The truth
is that no nation can be constantly prepared to undertake a full-scale
war at any moment and still hope to maintain any of the other
purposes in which people are interested and for which nations
are founded.
In the first
place, it requires a complete surrender of liberty and the turning
over to the central government of power to control in detail the
lives of the people and all of their activities.
While in
time of war people are willing to surrender those liberties in
order to protect the ultimate liberty of the entire country, they
do so on the theory that it is a limited surrender and one which
they hope will soon be over, perhaps within a few months, certainly
within a few years. But an indefinite surrender of liberty such
as would be required by an all-out war program in time of peace
might mean the final and complete destruction of those liberties
which it is the very purpose of the preparation to protect.
Furthermore,
the destruction of that liberty in the long run will put an end
to the constant progress which has characterized this country
during its 160 years of life, a progress due more than anything
else to the freedom of men to think their own thoughts, live their
own lives, and run their own affairs.
It would
require a complete surrender of all of our material and humanitarian
aims to increase the standard of living of our people and of the
people of our allies. All of those standards of living would have
to be reduced, because even the most optimistic do not feel that
we can have all the guns we want and all the butter we want at
the same time.
It would
be impossible to conduct any such all-out program without inflation.
In World War II, in spite of complete controls, we saw an increase
in prices, apparently permanent, of about 70 per cent, a depreciation
of the dollar to sixty cents. I doubt if any government spending
program calling for half the national income could be undertaken
which would not involve an increase in prices of at least 10 per
cent every year and a corresponding depreciation in the value
of the dollar.
This would
mean the destruction of savings and life insurance policies. It
would mean a constant race between prices and wages. It would
mean hardship for millions, and doubt and uncertainty for many
millions more. It would mean constant domestic turmoil and disagreement.
Finally,
it would interfere with the very production which is the great
basis of the strength of the United States and to which not only
our own people but all of our allies look for ultimate victory
if there should be a war with Russia.
The truth
is, also, that the most foresighted person could not set up a
preparation that would protect us against every conceivable contingency.
One or two Pearl Harbors might lay us open to a dangerous attack.
We have to choose those measures which will give us the most complete
protection within our reasonable economic capacity.
In short,
there is a definite limit to what a government can spend in time
of peace and still maintain a free economy, without inflation
and with at least some elements of progress in standards of living
and in education, welfare, housing, health, and other activities
in which the people are vitally interested.
The question
which we have to determine, and which apparently nobody in the
Administration has really thought through, is the point at which
we reach the economic limitation in time of peace on government
expenditures and a military program. After that we must choose
between the various measures contributing to our defense, to determine
which are of first importance and which can be ignored without
serious danger. (pp. 69–70)
An unwise
and overambitious foreign policy, and particularly the effort
to do more than we are able to do, is the one thing which might
in the end destroy our armies and prove a real threat to the liberty
of the people of the United States....
And when
I say liberty I do not simply mean what is referred to as "free
enterprise." I mean liberty of the individual to think his own
thoughts and live his own life as he desires to think and to live;
the liberty of the family to decide how they wish to live, what
they want to eat for breakfast and for dinner, and how they wish
to spend their time; liberty of a man to develop his ideas and
get other people to teach those ideas, if he can convince them
that they have some value to the world; liberty of every local
community to decide how its children shall be educated, how its
local services shall be run, and who its local leaders shall be;
liberty of a man to choose his own occupation; and liberty of
a man to run his own business as he thinks it ought to be run,
as long as he does not interfere with the right of other people
to do the same thing.
We cannot
overestimate the value of this liberty of ideas and liberty of
action. It is not that you or I or some industrial genius is free;
it is that millions of people are free to work out their own ideas
and the country is free to choose between them and adopt those
which offer the most progress. I have been through hundreds of
industrial plants in the last two or three years, and in every
plant I find that the people running that plant feel that they
have something in the way of methods or ideas or machinery that
no other plant has. I have met men said to be the best machinists
in the industry who have built special machines for a particular
purpose in which that company is interested.
Thousands
of wholly free and independent thinkers are working out these
ideas and have the right and ability to try them out without getting
the approval of some government bureau. You can imagine the difference
between the progress under such a system and one in which the
government ran every plant in the country as it runs the post
offices today. There would be one idea for a hundred that are
now developed. If any plant employee had an idea for progress
and wrote to Washington, he probably would get back a letter referring
him to Regulation No. 5201 (c), which tells him exactly how this
particular thing should be done, and has been done for the past
fifty years.
It is clear
to me that the great progress made in this country, the tremendous
production of our people, the productivity per man of our workmen
have grown out of this liberty and the freedom to develop ideas.
We have the highest standard of living, because we produce more
per person than any other country in the world.
After the
American Revolution and the French Revolution the whole world
became convinced that liberty was the key to progress and happiness
for the peoples of the world, and this theory was accepted, even
in those countries where there was, in fact, no liberty. People
left Europe and came to this country, not so much because of the
economic conditions as because they sought a liberty which they
could not find at home. But gradually this philosophy has been
replaced by the idea that happiness can only be conferred upon
the people by the grace of an efficient government. Only the government,
it is said, has the expert knowledge necessary for the people's
welfare; only the government has the power to carry out the grandiose
plans so necessary in a complicated world.
Those who
accept the principle of socialism, of government direction, and
of government bureaucracy have a hard time battling against the
ideology of communism. Our labor union leaders cannot effectively
fight communism, as such, because they favor a socialist control
that comes very close to communism in the actual measures which
are to be undertaken. Even our statesmen seem to be handicapped
in the same way.
Thus, Secretary
Acheson only a year ago stated: "To say that the main motive of
American foreign policy was to halt the spread of communism was
putting the cart before the horse. The United States was interested
in stopping communism chiefly because it had become a subtle instrument
of Soviet imperialism."
With this
point of view I emphatically disagree. I believe that we should
battle the principles of communism and socialism and convince
the world that true happiness lies in the establishment of a system
of liberty, that communism and socialism are the very antithesis
of liberalism, and that only a nation conceived in liberty can
hope to bring real happiness to its people or to the world. (pp.
155–117)
