Cleveland Declaration

Foreign Relations

The biggest body of opinion in the U.S. last week gave the No. 1 plank in President Roosevelt's foreign policy all the support that he could ask or want. In Cleveland, at a conference sponsored by the Federal Council of Churches of Christ, leaders of some 25,000,000 U.S. Protestants voted unanimous, unconditional approval of the Dumbarton Oaks plan for world security.*

This action did not mean that the 500 serious-minded clerics and laymen assembled in Cleveland liked everything about the Dumbarton Oaks plan as it now stands. They had some grave objections, but they decided that since Dumbarton Oaks is all there is, better something than nothing. Said the president of the Federal Council, New York's Methodist Bishop Garfield Bromley Oxnam:

"Improvement must be made. But [first] we must establish an organization; otherwise there is nothing to improve."

The man most responsible for giving President Roosevelt the most important moral support he has yet received was John Foster Dulles--the man whom New Dealers (led by Senator Claude Pepper, Walter Winchell, Drew Pearson and PM) had worked hard to smear in the 1944 campaign. A conscientious international lawyer, grandson of a U.S. Secretary of State, Republican Dulles has devoted most of his life to international problems. For four years he has chairmanned the Federal Council's Commission on a Just and Durable Peace. His and the Council's great objective was largely achieved last week --to give to Protestants a vigorous point of view on international affairs which would be compatible both with the highest Christian ethics and with the ugly facts of human life in a sinful world.

The Cleveland conference lasted for four days of earnest, enlightening debates (see box). After the unconditional endorsement of Dumbarton Oaks, the Christians made plain their Christianity by demanding "improvements" in terms of the following nine points:

1) Small nations should be specifically protected from any abuse of power by the Big Powers.

2) Principles (as in the Atlantic Charter) should be written into the final Dumbarton charter. (In its present form Dumbarton is scandalously naked of principles.)

3) Law. The organization must be based eventually upon law rather than upon brute force. The present plan includes an international court, but makes no mention whatever of what law the court is to make or enforce.

4) Point against Stalin. On a touchy point soon to be taken up by Messrs. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin (see above), the conference sided squarely against the Soviet Union: "A nation, while having the right to discuss its own case, should not be permitted to vote when its case is being judged. . . ."

5) Point against Churchill. On one of the touchiest long-range points, the conference sided squarely against Imperialist Churchill. No single nation or empire, said the Protestant leaders, should be left solely responsible for the progress of its colonies or other dependencies toward full autonomy (the conferees did not say "independence"). Instead, the welfare of subject peoples should be made an international responsibility, vested in a special international agency within the world organization.*

6) Future Changes. More flexible provision should be made for future changes in the charter.

7) Freedom. A special agency should be set up to deal with "human rights and fundamental freedoms."

8) One World. The charter should clearly specify that the world organization is open to "all nations willing to accept the obligations of membership." The Protestant critics apparently felt that the present bars against enemy countries and satellites are too rigid.

9) Armaments. "More specific provision should be made for promptly initiating the limitation and reduction of national armaments."

* Last November, 118 U.S. Catholic bishops and archbishops took a different course. They made their approval of Dumbarton Oaks conditional upon vital changes (TIME, Nov. 27). Like the Protestant leaders, they wanted to make Dumbarton Oaks less of a big-power vehicle, more of a world association based on principles of justice.

* Last week, Oliver Stanley, His Majesty's Secretary of State for Colonies, was in the U.S., enunciating the proposition that Britain would reform its empire but would not submit to any form of international advice.

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