be the slave of fear. Let us not deceive ourselves: we must elect world peace or world destruction.

  Science has torn from nature a secret so vast in its potentialities that our minds cower from the terror it creates. Yet terror is not enough to inhibit the use of the atomic bomb. The terror created by weapons has never stopped man from employing them. For each new weapon a defense has been produced, in time. But now we face a condition in which adequate defense does not exist.

  Science, which gave us this dread power, shows that it can be made a giant help to humanity, but science does not show us how to prevent its baleful use. So we have been appointed to obviate that peril by finding a meeting of the minds and the hearts of our peoples. Only in the will of mankind lies the answer.

  In this crisis we represent not only our governments but, in a larger way, we represent the peoples of the world. We must remember that the peoples do not belong to the governments, but that the governments belong to the peoples. We must answer their demands; we must answer the world’s longing for peace and security.

  In that desire the United States shares ardently and hopefully. The search of science for the absolute weapon has reached fruition in this country. But she stands ready to proscribe and destroy this instrument—to lift its use from death to life—if the world will join in a pact to that end.

  In our success lies the promise of a new life, freed from the heart-stopping fears that now beset the world. The beginning of victory for the great ideals for which millions have bled and died lies in building a workable plan. Now we approach the fulfillment of the aspirations of mankind. At the end of the road lies the fairer, better, surer life we crave and mean to have.

  Only by a lasting peace are liberties and democracies strengthened and deepened. War is their enemy. And it will not do to believe that any of us can escape war’s devastation. Victor, vanquished, and neutrals alike are affected physically, economically, and morally.

  Against the degradation of war we can erect a safeguard. That is the guerdon for which we reach. Within the scope of the formula we outline here, there will be found, to those who seek it, the essential elements of our purpose. Others will see only emptiness. Each of us carries his own mirror in which is reflected hope—or determined desperation—courage or cowardice.

  There is famine throughout the world today. It starves men’s bodies. But there is a greater famine—the hunger of men’s spirit. That starvation can be cured by the conquest of fear, and the substitution of hope, from which springs faith—faith in each other; faith that we want to work together toward salvation; and determination that those who threaten the peace and safety shall be punished.

  The peoples of these democracies gathered here have a particular concern with our answer, for their peoples hate war. They will have a heavy exaction to make of those who fail to provide an escape. They are not afraid of an internationalism that protects; they are unwilling to be fob-bled off by mouthings about narrow sovereignty, which is today’s phrase for yesterday’s isolationism.

  The basis of a sound foreign policy, in this new age, for all the nations here gathered, is that: anything that happens, no matter where or how, which menaces the peace of the world, or the economic stability, concerns each and all of us.

  That, roughly, may be said to be the central theme of the United Nations. It is with that thought we gain consideration of the most important subject that can engage mankind—life itself.

  Now, if ever, is the time to act for the common good. Public opinion supports a world movement toward security. If I read the signs aright, the peoples want a program, not composed merely of pious thoughts, but of enforceable sanctions—an international law with teeth in it.

  We of this nation, desirous of helping to bring peace to the world and realizing the heavy obligations upon us, arising from our possession of the means for producing the bomb and from the fact that it is part of our armament, are prepared to make our full contribution toward effective control of atomic energy.

  But before a country is ready to relinquish any winning weapons, it must have more than words to reassure it. It must have a guarantee of safety, not only against the offenders in the atomic area, but against the illegal users of other weapons—bacteriological, biological, gas—perhaps—why not?—against war itself.

  In the elimination of war lies our solution, for only then will nations cease to compete with one another in the production and use of dread “secret” weapons which are evaluated solely by their capacity to kill. This devilish program takes us back not merely to the Dark Ages but from cosmos to chaos. If we succeed in finding a suitable way to control atomic weapons, it is reasonable to hope that we may also preclude the use of other weapons adaptable to mass destruction. When a man learns to say “A” he can, if he chooses, learn the rest of the alphabet, too.

  Let this be anchored in our minds:

  Peace is never long preserved by weight of metal or by an armament race. Peace can be made tranquil and secure only by understanding and agreement fortified by sanctions. We must embrace international cooperation or international disintegration.

  Science has taught us how to put the atom to work. But to make it work for good instead of for evil lies in the domain dealing with the principles of human duty. We are now facing a problem more of ethics than of physics.

  The solution will require apparent sacrifice in pride and in position, but better pain as the price of peace than death as the price of war.

  Senator Robert Taft Opposes War Crimes Trials as Ex Post Facto Law

  “The trial of the vanquished by the victors cannot be impartial, no matter how it is hedged about with the forms of justice.”

  Robert A. Taft, son of President William Howard Taft (“Mere size is no sin”), dominated the U.S. Senate in the decade after World War II. He led the fight to break down wartime restrictions such as price controls, lest they become permanent in peacetime, and urged the rollback of other reaches for more central power that marked the New Deal crisis era. Brilliant and abrasive, personally stiff and remote, he became known as Mr. Republican; “To err is Truman” was the famous crack of his wife, Martha; he is remembered for his bill restraining the power of organized labor. Though the exponent of a principled policy to limit the concentration of executive power, his most lasting contribution to the nation’s economy was housing legislation revered by liberals.

  One reason he lost the Republican nomination to Eisenhower in 1952 was his willingness to support unpopular causes in the name of political principle. As World War II ended, and the enormity of Nazi atrocities came to light, the Allied nations moved toward trying Hitler’s aides for the new crime of genocide. Taft reminded Americans that trying anyone for acts later designated as crimes was against all Anglo-American legal principles; pundit David Lawrence, his conservative supporter, called this “a technical quibble,” and Ohio’s Toledo Blade summed up the opinion of the majority in saying Taft’s speech to Kenyon College on October 5, 1946, demonstrated that he “had a wonderful mind which knows practically everything and understands practically nothing.”

  On later review, however, at least another passage of his “equal justice under law” speech—about our failure to protest Stalin’s takeover of the Baltic states—seems prescient in its evocation of human rights as a greater determinant of foreign policy than is the use of force.

  The tone of this Taft speech is formal and dispassionate, the reasoning logical, the style legalistic and bloodless, but in all carrying the weight of principle.

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  …I DESIRE TODAY to speak particularly of equal justice, because it is an essential of individual liberty. Unless there is law, and unless there is an impartial tribunal to administer that law, no man c
an be really free. Without them only force can determine controversy, as in the international field today, and those who have not sufficient force cannot remain free. Without law and an appeal to a just and independent court to interpret that law, every man must be subject to the arbitrary discretion of his ruler or of some subordinate government official.

  Over the portal of the great Supreme Court building in Washington are written the words “Equal Justice under Law.” The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States and every pronouncement of the founders of the government stated the same principle in one form or another. Thomas Jefferson in his first inaugural emphasized above everything the necessity for “equal and exact justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political.”

  In England the progress towards a definite law, administered by efficient and impartial courts or tribunals, was slow and uncertain. The common law developed slowly and only became clear and definite after many centuries. For a long time the courts were anything but impartial, and the actual application of the law was often unfair and unjust. But reverence for the principle must have existed, or it would not have been transported so early to the shores of America to become the dominant theory of government in the colonies….

  Unfortunately, the philosophy of equal justice under law, and acceptance of decisions made in accordance with respected institutions, has steadily lost strength during recent years. It is utterly denied in totalitarian states. There the law and the courts are instruments of state policy. It is inconceivable to the people of such a state that a court would concern itself to be fair to those individuals who appear before it when the state has an adverse interest. Nor do they feel any need of being fair between one man and another. Therefore they see no reason for presenting logical argument to justify a position. Nothing is more typical of the Communist or the Fascist than to assert and reassert an argument which has been completely answered and disproved, in order to create public opinion by propaganda to the ignorant.

  The totalitarian idea has spread throughout many nations where in the nineteenth century, the ideals of liberty and justice were accepted. Even in this country, the theory that the state is finally responsible for every condition, and that every problem must be cured by giving the government arbitrary power to act, has been increasingly the philosophy of the twentieth century. It infects men who still profess complete adherence to individual liberty and individual justice, so that we find them willing to sacrifice both to accomplish some economic or social purpose. There is none of the burning devotion to liberty which characterized Patrick Henry and even the conservative leaders of the American Revolution.

  We see the ignoring of justice internationally when a powerful nation takes the position that its demands must be complied with, “or else,” and refuses to argue or discuss the question. We see it within this country in some labor groups and in some business groups who present ultimatums backed by economic force, and refuse to submit even to partial arbitration. It is present in the world so long as any nation refuses to submit its disputes to argument or adjudication….

  Even more discouraging is the attitude of the people and the press. Government action which twenty-five years ago would have excited a sense of outrage in thousands is reported in a few lines and, if disapproved at all, is disapproved with a shrug of the shoulders and a hopeless feeling that nothing can be done about it.

  To a large extent this feeling has been promoted by the attack on the Supreme Court, and the effort to make the courts instruments of executive policy. The old Court may have been too conservative, but the judges believed they were interpreting the laws and Constitution as they were written, and most of the country believed that they were honestly impartial. Today the Court regards itself as the maker of policy—no maker of policy can command respect for impartial dispensation of justice.

  I believe more strongly than I can say that if we would maintain progress and liberty in America, it is our responsibility to see not only that laws be rewritten to substitute law for arbitrary discretion but that the whole attitude of the people be educated to a deep devotion to law, impartiality, and equal justice. It is even more important to the entire world that these principles be established as the guide for international action. In my opinion they afford the only hope of future peace. Not only must there be a more definite law to govern the relations between nations, not only must there be tribunals to decide controversies under that law, but the peoples of the world must be so imbued with respect for law and the tribunals established that they will accept their decisions without an appeal to force.

  Whether we have a league of sovereign nations like the United Nations, or a world state, there cannot be an end of war if any important people refuse to accept freely the principle of abiding by law, or if truly impartial tribunals are not established.

  Unfortunately, I believe we Americans have also in recent foreign policy been affected by principles of expediency and supposed necessity, and abandoned largely the principle of justice. We have drifted into the acceptance of the idea that the world is to be ruled by the power and policy of the great nations and a police force established by them rather than by international law….

  During the war, and since, I have felt that there has been little justice in our treatment of the neutral countries. We took the position, in effect, that no nation had the right to remain neutral, and bullied these countries to an extreme restrained only by consideration of policy, but not of justice.

  The treatment of enemy countries has seldom been just after any war, but only now are we beginning to get some justice into our treatment of Germany. Our treatment has been harsh in the American Zone as a deliberate matter of government policy, and has offended Americans who saw it, and felt that it was completely at variance with American instincts. We gave countenance to the revengeful and impracticable Morgenthau plan, which would have reduced the Germans to economic poverty. We have fooled ourselves in the belief that we could teach another nation democratic principles by force. Why, we can’t even teach our own people sound principles of government. We cannot teach liberty and justice in Germany by suppressing liberty and justice.

  I believe that most Americans view with discomfort the war trials which have just been concluded in Germany and are proceeding in Japan. They violate that fundamental principle of American law that a man cannot be tried under an ex post facto statute.

  The trial of the vanquished by the victors cannot be impartial, no matter how it is hedged about with the forms of justice. I question whether the hanging of those who, however despicable, were the leaders of the German people will ever discourage the making of aggressive war, for no one makes aggressive war unless he expects to win. About this whole judgment there is the spirit of vengeance, and vengeance is seldom justice. The hanging of the eleven men convicted will be a blot on the American record which we shall long regret.

  In these trials we have accepted the Russian idea of the purpose of trials—government policy and not justice—with little relation to Anglo-Saxon heritage. By clothing policy in the forms of legal procedure, we may discredit the whole idea of justice in Europe for years to come. In the last analysis, even at the end of a frightful war, we should view the future with more hope if even our enemies believed that we had treated them justly in our English-speaking concept of law, in the provision of relief and in the final disposal of territory. I pray that we do not repeat this procedure in Japan, where the justification on grounds of vengeance is much less than in Germany.

  Our whole attitude in the world, for a year after V-E Day, including the use of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, seems to me a departure from the principles of fair and equal treatment, which has made America respected throughout the world before this Second World War. Today we are cordially hated in many countries. I am delighted that Secretary [of State James F.] Byrnes and Senator [Arthur H.] Vandenburg have reversed our policy in many of the respects I have referred to. But abroad
as at home we have a long way to go to restore again to the American people our full heritage of an ingrained belief in fairness, impartiality, and justice.

  Peace in the world can only come if a law is agreed to relating to international relations, if there is a tribunal which can interpret that law and decide disputes between nations, and if the nations are willing to submit their disputes to impartial decision regardless of the outcome. There can be no peace until the public opinion of the world accepts, as a matter of course, the decisions of an international tribunal.

  War has always set back temporarily the ideals of the world. This time, because of the tremendous scope of the war, the increased barbarism of its methods and the general prevalence of the doctrine of force and expediency even before the war, the effect today is even worse and the duration of the postwar period of disillusionment may be longer.

  As I see it, the English-speaking peoples have one great responsibility. That is to restore to the minds of men a devotion to equal justice under law.

  Governor Kissin’ Jim Folsom of Alabama Startles the South with a Concern for the Negro

  “Our Negroes, who constitute 35 percent of our population in Alabama—are they getting 35 percent of the fair share of living?”

  In 1949, southern politicians cared little about civil rights; on the contrary, the votes were to be had by exploiting what later came to be known as racism. James Folsom, at the end of the third year of his first term as Alabama’s governor, was known as Big Jim for his size and as Kissin’ Jim for his habit of enthusiastically bussing women (the sobriquet buttressed by a much-publicized paternity suit against him); he was a populist in the Huey Long tradition, with no intellectual pretensions. Thus, his seriously Christian Christmas message, broadcast on December 25, 1949, came as something of a surprise to constituents, and years later southern scholars saw in it political-social thinking that was considerably ahead of its time.