Address by Eleanor Roosevelt to the Women's Joint Congressional Committee

14 March 1946 [Washington D.C]

Madam Chairman,³ Senator Connally, distinguished guests, Mrs. Wilson,⁴ ladies and gentlemen, I am deeply touched by the honor which the organizations represented here have paid to me tonight and I am deeply touched by the Senator's introduction. I think that what really was accomplished in London was accomplished by our delegation working together. None of us did any better work than all the members of the delegation. We met and talked our problems over. We were given information by our advisers. I am glad that Miss Fosdick⁵ is here this evening and I hope she will take back to the numerous people from the State Department, who worked with us my feeling of gratitude for the wonderful help which was given to all of us who were delegates, or alternates, and who needed help to do a good job.

I like the feeling that everyone of us went to London with; we had just one main objective: We wanted to set in motion an organization for which the Charter had been written, but which as yet was not actually functioning, and we wanted to set it in motion so that the world might hope for world peace in the future. We knew that setting up the organization wasn't going to give us world peace, but we knew that it was the machinery through which we could or would have world peace in the future.

I never forgot in those days in London the gratitude which we owe to President Woodrow Wilson and the people who had worked with him to set up the League of Nations because over and over again the work which had been done made it possible to do what we hope will prove to be more effective work this time. However, it cannot be more effective unless the peoples of the world state that it shall be effective.

I sometimes wonder if we in this country realize what our responsibility is. I have had people say to me in the course of the last few days, "Well, why should we give up food? Why should we be uncomfortable? Europe brought this situation on herself. What difference does it make to us?"⁶ Sometimes, as I look at our domestic scene, I wonder if that is a widespread idea, if really we are thinking throughout this country that our domestic affairs can be isolated from world affairs. If we still think that, then I am afraid the future is a very, very dark future and I am afraid that our vision is a very narrow vision, because during the war we have developed in this country the greatest pro-duction capacity in the world. Now, if you produce very successfully, you produce for a purpose. You produce so that others may have what you produce, and they must be in a position so that they can have desires and the wherewithal to achieve their desires. Therefore, if we are chiefly concerned today with what happens to us in the next year or two and forget, because of that concern, what is happening to the rest of the world, then we are endangering the rest of the world surely, but ourselves just as surely in the course of the next few years. That is one of the lessons which I hope we are going to face and to learn fairly quickly. If we don't do it, I don't know just what is going to bring us to a realization of what another war would mean.

We are such a fortunate Nation. No bombs have dropped on us; no bombs have destroyed our homes and our factories. We have lost loved ones, but they fought in far away places and in many cases we cannot even imagine what they went through. We have been spared a good deal and I don't think we were spared because of some particular value in us as human beings which sets us apart from other human beings in the world. I think we were spared for a purpose which we can justify or we can find that there is nothing in us that arises to the challenge of the opportunity that is offered us. And if we cannot rise to that challenge, then perhaps we will not be spared again.

Several people have said to me in the course of the last few days, "Well, things look very bad." One young reporter said to me in New York the other night, "I wonder whether you share our pessimism. We on the newspapers think that the United Nations is going to have its last meeting. We don't see any real hope of success."

That can only happen if the peoples of the world abdicate actually saying what they feel. I don't believe our people or the people of Russia or the people of Great Britain want another war, but I do believe that we have to say how we feel. We have to say that force has been used for a long time in the world and it does not seem as though one could do away with it immediately; therefore, one must build collective force, which can be used by all the nations, or one cannot cut down on individual force. You have to build a strong United Nations and gradually you have to build the confidence of people in each other and in the ability to work together in order to hope for world peace.

When I went to London I thought that I really knew what war was like and that I knew why I never wanted to see my country subjected to war upon its own doorstep, but I don't think I ever realized what war today, without the atomic bomb, could actually accomplish, perhaps because I am a very old lady. I look back over a long period on Europe and Great Britain. I can remember Europe very well because some 47 years ago I went to school in England⁷ and I lived with families in many of the countries where war has been on their doorstep, and I knew those cities and those countrysides before two World Wars had been fought.⁸ Then at the end of the last war, within the six weeks after the armistice, I went over the front where we had fought,⁹ and 10 years later I went back and saw how quickly nature helps us to forget.¹⁰ I realize, however, that there were many things that even nature couldn't wipe out.

Then, in the Assembly, my first real thought that covered those periods was brought very sharply before me when we were looking for candidates for Secretary-General. The Senator will remember that we wanted candidates who had had experience in their own countries, who had made some name as executives and statesmen, but we wanted them to be fairly young, and as we talked something suddenly clicked in my mind. I remembered in '28 motoring through little villages in England, stopping in the evening and looking at the monument in the middle of the town, with its sides covered with names, and saying to the boys, "Those are the names of men who went from this little village, all of whom were killed in the war."¹¹ And then going to the little church. In nearly all those towns there is an old family tradition which prompts some member of each generation to go into politics in Great Britain. There were always these monuments. I remember one in particular on which were recorded the names of every young member of a certain family, the last of that family, all of whom had been killed, perhaps in the retreat from the Marne.¹²

Then we drove over the battlefield and suddenly the older of my boys¹³ said to me, "This is a funny country, Mommy. Out of the fields there are only coming boys our age and old men. Where are the men in between whom we have coming out of the fields at home?" Dead, crippled, hospitalized! So, a whole generation practically was taken out of the leadership of Europe. That is something to remember.

We looked and we didn't find very many people in that age bracket, and that was a loss, a great loss to the whole of European civilization.

After I was through with my part of the work in London I went over for 2 1/2 days only to our zone in Germany.¹⁴ It is foolish to talk of really getting much information in 2 1/2 days, but if you have a background of knowing a countryside and a country well—different countries well—and you have talked with many people, I think you may gain impressions even in 2 1/2 days. If I needed an added reason for knowing why I wanted world peace and why I didn't want war on our doorstep, I gained it in 2 1/2 days in our zone in Germany.

I wish everyone in this country could know what was accomplished without the atomic bomb in destruction. Remember that I saw destruction within 6 weeks at the end of the last war. So, I know what we did in the last war, too. However, the comparison is rather terrific. Berlin is a city of 5,000,000 or so inhabitants. Today they told me some 3,500,000 people still live there. The streets don't seem to have that number of people around. A good many of them, I don't believe, feel much like moving around, but those who are cold have to go and get their wood. They are on a ration; it is like this. You only get enough to cook your soup, which is your main meal for the day—and it is potato soup, with which you get a hunk of bread. That is your main meal. 1,500 calories are not a very great amount of food and you have none of the other foods to compensate. So you get a cup of coffee with a little teaspoon of sugar and a little condensed milk in it and a hunk of bread for breakfast and the same for supper, or a little leftover soup. That is not a very satisfactory diet. It will keep you alive, but you don't have much energy. You only do the things that you have to do.

The curious thing about war is that it is no respecter of persons. General Clay¹⁵ lives in the one house which just happened to be spared in an area where everything else went. The windows were all out but they could be replaced, and it was a very comfortable house. A German industrialist lived in it who thought that he could be safe regardless of what happened to other people and although Berlin had by that time begun to be hungry, he was not hungry. He had barrels of food stored. When General Clay went in he found them. You see, in the end the industrialist who thought he could be selfish had exactly the same fate that all the other people have when war takes its toll on your doorstep.

Today the people of Berlin live in cellars or, if they can find a room which is watertight, they may live in that room.

The people of many other places in Europe have lived for many years not only in devastated cities but under the heel of a conqueror, and the result is a very terrifying thing in its effect on people. You may ask me why I think in 2 1/2 days I can sense what happened to people. Well, it is a curious thing, but there is a feeling that spreads over a land and I don't think any one of you could spend time anywhere on the continent of Europe or talk long to any people who had been through the last 5 or 6 years and not get the feel of a civilization that of itself is going to have a very hard time coming back.

They require goods from us. There is not much use in giving them loans if we don't give them things to build up their country, machinery, to modernize their various necessary activities. They must have that from us because nobody else in the world can provide it today. They must have food because no one can starve and rehabilitate a country. They must have leadership, people who know how to do things and who have the energy to do them.

I kept trying to compare the people I was seeing with our people in the worst period that I remember in this country, the days of the depression in '33, in the worst sections that I could remember in this country. You may have forgotten, but I remember that it took some of our people 3 to 5 years, while they were out of work for that length of time, to get back their initiative and their confidence in themselves. Well, remember that those people, many of them young people, have been in concentration camps and labor camps for 4 or 5 years. One French woman said to me something that I felt and thought about as I went into Germany. She had said to me in London, "Aye, Madam, it is not just the physical rehabilitation that people go through. When people have suffered so much, they either go crazy or they die or something happens to their personality so that they cannot feel any more. When they come back now and go to a sanatorium, physically they may come back, but it varies how that sense of numbness goes. Sometimes it takes a long time; sometimes it never goes."

While that is happening that person does not provide leadership, that person is almost like a living dead person. Europe has many of those people.

There is another thing that we must remember. There were young people in the resistance movements all over Europe. They were brave, and for 4, 5, or 6 years they fought in the resistance movements. I think I should add this: That sometimes, we forget the range of age in the resistance movements. There were little children engaged in this dangerous work, and it went right up to the older people. The people we need today first of all are the young people from 15 to 25. Well, that age would ordinarily have been in school learning their skills, learning to earn a living, learning whatever they wished to do in life. They have not been to that kind of school; they have been to another kind, though, which matures one very rapidly. That is the school where every time you open a door death may wait just outside. That is a maturing school, but, you see, the things that were virtues in the resistance—lying, cheating, stealing, killing—are no longer virtues after the resistance is over. Now you say to your people, "Go back to school and learn how to live in a peaceful society. Go and keep your house, young ladies; it is time you were making a home. The things which you have done in the last few years are now criminal offenses, so don't do them any more."

That is rather a rapid change, isn't it? That is something hard to learn overnight. If you had to live with death as a possibility day in and day out, you were certain of a lot of excitement. It is not quite so easy to go back and keep your house and get an education and start out on peaceful living.

That is what I want you to think of when you say, as I hope you will every day of your lives, "We want to build for world peace. We want to use this machinery. We in this country are willing to pay the price for world peace."

It is a heavy price. It means education of a nation that has always been isolationist at heart. We love our own country. We have felt that our salvation lay in living within ourselves. Now suddenly we say to our people, "You cannot live for yourselves alone. You depend on the rest of the world and the rest of the world depends on you." That is a very hard lesson to learn. You haven't had any of these things happen to you that I have been telling you about. Yet interdependence is what we have to learn if we are going to be willing to pay the price for peace. We are today the strongest nation on earth, even though we have disarmed to an extent; that is to say, we have a smaller army and our people don't want to go to war, and we don't want to stay prepared for war, and we don't want to think of production as a world need. Nevertheless, the United States and Russia are the two nations, which, being the youngest, have the greatest vitality. I am not minimizing Great Britain's strength. I am not minimizing what Great Britain did for us when she stood alone for a whole year. We can never forget what Mr. Churchill's leadership meant in winning the war, but we should not have our vision clouded by thinking that the English-speaking people of the world, despite their strength, can get along without the far greater number of people that are not English-speaking.¹⁶

It is going to take much patience for us to learn about other people. We haven't been interested very much, and we have a lot to learn. They have a lot to learn about us. I know only too well some of the things that I consider fundamental that other nations don't consider quite so fundamental. There is one thing that I think we have to realize, however, and that is that we have taken for granted too much the fact that saying, "We are a republic and our way of life is democratic" does not teach people what we mean, nor is it telling them what the things are that we believe in and are willing to die for. It is much easier if you can just tell people a few things that they must believe and put it in very simple words and have them repeat it parrot fashion. Unfortunately, you cannot do that with democracy. Democracy is something you really have to understand and live. It is a little hard for people in other parts of the world not to find us at times a little inconsistent in our democracy.¹⁷ They sometimes wonder whether some of the things which we say are really things we believe in, or whether they are just words that sound pretty.

Someone said to me in the Press Club,¹⁸ "Well, we are not living up to the Atlantic Charter."¹⁹ No, perhaps not; neither do we live up to everything in our Constitution,²⁰ but I think it is good for us to have the Constitution and the Bill of Rights²¹ and I think it is a good thing for us to have the Atlantic Charter. I think it is a good thing to realize that 51 nations agreed to the Atlantic Charter. There will be things that all of us don't live up to right along and it would be well for us to remember that there are nations that have a great deal to learn and that are still young and are growing nations.

We have to have our own convictions and our faith so clear that we can state them and live by them and prove that what we say we actually mean, so we can say quite plainly that "we are not afraid of your beliefs; we can live in the same world with you, though you differ from us, because we can meet the needs of our people; and 20 years from now our people will have more of what they want than your people will have, and therein lies the proof that our beliefs are the best beliefs in the world." Just saying that you don't believe in certain things is all right, but you have to be able to prove what you say and the proof is the real achievement, over the years, of happiness for your people. No happiness can come to any people if we allow another world war.

I cannot tell you what destruction is. No one can. I think I will tell you one story which filled me with horror. In Great Britain today they have a little more than they have in Holland. Actually they have a great deal more, although we wouldn't think it much. Holland is hard hit. So, Great Britain takes several hundred children and keeps them 3 or 4 months and they go back much better in body than when they came. These children had to be outfitted in England. I suppose you wonder why it was necessary to outfit them there; the reason is you cannot buy anything in Holland today. You cannot buy a sheet of paper or a pen or a pencil. There are no consumer goods. You cannot buy anything in Russia. You cannot buy anything in any of these countries.

The children come over and they are given a set of clothes and a pair of shoes. The women who were doing the outfitting in England found that the children required shoes that were two sizes larger than the clothes they wore. That seemed odd. They pass two medical examinations, one in Holland and one in England. The medical examiners are careful because when people have been hungry (and some of them under the German occupation have starved because the calories were between 800 and 1,000) their resistance becomes pretty badly depleted and they are therefore prone to carry diseases and start them. So they have two examinations; yet no one had any explanation as to why they take shoes that are two sizes larger than the clothes they need and why they wear them out twice as quickly as the British children do. So, an orthopedic surgeon and an X-ray machine were brought to the camp where they were and they X-rayed the feet of those children and watched them walk. The feet spread out, heels going down first and then the toes and a shuffle. The X-rays showed that there were no bones in their feet; there was just gristle. That was the result of lack of food, of hunger. They were given calcium and they went back much better, but that is just one more tragic thing that war brings in its wake. There are many, many more stories I could tell. I could go on for a long time trying to tell you what this means to people, physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Somehow we have to understand, because unless we do, the leadership that we can take will slip out of our hands and the results will not just be bad for Europe, they will be equally bad for us in 2 or 3 or 5 years. We are a great production nation and we need people to buy from us. Economic questions are tied up with political questions the world over today. Don't ever look at anything that happens anywhere without trying to see it from all sides.

The fear of war (because most of these people know what war is and fear it) the fear of not being secure, of being invaded and the fear of the economic situation affects the political situation also. We have to understand things that we have never understood or really cared about before, things that we were glad to turn our backs on, things that we hoped profoundly would never be our business. Today it is our business, if we don't want war.

Everyone of us hopes in our hearts that if war comes again it will not be in our country any more than it was this time. I wonder how many of you read Goering's testimony today, that he had asked before the war in Germany came for the building of planes that would carry destruction to our production cities and get back to Germany, and he had asked for that before the war started.²²

Don't let's fool ourselves that another war will see us come away scot free again. Let us know what has happened to the nations where war has been on their doorstep. Let's face what has happened to people and let's make up our minds whether we are ready to pay the price of peace. If we are, we are not going to be afraid to stand up for the things that we believe in in the world; oh, no, but we are going to examine what we do believe in and why, and we are going to look at the rest of the world, at least we are going to try to look at what other people need and what they believe in and what their fears and desires are, and see whether 51 nations meeting together can face those problems and deal with them collectively.

Let's stop counting entirely on individual strength and try to build up collective strength, not just collective military strength but collective moral and spiritual and economic strength, so that the world may be able to live in the future. Hunger, lack of opportunity, poverty, unhappy people—they make war; they make revolutions, and there are no more unreachable places. An epidemic today can reach us just as easily from Europe or from the Far East as if it started right in our midst.

Every morning remember that the thing we should pray for first is: God, give us understanding of what we have been spared and make us truly grateful, but in addition give us the strength to see that the sacrifices of those we loved have not been made in vain and to remember day in and day out that there is a price for peace, that we work for it just as we work in war, and that only through our work together can the world have hope in the future.

PSp HSTOF, HSTL

1. The Women's Joint Congressional Committee formed in 1920 after the achievement of women's suffrage. It consisted of twenty-two national women's organizations, with a combined total of more than ten million women members, working to lobby Congress on behalf of women. The twenty-two members included the American Association of University Women, the American Dietetic Association, the American Home Economics Association, the American Medical Women's Association, the American Nurses' Association, the American Psychotherapy Association, the Association for Childhood Education, the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the Girls' Friendly Society of the USA, the National Association of Nursery Education, the National Board of the Young Women's Christian Association, the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, the National Consumers' League, the National Council of Jewish Women, the National Education Association, the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, the National Women's Trade Union League of America, the Service Star Legion, the United Council of Church Women, and the Women's National Homeopathic Medical Fraternity ("Proceedings at Dinner in Honor of Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt," 14 March 1946, 3, HSTOF, HSTL).

2. Remarks, Senator Tom Connally, "Proceedings at Dinner in Honor of Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt," 14 March 1946, 8, HSTOF, HSTL.

3. Mrs. Louis Ottenberg, vice chairman of the Women's Joint Congressional Committee, representing the National Council of Jewish Women ("Proceedings at Dinner in Honor of Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt," 14 March 1946, 5, HSTOF, HSTL).

4. Edith Bolling Galt (Mrs. Woodrow) Wilson ("Proceedings at Dinner in Honor of Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt," 14 March 1946, 7, HSTOF, HSTL).

5. Dorothy Fosdick, State Department advisor to the US Delegation to the General Assembly of the United Nations. See n19 Document 75.

6.Calling the food crisis in Europe "the worst hunger crisis in human history," Truman announced February 6 a 25 percent reduction in the amount of grain, meat, dairy products, fats, and oil available to the United States so that the United States might increase its food contribution to the UNRRA campaign against hunger in Europe. Reaction to the proposal was swift and decidedly mixed. That afternoon, leading US food producers criticized the sudden announcement, arguing that the proposal would reinstate food rationing and lower the profits the producers could receive. As criticism escalated, Truman asked former president Hoover, who served as food administrator during World War I, to coordinate the food collection effort (Felix Blair, "Asks We Eat Less," NYT, 8 February 1946, 1; "Food Men Upset by Truman Order," NYT, 8 February 1946, 8; "Hoover Urges U.S. to Heed Food Plea," NYT, 9 February, 5).

7. ER attended the Allenswood School in England from 1899 to 1902 (Cook, vol. 1, 101, 120).

8. ER went to Europe for the first time when she was six, visiting Germany, Austria, Italy, and France with her parents. During her years at Allenswood, she visited France and Italy, this time with Marie Souvestre, the director of the school. On their honeymoon, ER and FDR visited England, France, Italy, and Switzerland. On all of these trips, ER sometimes visited or stayed in the homes of people native to those countries (Lash, Eleanor, 34-37, 84-85, 147-50).

9. In January 1919, just after the end of World War I, ER visited the devastated battlefields of France with FDR, then assistant secretary of the navy (Lash, Eleanor, 231-32).

10. In 1929, ER motored through Ireland, England, Belgium, Germany, and France, and visited the World War I battlefields with Nancy Cook, Marion Dickerman, and two of her sons, John and Franklin Jr. (Lash, Eleanor, 32-33; Cook, vol. 1, 412-14).

11. ER is actually referring to her trip of 1929 (see n10 above). She spent most of 1928 working on Al Smith's campaign for the presidency. Between July and September 1929 she toured Europe with Franklin, Jr., John, Marion Dickerman, and Nancy Cook. The portion of the tour in England included visits to the Lake District, Stratford-on-Avon, Stonehenge, Salisbury, Winchester, Oxford, Hampton Court, and London. In her autobiography, ER again compared her feelings about Europe after each of the World Wars; she experienced the overwhelming "sense of the loss of a generation" (Davis, 94; Lash, Eleanor, 309-33; ER, TIR, 60).

12. The French retreated from the River Marne in 1914 after the first battle they fought there with the Germans during World War I (OEWH).

13. Franklin Roosevelt, Jr.

14. After its defeat in World War II, the Allies divided Germany into four zones of occupation: American, British, Russian, and French. The American forces controlled Bavaria, Wurttemberg, and Thuringia, as well as a supply corridor through Bremen, which remained under British control (OEWH; "Zones in Reich Listed," NYT, 13 May 1945, 10).

15. General Lucius Clay (1897–1978) served as General Dwight D. Eisenhower's deputy in charge of civil-military affairs in the American zone of occupied Germany. See n13 Document 94.

16. The transcript indicates that "prolonged applause" interrupted ER's remarks ("Proceedings at Dinner in Honor of Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt," 14 March 1946, 12, HSTOF, HSTL).

17. The audience received ER's remark with "laughter" ("Proceedings at Dinner in Honor of Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt," 14 March 1946, 12, HSTOF, HSTL).

18. The Women's Press Club of London bestowed an honorary membership upon ER on February 4. On this occasion she spoke about the first meetings of the United Nations and referred explicitly to tensions between Soviet and British delegates, believing it better to discuss disagreements rather than allow issues to "boil under the surface until they explode." See also ER's references to her press club speech in her diary entries and Document 88 ("London Roosevelt Memorial Pilgrims' Aim; Society Breaks Custom in Dinner to Widow," NYT, 5 February 1946, 5).

19. FDR and Churchill issued the Atlantic Charter after their first wartime conference in August 1941 as a statement of principles intended to shape the postwar world. Among the principles included were: the right of people to self-determination, the renunciation of territorial claims, the protection of nations against forced changes in territory, free trade, and freedom from want and fear. After the United States entered the war in December 1941, these principles became the war aims of the Allies and were later incorporated into the charter of the United Nations (OEWH).

20. "Laughter" again interrupted ER's sentence ("Proceedings at Dinner in Honor of Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt," 14 March 1946, 12, HSTOF, HSTL).

21. The transcript shows that "applause" disrupted ER mid-sentence ("Proceedings at Dinner in Honor of Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt," 14 March 1946, 12, HSTOF, HSTL).

22. Beginning on March 13, 1946, Hermann Wilhelm Göring (1893–1946) testified at his Nuremberg trial on German preparations for and conduct during World War II, defending Nazi policies and his own role in them. Göring, who had been commander of the Nazi paramilitary "Brownshirts" during the 1920s, became head of the German air force in 1934 and leader of the German rearmament program. He directed the Gestapo, which he created, until 1936 when Hitler put him in charge of managing the German economy. In 1943, after Göring had become addicted to drugs, Hitler ordered his immediate arrest and execution, fearing that Göring was attempting to make peace with the Allies and take over power from Hitler. During his testimony, however, Göring denied any disloyalty to Hitler and regretted that in the Fuhrer's last will and testament that he indicated his belief that Göring secretly negotiated with the enemy (Raymond Daniel, "Goering Defends Nazi Suppression from Witness Stand in Nuremberg," NYT, 14 March 1946, 1; "Göring in the Box," TL, 14 March 1946, 4; "Göring Denies Betrayal," TL, 19 March 1946, 4; OEWH).

For discussion of Göring's plan to derail American attempts to send military forces to support European allies, see Raymond Daniel, "Goering Cites Plan to Neutralize U.S.," NYT, 16 March 1946, 8.

On Winston Churchill

On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill, now a private citizen, gave a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, in which he applied the term "iron curtain" to the division between those countries in Eastern Europe that had come under Soviet domination after World War II and the non-Communist countries of Western Europe: "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic," he declared, "an iron curtain has descended across the Continent." With President Truman in the audience, Churchill urged a strong alliance between Great Britain and the United States to curtail "the expansive and proselytizing tendencies" of the Soviet Union, an alliance that he felt was better equipped than the United Nations to protect democracy, keep the peace, and handle matters as vital as atomic secrets.¹

Two days later, ER argued in My Day that "the situation does not seem to me to differ very greatly from the old balance of power politics that have been going on in Europe for hundreds of years." She then assessed Churchill's thesis:

I think the time has come for us as a nation, perhaps for various nations, throughout the world to decide what really offers us the best chances for peace in the future. Mr. Churchill's speech in Missouri indicates his belief as a private individual that the future peace of the world can best be guaranteed by a military alliance between Great Britain and the United States. He believes that the people of both our countries want peace, but for some reason he is not equally sure apparently that this is the case where the peoples of other nations are concerned. I think he pays the English speaking people of the world a very high compliment. I hope that we could be trusted to have no selfish desires, not to think of our own interests first and therefore never to take advantage of our strength at the expense of other peoples. We must, however, it seems to me face the fact that were such an alliance formed other nations in the world would certainly feel that they must form independent alliances too. What is sauce for the goose must also be sauce for the gander.

… Instead of running an armament race against each other and building up trade cartels and political alliances, we the nations of the world should join together each contributing a certain amount of military strength to be used only against an aggressor. We would use the forum of the United Nations to discuss our difficulties and our grievances using our diplomatic machinery to adjust such things as we could among ourselves, but bringing questions that individual governments disagreed on before the bar of the United Nations as a whole … I do not wonder that the elderly statesmen think this a new and revolutionary move in the international situation. I will grant that there are two possibilities here, the old way and the new way. We have seen the results of the old way, however, in war and destruction and we may still see starvation and pestilence stalk the earth as a result of the old way. Might it be wise to try the new way?²

ER's close friend, Arthur Murray, Lord Elibank, expressed similar concerns about Churchill's speech in the following letter. In it he refers to an evening he and ER spent in London during the first session of the General Assembly discussing the world situation.³