- Delivered June 14, 1951, before the United States Senate:
-
- "How can we account for our present situation unless
we believe that men high in this Government are concerting to deliver us
to disaster? This must be the product of a great conspiracy, a conspiracy
on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history
of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed,
its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest
men.
-
- Who constitutes the highest circles of this conspiracy?
About that we cannot be sure. We are convinced that Dean Acheson, who steadfastly
serves the interests of nations other than his own, the friend of Alger
Hiss, who supported him in his hour of retribution, who contributed to
his defense fund, must be high on the roster. The President? He is their
captive. I have wondered, as have you, why he did not dispense with so
great a liability as Acheson to his own and his party's interests. It is
now clear to me. In the relationship of master and man, did you ever hear
of man firing master? Truman is a satisfactory front. He is only dimly
aware of what is going on.
-
- I do not believe that Mr. Truman is a conscious party
to the great conspiracy, although it is being conducted in his name. I
believe that if Mr. Truman had the ability to associate good Americans
around him, be would have behaved as a good American in this most dire
of all our crises.
-
- It is when we return to an examination of General Marshall's
record since the spring of 1942 that we approach an explanation of the
carefully planned retreat from victory. Let us again review the Marshall
record, as I have disclosed it from all the sources available, and all
of them friendly. This grim and solitary man it was who, early in World
War II, determined to put his impress upon our global strategy, political
and military.
-
- It was Marshall, who, amid the din for a "second
front now" from every voice of Soviet inspiration, sought to compel
the British to invade across the Channel in the fall of 1942 upon penalty
of our quitting the war in Europe.
-
- It was Marshall who, after North Africa had been secured,
took the strategic direction of the war out of Roosevelt's hands and -
who fought the British desire, shared by Mark Clark, to advance from Italy
into the eastern plains of Europe ahead of the Russians.
-
- It was a Marshall-sponsored memorandum, advising appeasement
of Russia In Europe and the enticement of Russia into the far-eastern war,
circulated at Quebec, which foreshadowed our whole course at Tehran, at
Yalta, and until now in the Far East.
-
- It was Marshall who, at Tehran, made common cause with
Stalin on the strategy of the war in Europe and marched side by side with
him thereafter.
-
- It was Marshall who enjoined his chief of military mission
in Moscow under no circumstances to "irritate" the Russians by
asking them questions about their forces, their weapons, and their plans,
while at the same time opening our schools, factories, and gradually our
secrets to them in this count.
-
- It was Marshall who, as Hanson Baldwin asserts, himself
referring only to the "military authorities," prevented us having
a corridor to Berlin. So it was with the capture and occupation of Berlin
and Prague ahead of the Russians.
-
- It was Marshall who sent Deane to Moscow to collaborate
with Harriman in drafting the terms of the wholly unnecessary bribe paid
to Stalin at Yalta. It was Marshall, with Hiss at his elbow and doing the
physical drafting of agreements at Yalta, who ignored the contrary advice
of his senior, Admiral Leahy, and of MacArtbur and Nimitz in regard to
the folly of a major land invasion of Japan; who submitted intelligence
reports which suppressed more truthful estimates in order to support his
argument, and who finally induced Roosevelt to bring Russia into the Japanese
war with a bribe that reinstated Russia in its pre-1904 imperialistic position
in Manchuria-an act which, in effect, signed the death warrant of the Republic
of China.
-
- It was Marshall, with Acheson and Vincent eagerly assisting,
who created the China policy which, destroying China, robbed us of a great
and friendly ally, a buffer against the Soviet imperialism with which we
are now at war.
-
- It was Marshall who, after long conferences with Acheson
and Vincent, went to China to execute the criminal folly of the disastrous
Marshall mission.
-
- It was Marshall who, upon returning from a diplomatic
defeat for the United States at Moscow, besought the reinstatement of forty
millions in lend-lease for Russia.
-
- It was Marshall who, for 2 years suppressed General Wedemeyer's
report, which is a direct and comprehensive repudiation of the Marshall
policy.
-
- It was Marshall who, disregarding Wedemeyer's advices
on the urgent need for military supplies, the likelihood of China's defeat
without ammunition and equipment, and our "moral obligation"
to furnish them, proposed instead a relief bill bare of military support.
-
- It was the State Department under Marshall, with the
wholehearted support of Michael Lee and Remington in the Commerce Department,
that sabotaged the $125,000,000 military-aid bill to China in 194S.
-
- It was Marshall who fixed the dividing line for Korea
along the thirty-eighth parallel, a line historically chosen by Russia
to mark its sphere of interest in Korea.
-
- It is Marshall's strategy for Korea which has turned
that war into a pointless slaughter, reversing the dictum of Von Clausewitz
and every military theorist since him that the object of a war is not merely
to kill but to impose your will on the enemy.
-
- It is Marshall-Acheson strategy for Europe to build the
defense of Europe solely around the Atlantic Pact nations, excluding the
two great wells of anti-Communist manpower in Western Germany and Spain
and spurning the organized armies of Greece and Turkey-another case of
following the Lattimore advice of "let them fall but don't let it
appear that we pushed them."
-
- It is Marshall who, advocating timidity as a policy so
as not to annoy the forces of Soviet imperialism in Asia, had admittedly
put a brake on the preparations to fight, rationalizing his reluctance
on the ground that the people are fickle and if war does not come, will
hold him to account for excessive zeal.
-
- What can be made of this unbroken series of decisions
and acts contributing to the strategy of defeat? They cannot be attributed
to incompetence. If Marshall were merely stupid, the laws of probability
would dictate that part of his decisions would serve this country's interest.
If Marshall is innocent of guilty intention, how could he be trusted to
guide the defense of this country further? We have declined so precipitously
in relation to the Soviet Union in the last 6 years. How much swifter may
be our fall into disaster with Marshall at the helm? Where Will all this
stop? That is not a rhetorical question: Ours is not a rhetorical danger.
Where next will Marshall carry us? It is useless to suppose that his nominal
superior will ask him to resign. He cannot even dispense with Acheson.
-
- What is the objective of the great conspiracy? I think
it is clear from what has occurred and is now occurring: to diminish the
United States in world affairs, to weaken us militarily, to confuse our
spirit with talk of surrender in the Far East and to impair our will to
resist evil. To what end? To the end that we shall be contained, frustrated
and finally: fall victim to Soviet intrigue from within and Russian military
might from without. Is that farfetched? There have been many examples in
history of rich and powerful states which have been corrupted from within,
enfeebled and deceived until they were unable to resist aggression. . .
.
-
- It is the great crime of the Truman administration that
it has refused to undertake the job of ferreting the enemy from its ranks.
I once puzzled over that refusal. The President, I said, is a loyal American;
why does he not lead in this enterprise? I think that I know why he does
not. The President is not master in his own house. Those who are master
there not only have a desire to protect the sappers and miners - they could
not do otherwise. They themselves are not free. They belong to a larger
conspiracy, the world-wide web of which has been spun from Moscow. It was
Moscow, for example, which decreed that the United States should execute
its loyal friend, the Republic of China. The executioners were that well-identified
group headed by Acheson and George Catlett Marshall.
-
- How, if they would, can they, break these ties, how return
to simple allegiance to their native land? Can men sullied by their long
and dreadful record afford us leadership in the world struggle with the
enemy? How can a man whose every important act for years had contributed
to the prosperity of the enemy reverse himself? The reasons for his past
actions are immaterial. Regardless of why he has done what be did, be has
done it and the momentum of that course bears him onward. . .
-
- The time has come to halt this tepid, milk-and-water
acquiescence which a discredited administration, ruled by disloyalty, sends
down to us. The American may belong to an old culture, he may be beset
by enemies here and abroad, he may be distracted by the many words of counsel
that assail him by day and night, but he is nobody's fool. The time has
come for us to realize that the people who sent us here expect more than
time-serving from us. The American who has never known defeat in war, does
not expect to be again sold down the river in Asia. He does not want that
kind of betrayal. He has had betrayal enough. He has never failed to fight
for his liberties since George Washington rode to Boston in 1775 to put
himself at the head of a band of rebels unversed in war. He is fighting
tonight, fighting gloriously in a war on a distant American frontier made
inglorious by the men he can no longer trust at the head of our affairs.
-
- The America that I know, and that other Senators know,
this vast and teeming and beautiful land, this hopeful society where the
poor share the table of the rich as never before in history, where men
of all colors, of all faiths, are brothers as never before in history,
where great deeds have been done and great deeds are yet to do, that America
deserves to be led not to humiliation or defeat, but to victory.
-
- The Congress of the United States is the people's last
hope, a free and open forum of the people's representatives. We felt the
pulse of the people's response to the return of MacArthur. We know what
it meant. The people, no longer trusting their executive, turn to us, asking
that we reassert the constitutional prerogative of the Congress to declare
the policy for the United States.
-
- The time has come to reassert that prerogative, to oversee
the conduct of this war, to declare that this body must have the final
word on the disposition of Formosa and Korea. They fell from the grasp
of the Japanese empire through our military endeavors, pursuant to a declaration
of war made by the Congress of the United States on December 8, 1941. If
the Senate speaks, as is its right, the disposal of Korea and Formosa can
be made only by a treaty which must be ratified by this body. Should the
administration dare to defy such a declaration, the Congress has abundant
recourses which I need not spell out.
-
-
- Source: The Congressional Record: Proceedings and
Debates of the 82nd Congress, First Session, Volume 97, Part 5 (May 28,
1951-June 27, 1951), pp. 6556-6603.
|
