International: LET US MAKE PEACE1

In a brief of rare logic and eloquence, John Foster Dulles, father of the Japanese treaty, explained the document, defended it against Soviet attacks. Excerpts:

“The nations will here make a peace of justice, not . . . of vengeance. That is not merely an act of generosity toward a vanquished foe; it is an act of enlightened self-interest. For a treaty warped by passion often becomes a boomerang . . .”

The U.S. Role. “In framing the peace, the U.S. has taken an initiative. That was plainly our duty . . . [But] every nation which has constructively interested itself . . . can claim authorship of important parts of the present text. The allied powers have been conducting what, in effect, is an eleven-months’ peace conference, participated in by so many nations as to make this treaty the most broadly based . . . in all history.”

Pacific Defense. “It has been suggested [by Russia] that the treaty ought to deny to Japan ‘the inherent right of collective self-defense’ and permit only a token right of ‘individual self-defense.’ That kind of a peace, in this present kind of a world, would be a fraud . . .”

Reparations. “Japan’s aggression caused tremendous cost, losses and suffering . . . One hundred thousand million dollars would be a modest estimate of the whole . . . [But] if the treaty validated . . . monetary reparations claims against Japan . . . the incentive of her people would be destroyed and they would sink into a misery of body and spirit which would make them an easy prey to . . . totalitarian demagogues . . . Such a treaty . . . would promote disunity among many of the allied powers. There would be bitter competition for . . . an illusory pot of gold . . .”

Search for the Good. “[The treaty] contains . . . imperfections . . . [But] there come times when to seek the perfect is to lose the good . . . It was our common hope that, out of the fiery purge of war, there would rise a new Japan . . . Dignity cannot be developed by those who are subject to alien control . . . Self-respect is not felt by those who have no rights of their own . . . Fellowship is not the mood of peoples who are denied fellowship . . . No nation is bound to sign the treaty . . . The only compulsion is the moral compulsion of grave circumstances. They unite us to say: Let us make peace.”