Eleanor Roosevelt to Sumner Welles
Eleanor Roosevelt to Sumner Welles
23 February 1947 [New York City]
Dear Sumner:
I was very much interested in your letter and rather relieved that you do not think we need fear the German menace as much as I have been led to believe.44
I judge you are probably right about Mr. Braden and Franklin who on the whole had a pretty accurate knowledge of people, was right in thinking him a bull in a china shop. I think his intentions are good and his fundamental beliefs, but he just does not know how to handle people and attain his ends without too much friction. I never have known Mr. Messersmith and the few times I have met him, he hasn't seemed very attractive but you seem to trust him so I hope he will be able to handle the Argentine situation.45
As I wrote you I shall be away from the 28th of this month to the 23rd of March, but if you should need to get in touch with me, my office staff will be on hand at the above address and will know where I am every day.
Please give my love to Cousin Susie and tell her I will write to her in a day or so.
Affectionately,
TLS SWP, FDRL
1. After helping lead a successful coup in 1943, Colonel Juan Perón entered the Argentine government first as head of the Secretariat of Labor and Social Security, rising the following year to become minister of war, and later vice-president and minister of war, only to be deposed and imprisoned in October 1945 by officers jealous of his quick rise to power. Mass popular protest forced his release later that year and in 1946, "in one of the freest elections in Argentine history," he was elected president (OCPW). For discussions of his policies, see n16 and n20.
2. On the Chapultepec conference, see Document 23.
3. Stiller, 228-63; Page, 182-84; MD, 14 August 1944.
4. During the 1930s, ER and Welles worked together on several issues. In 1938 she backed his idea for an international conference (that was never held) to deal with fascism in Italy and Germany. In 1939, he supported her efforts to secure passage of a bill that would have admitted 10,000 Jewish children a year for two years beyond the German quota. After the war began in 1941, ER convinced Welles to convert an area reserved for the reception of foreign diplomats in Union Station to a sleeping area for soldiers passing through Washington, DC (Cook vol. 2, 305, 499; Lash, Eleanor, 571-72, 576, 656; FDRE; Sumner Welles to ER, 17 January 1947, AERP; ER and Edgar Ansel Mowrer to Bernard Baruch, January 1947, BBP, NjP-SC; ER and Edgar Ansel Mowrer to Lewis Mumford, 8 January 1947, LMP, PU-Ar; ER and Edgar Ansel Mowrer to Philip Murray, 14 January 1947, PMP, DCU).
5. In April 1946, an accidental fire destroyed the second and third floors of Susan Parish's house in West Orange, New Jersey. No one was injured, and damage was estimated at $30,000. At this point Parish was a semi-invalid and temporarily staying near Welles in Palm Beach, Florida. She would die in 1950, leaving ER a bequest of $25,000 and the responsibility for cleaning out her house ("$30,000 Fire Sweeps West Orange Home," NYT, 23 April 1946, 23; Lash, Years, 323; Lash, World, 328).
6. An engineer turned diplomat with strong ties to Latin America (his family owned the Braden Copper Company in Chile), Spruille Braden (1894–1978) served as assistant secretary of state for Latin America from 1945 through 1947. He had previously served as US ambassador to Colombia, Cuba, and most recently to Argentina, where he had publicly opposed the election of Argentine president Juan Perón ("Spruille Braden, Former Official of State Department, Is Dead at 83," NYT, 11 January 1978, B2; Page, 94-95).
7. Possibly Argentine political activist Ana Rosa de Martinez Guerrero (?–1964), who during World War II headed the pro-Allied organization Junta de la Victoria in Argentina, or Argentine writer/activist Maria Rosa Oliver (1900–1977), vice president of the junta. Both women opposed Perón. Guerrero and ER may have met at the International Assembly of Women in New York State in October 1946 where both spoke (n4 Document 159). At that conference, Guerrero discussed the Nazi influences "who are still operating all over the world." The Pan American Union may have been the Pan-American Women's Association (PAWA), a volunteer, nonpolitical educational and cultural organization founded in 1930. Fascism, World War II, and the rise of dictatorships in postwar Latin American countries caused the group to shift its focus to human rights abuses in the 1940s ("Mrs. Ana de Martinez Guerrero of Argentina, Foe of Peron, Dies," NYT, 5 September 1964, 19; "Argentine Woman Assails Dictators," NYT, 25 October 1946, 5; ELAACL; Fernando Perrone, "Biographical Sketch of Frances Grant," Rutgers University Libraries, http://www.2.scc.rutgers.edu/ead/manuscripts/grantf.html, accessed 28 February 2005).
8. George Messersmith (1883–1960), former assistant secretary of state and former US ambassador to Cuba and Mexico, succeeded Braden as US ambassador to Argentina in the spring of 1946. His instructions from Truman and Byrnes were to prepare the way for US military aid to Argentina and other Latin American countries in preparation for a hemispheric defense pact. Braden, Messersmith's supervisor, strongly opposed these instructions, and the two men clashed repeatedly over Messersmith's attempts to work with Argentine president Juan Perón.
By the end of 1946, when Messersmith returned to the United States for medical treatment, the feud between him and Braden was public. The two men met early in January 1947 but were unable to resolve their differences. Events in Washington, notably Byrnes's resignation on January 7, Truman's appointment of General George C. Marshall as secretary of state, and congressional criticism over the postponement of a hemispheric defense conference, postponed the resolution of the disagreement ("George Messersmith Dies at 86; In Diplomatic Service 34 Years," NYT, 30 January 1960, 21; Page, 182-84; Stiller, 228-58; "Braden Seen Loser By Shift in Chiefs," NYT, 8 January 1947, 11; James Reston, "Argentine Issue to Be Postponed," NYT, 14 January 1947, 21; Bertram D. Hulen, "Argentina Is Problem for Marshall," NYT, 26 January 1946, E7; "Our Ambassador Returns to Argentina," NYT, 6 February 1947, 9; "President Assures Marshall in Tasks," NYT, 24 January 1947, 7).
9. Mathilde Townsend Gerry Welles (1885?–1949), Welles's second wife, whom he married in 1925 ("Mrs. Sumner Welles Dies Unexpectedly in Switzerland," WP, 9 August 1949, B2).
10. On the Monroe Doctrine, see n2 Document 176. President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) added what became known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904 when several nations threatened to invade the Dominican Republic after that country defaulted on its debts. The Roosevelt Corollary, which provided for US intervention in the internal affairs of any Latin American country whenever "chronic wrongdoing" occurred, allowed the United States to take over the operations of the Dominican Republic's customs service and manage the country's foreign debt.
Subsequent US interventions in Latin America included a military mission to the Dominican Republic (1916–1924) and similar missions to Haiti (1915–1934) and Nicaragua (1912–1925 and 1926–1933) to stabilize the political conditions and allow American civilians to control those countries' economies. The United States also sent troops to Mexico in 1914 and 1916 in an attempt to encourage pro-American government and safeguard American economic interests there. Instances of "dollar diplomacy"—the advancement of American economic interests abroad—included the United Fruit Company's political influence in Guatemala obtained through its large-scale land holdings and ownership of ancillary transportation services (Boyer et al., 650, 652; T. Paterson et al., 230-38, 351-55, 357).
11. While serving as assistant secretary of state, Welles coined the phrase "Good Neighbor" to describe FDR's general attitude toward US diplomacy, but the term soon became associated only with FDR's Latin America policy, replacing the Roosevelt Corollary at the 1933 Pan American conference in Uruguay. As the threat of world conflict grew, US and Latin American representatives held a series of meetings at which they negotiated agreements that expanded the Good Neighbor policy to include regional solidarity in case of an attack from outside the hemisphere. After the United States entered World War II in 1941, all Latin American countries declared war on the Axis Powers except Argentina, which waited until March 1945 to do so. Some, notably Brazil and Mexico, sent military forces to aid the Allies (FDRE).
12. FDR went to Argentina in December 1936 to open the Pan-American conference in Buenos Aires. The combination of his speech, which emphasized his desire to unite North and South America through commerce, cultural exchange, and a commitment to world peace, and his public appearances made him the personification of democracy at a time when fascism was making inroads in Argentina. One local journal noted that FDR arrived, "just when he was most needed. When we were being coaxed to believe that democracy [had] failed and we must choose between Fascism and Communism, this great man has communicated to us his optimistic faith in democracy" (Freidel 215-17; Welles, 192-94).
13. Roberto M. Ortiz (1886–1942), an Argentine lawyer and politician, became president of Argentina in a fraudulent election held in 1937. Once in office, Ortiz tried to halt the fraud in the country's provisional elections, but his death in 1942 cut short his reform efforts. Ortiz's successor, Ramón Castillo (1873–1944), used the power of the national government to interfere with local elections and, once the United States entered World War II in December 1941, imposed a state of siege on Argentina that enabled him to suspend constitutional guarantees. For more on the Castillo administration and its relationship with the United States, see n4 Document 13 (Page, 42-43).
14. Although Argentina remained nominally neutral in the early part of World War II, Castillo's tolerance for Nazi activity within the country's borders and his government's appeal to Nazi Germany for weapons further increased tensions. At the same time, political, military, and civilian opposition to Castillo began to rise, particularly among Argentines who supported the Allied cause. Castillo's 1943 decision to nominate another conservative as his successor and his attempt to dismiss minister of war Pedro Ramírez (1884–1962), whom Castillo suspected of plotting with the opposition, galvanized the army into revolt in June (Page, 41-53; Whitaker, 111-13, 122-23).
15. The Argentine Constitution institutionalized oligarchic control of the government through a "system of national intervention" that allowed the president to suppress a province's constitution, remove the local legislative, executive, and judicial authorities, and appoint a federal "Interventor" to take over the local government and report directly to the president, without recourse to local or national law (Blanksten, 136-39; Page, 43; Ralph et al., 789).
16. In the aftermath of the 1943 coup, General Edelmiro Farrell became president in March 1944, with Colonel Juan Perón as his vice president. Concerned that Farrell's government was pro-Axis, the US State Department attempted to oust Farrell and Perón by breaking off diplomatic relations and applying economic sanctions (see n4 and n6 Document 13). Diplomatic relations were restored in April 1945 but the two countries continued to spar over Argentina's support of fascism (see n3 Document 23). When Perón declared his candidacy for the Argentine presidency in December 1945, US ambassador Braden publicly opposed him, believing Perón to be a fascist. Many Argentines interpreted Braden's anti-fascist speeches as calls for the overthrow of the Farrell-Perón regime. Braden's overt involvement in the 1945–46 Argentine presidential campaign continued after he returned to the United States, when he authorized the publication of a State Department report discrediting the Castillo, Ramirez, and Farrell-Perón administrations and accusing the Farrell-Perón administration of complicity with the Nazis. Braden's activities antagonized the Argentines and solidified support for Perón (Gaddis, 30-31; Page, 95-105, 145-46, 148-50; Whitaker, 148-49).
17. Though Brazil's German population (more than 2 million in a total population of more than 44 million) outnumbered Argentina's (approximately 300,000 in a population of more than 13 million), German influence was stronger in Argentina where the immigrants were better assimilated. The Argentines also valued German military training, with its emphasis on offensive warfare, and staffed the country's military academy with German military men (Gunther, 386 and chart; Herring, 67; Page, 22-23).
18. Perón exploited this nationalistic feeling, telling a campaign audience at one point, "The choice at this crucial hour is this: Braden or Perón" (Page, 149; Whitaker, 149).
19. On Messersmith in Argentina, see n8 above.
20. Perón continued the purge of the faculty from Argentina's universities begun in 1946 under the Farrell government. He also limited labor union independence and press freedom. In April 1947, the Argentine Chamber of Deputies, which Perón controlled, would impeach the country's Supreme Court Justices, further increasing his power and ensuring that his legislative program would not be declared unconstitutional.
On October 21, 1947, Perón introduced his economic Five Year Plan, consisting of twenty-seven laws to modernize Argentina's society and economy. The plan called for government and private ownership of business and industry. Perón hoped that the plan, which included initiatives for full employment without inflation and public investments of $1.5 billion to develop the country's environmental resources and its industry, would siphon wealth away from the large landowners, improve Argentine living conditions, and ensure a more equitable distribution of income (Stiller, 255-56; Page, 164-69; Blanksten, 254).
21. On Guerrero and Oliver, see n7 above.
22. The first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was completed on June 25, 1947 (Glendon, 70).
23. Sumner Welles, "Argentine Policy: Clarifying the Issue," WP, 2 February 1947, 11.
24. US military planners had suggested that Latin American weapons be standardized on US models as a preliminary step toward a hemispheric conference to hammer out a defensive military alliance against possible Soviet aggression (Newton, 360-64; Stiller, 259).
25. German settlers began arriving in Latin America as early as the sixteenth century but government-sponsored immigration did not begin until the 1830s when the Brazilian government fostered German agricultural settlements in the southern part of that country. Chile did the same in the 1850s and 1860s and German settlers joined these colonies and similar colonies established in Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay into the twentieth century. In 1940, all these populations remained small relative to the total populations of their individual countries. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, they attempted to create a Pan-German movement in German communities worldwide including Latin America—an effort that worried US officials fearful of a fifth column in the hemisphere. ER left no record identifying the old families she refers to in this sentence (ELAHC, vol. 3; Gunther, 386 and chart; Herring, 67, 232, 251, 254; Blanksten, 40-41; Newton, xvi, 29-30).
26. The visit of a Soviet trade delegation to Argentina in May 1946 and the resumption of diplomatic ties between the two nations in June 1946 worried US military planners and other Latin American countries who feared that an Argentina isolated from the rest of the hemisphere might be tempted to seek arms from the USSR. For more on the Argentine-USSR relationship, see Document 13 and Document 23 (Stiller, 224, 229, 251; "Argentina, Soviet Enter Relations," NYT, 7 June 1946, 1).
27. Messersmith, who served as US consul general in Berlin in 1933 and American minister in Austria from 1934 to 1937, was among the earliest American observers to warn of the danger Nazi Germany posed to the rest of the world. While in Berlin, he told Washington that Hitler planned to go to war and while in Austria he reported on the development of the Austrian Nazi organization and its threat to Austrian independence. For more on the rest of Messersmith's career, see n8 ("George Messersmith Dies at 76; In Diplomatic Service 34 Years," NYT, 30 January 1960, 21).
28. For more on the Chapultepec conference and the San Francisco conference, see Document 13 and Document 23.
29. For ER's previous encounters with Braden and Braden's approach to Argentina, see n6 and n8.
30. Susan Parish was a semi-invalid. See n5 above.
31. Over the course of three weeks (February 28-March 21), ER traveled by train to the West Coast to lecture and see friends and family (her daughter, Anna, and her husband, John Boettiger, then lived in Phoenix, Arizona; her son, James, and his wife, Romelle, were in Los Angeles; and her oldest granddaughter, Anna Eleanor "Sisty" Dall, was a student at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Her oldest grandson, Curtis, was attending military school in Wisconsin). ER's itinerary for the three-week trip took her to Detroit; Chicago; Portland, Oregon; Chico, California; and San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, where she addressed the United Jewish Appeal (Detroit and Phoenix), the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, the Oakland YWCA, and Chico State College in Chico, California. She also attended the opening convocation of the Pacific Northwest College Congress in Portland, Oregon (MD, 3 March, 4 March, 6 March, 7 March, 8 March, 11 March, 13 March, 17 March, 19 March, 20 March, 21 March, 22 March, and 24 March 1947; Lash, World, 232-33).
32. Welles's reference to a "hectoring and bulldozing approach" probably meant Braden's efforts to impede Messersmith's negotiations with Perón. See n8 above. While Communists did make inroads in Latin America at this time, the number of actual Communists in the region remained relatively small (W H. Lawrence, "Communism Spreading Fast in Americas, Survey Shows," NYT, 29 December 1946, 1; "Communists Claim 18,500,000 in World," NYT, 27 February 1947, 8).
33. On Argentina's admission to the United Nations at the San Francisco conference, see Document 13 and Document 23. On the Chapultepec conference, see Document 23.
34. William II (1859–1941), the last king of Prussia and the last emperor of Germany, whose expansionist polices and support for the Austrian-Hungarian Empire led to World War I and cost him his throne. He abdicated in 1918 as World War I was ending (OEWH).
35. The "Russian activities" to which Welles referred may have meant the recent rapprochement between the Soviet Union and Argentina, which was viewed by the American press as an effort by the Soviets to make Argentina "one of their key outposts in Latin America." See n26 above (Frank L. Kluckhohn, "Argentina to Sign Pact with Soviet," NYT, 7 December 1946, 10).
36. US military leaders first proposed the standardization of military equipment in 1943 as a way of allowing the United States to spearhead the defense of the hemisphere, thus heading off arms sales from other countries. Legislation for standardization passed the House of Representatives in 1946, but never went further because of concerted opposition from both sides of the political spectrum. Liberals believed the proposal would siphon off Latin American revenues from social projects and help dictators become more repressive; conservatives worried about treaty commitments such a program would involve, and the costs of such subsidies. Ultimately, its high cost and the priority of American commitments elsewhere—notably Greece, Turkey, Iran, and the Philippines—derailed the legislation, leaving the arms standardization issue in limbo. Nothing more would be done until Secretary of State George Marshall completed a personal review of US policy toward Latin America in the spring of 1947 (Newton, 360-64; Pogue, 381).
37. As chief US negotiator at the Chaco Peace Conference in Buenos Aires from 1935 to 1939, Braden helped negotiate an armistice to end the Chaco War (1932–35), a conflict between Bolivia and Paraguay over control of a large, lowland plain area known as the Gran Chaco, the ownership of which the two countries had contested since the nineteenth century. Paraguay won the war, and in the conference gained most of the territory in question (Page, 95; Murray Illson, "Spruille Braden, Former Official of State Department, Is Dead at 83," NYT, 11 January 1978, B2; OEWH).
38. Scadta, the first commercial airline in Latin America, operated in Colombia from 1919 until 1939. An Austrian engineer, Paul von Bauer, founded the airline and its staff was German, but its principal shareholder was an American company, Pan American Airways (Gunther, 174).
39. In 1939, some Japanese citizens purchased land in Costa Rica, 250 miles from the Panama Canal, ostensibly to grow cotton. Since the land was purchased at inflated prices and the cotton crop failed, some observers thought the Japanese had actually bought the land for air bases (ELAHC, vol. 3, 65, 313; T. R. Ybarra, "Japan, Reich Make Gains in Costa Rica," NYT, 13 February 1939, 4).
40. Braden hated both Fascism and Communism and did not hesitate to say so to his colleagues and the government officials of the countries to which he was accredited. Undersecretary of state Dean Acheson, Braden's supervisor when he was assistant secretary of state for Latin America, described him as "a bull of a man physically … with the temperament and tactics of one, dealing with the objects of his prejudices by blind charges, preceded by pawing up a good deal of dust" (Acheson, 160; Stiller, 231).
41. As US ambassador from 1939 to 1942, Braden's assignment was to keep Colombia, located near the Panama Canal, friendly to the United States so that American military resources would not be needed there. To that end, he pressured Pan American Airlines, majority shareholder of the Scadta airline there, to fire its German pilots and technicians and helped Colombia obtain loans from the Import-Export Bank (Gunther, Latin America, 174; Bushnell, 57, 119).
42. Eduardo Santos (1888–1974), a leading Latin American journalist and founder of the El Tiempo newspaper, served as Colombia's president from 1938 to 1942. An early supporter of collective defense in the hemisphere, he was also one of the most pro-US leaders in Latin America, and his relationship with Braden was close. Although he was quick to sever diplomatic ties with Japan after Pearl Harbor, Santos did not share Braden's concern about the extent of German infiltration into Colombia. Nevertheless he authorized restrictions on the German population there (ELAHC, vol. 5; Bushnell, 57-60; "Eduardo Santos, Ex-President of Colombia, a Publisher, Dies," NYT, 28 March 1974, 42).
43. Braden often acted in a most undiplomatic fashion. He clashed with Cuban president Fulgencio Batista (1901–1973) over the Cuban theft of lend-lease equipment, supported American business interests in Cuba, and publicly opposed American firms who paid bribes or contributed to Cuban political parties. Braden also became involved indirectly in a duel between a Havana newspaper editor who accused Braden of interfering in his newspaper's campaign to obtain higher prices for Cuba's sugar in America at the expense of US concerns in Cuba and a Cuban politician who defended Braden's actions.
In his memoirs, Braden also claimed to have bypassed Welles's command in the State Department by using a confidante of ER's to get FDR's approval. During World War II, Braden became frustrated by the practice of captured fascist agents bribing their way out of Cuban jails. He had asked Welles for funds to establish a separate, US-run prison for these enemy agents, which Welles refused. Knowing journalist Martha Gellhorn had a link to the White House, he directed her to brief ER and presidential advisor Harry Hopkins on the prisoner situation. ER and Hopkins then spoke to FDR, who authorized the State Department to approve Braden's request ("U.S. Envoy in Cuba Scored," NYT, 26 July 1944, 7; "Defender of Braden Challenged to a Duel," NYT, 30 July 1944, 12; "Warns Americans in Cuba," NYT, 23 September 1943, 11; Braden, 288-89, 300, 307-8).
44. For more on the German influence in Latin America, see n17 and n25 above.
45. Unable to resolve their differences, Braden and Messersmith left the State Department in June 1947. Accounts vary as to the details of their individual departures. In his memoirs, Dean Acheson says he as undersecretary of state took responsibility "to recall and retire Messersmith and to ask for Braden's resignation." Braden contended that he resigned voluntarily and only on the condition that Messersmith be recalled. As for Messersmith, his biographer, Jesse H. Stiller, writes that his subject learned of his "resignation" from an Argentine newspaper after Truman declared his mission to Argentina complete. For more on the Braden-Messersmith feud, see Document 201 (Stiller, 260-61; Acheson, 190).
Proposing Ground Rules for Committee Debates on Human Rights
Before it began its point-by-point discussion of which rights should be included in the international bill of rights ECOSOC instructed them to create, the Human Rights Commission first had to establish the procedures it would follow when reviewing material. The morning of February 4, as the HRC prepared to review the draft bills of rights it had requested from various supportive organizations,1 ER as chair laid out the following guidelines for discussion:
[W]e come at last to the discussion of the substance of the Bill of Human Rights. This discussion will guide the working group … We have eighteen Members of this Commission. While all eighteen are not here, I am sure that we have at least eighteen different ideas as to how we should proceed in discussing the Bill of Rights. Judging by our experience to date, I can imagine one Member putting a motion that we should proceed thus and so, and another offering an amendment that we should proceed in a somewhat different way, and so on, until we have a motion with seventeen amendments. After that, I can foresee the possibility of discussion as to which of the seventeen amendments is furthest away from the original motion, and then which amendment comes sixteenth, fifteenth, and so on. If, as seems quite possible, we proceed in this manner, we may get around to actual discussion of the content of the Bill by next summer, by which time we must be prepared for convening our next session.
I would ask you to cooperate with me to this extent; to make an earnest effort, if your consciences will permit, to allow discussion to be handled in the manner which I am abo[u]t to suggest. If you cannot agree, then I ask your consent to limit speeches on what method we should use, to two minutes each.
The method I propose is as follows: to base our work on the list of rights contained in the various draft bills—this has been prepared by the Secretariat and is before you, as paper E/CM.4/W18—and to discuss, one after another, the rights which are enumerated with one question only in mind, would this right be included in the first draft of the Bill. We would not be concerned with methods of expression or with questions of duplication, nor would we be deciding irrevocably that any particular right must be included. What we would aim to do would be to eliminate from the first draft any rights which it was generally agreed should not be considered for the present. After we have decided which rights to include and which rights to exclude, I propose that we discuss methods of implementation. I know well that some will feel we should discuss implementation first. Others, we should discuss rights first. Others, that we should discuss both, simultaneously. I urgently ask your consideration of the fact that it does not make much difference. We will have full discussion under any method, and that if you will allow me to lay down, at this time, the method which we should use, it will help us in getting through our work. We only have today, tomorrow, and Thursday. After that, I propose that we discuss the form of the Bill.
To sum up, my proposal is that we discuss first what rights should or should not be included; second, methods of implementation; third, form of the Bill. If this is not satisfactory, I propose that debate on our method of procedure be limited to speeches of not more than two minutes each.2
The commission adopted ER's suggestion. As it debated which rights to include or exclude, the commission then decided that the best guide the drafting committee could receive from it was a verbatim transcript of this discussion, rather than a mere up and down article-by-article vote.3
By lunchtime, the commission concurred that the principles of equal rights and the unity of the human race should be included in the bill and had moved on to a discussion of what should be included under the principle of liberty.4
When this discussion continued in the fourteenth meeting, sharp philosophical differences emerged. The statements made by Charles Malik of Lebanon and Valentin Tepliakov of the Soviet Union reflect the deep division in the commission between those who believed in the need to protect the rights of the individual from the power of the state and those who believed that the individual should serve the state, or, as ER put it in her response to these statements, between those who "believe that an organized society in the form of a government, exists for the good of the individual" and those who "believe that an organized society in the form of a government, exists for the benefit of a group." This basic difference, which permeated the detailed debates in the HRC about individual articles of the declaration of human rights, made ER's task of steering the commission toward agreement extremely difficult.