Stassen's Creed

Commander Harold E. Stassen, bronzed by months of service in the Pacific, was busy getting ready for his role as a Roosevelt-appointed delegate to the United Nations Conference at San Francisco.

Having talked it over with Republican Congressional leaders, the former Minnesota Governor last week took himself to Albany and talked it over with Governor Tom Dewey. In the Executive Mansion, they discussed the problems of world security in the light of G.O.P. principles and policies.

Next day young (37) Commander Stassen went to Cambridge, spent three hours discussing the same problems with 50 Harvard faculty members. Then he went to his home in South St. Paul, sat down and wrote a forthright speech for delivery this week at the University of Minnesota.

Seven Points. First, Delegate Stassen set forth how he saw the job ahead. Said he: "I will consider it my duty to represent my country as a whole as I see its best welfare, and to be individually responsible for my actions. It will be my aim to assist in securing a result . . . which will be supported by the overwhelming majority of the people of America, and by substantially all of the other United Nations." This would mean, he pointed out, that the result could not be entirely agreeable to any particular nation or any particular person; but the alternative would be to do nothing at all.

For future U.S. world policy, Stassen suggested seven cardinal points:

P:"That as a nation we will join with our present Allies ... to build a definite continuing organization of the United Nations of the world, based on justice and law and insured by force. . . .

P:"That we do not subscribe to the extreme view of nationalistic sovereignty; that we realize that neither this nation nor any other nation can be a law unto itself . . . and that we are willing to delegate a limited portion of our national sovereignty to our United Nations organization. . . .

P:"That we consider the future welfare and peace and happiness of the people of America is inseparably intertwined with the future welfare and peace and happiness of the world.

P:''That we will use the enormous productive capacity of America ... to contribute to the gradual advancement of the standards of living of the peoples of the world, not as recipients of charity, but as self-respecting men and women. . . .

P:"That we believe in freedom of information through press and radio and school and forum. . . .

P:"That those who were aggressors in this war shall be stripped of all means to make war and shall remain so stripped. .. .

P:"That we are and propose to remain a democracy of free citizens [and] will explain our system to the world but will leave it to the peoples in each nation to decide for themselves their own form of government so long as they do not trample on basic human rights or threaten the peace of the world. . . ."

Peace by Force. As flag secretary to Admiral William F. Halsey Jr., Commander Stassen had seen what the power of modern ships and planes and weapons can accomplish. Now he called for the U.S. "to remain strong on land, at sea and in the air," so that the nation may join with Russia, Great Britain, China, France and the other United Nations in furnishing a worldwide police power.

But it was on principles that Harold Stassen hammered hardest. "There may be diplomats who do not know it; there may be many political leaders who are afraid to admit it; there may be many people who do not understand it, but the extreme principle of absolute nationalistic sovereignty is of the Middle Ages and it is dead. It died with the airplane, the radio, the rocket and the robomb."

Now, said he, must come the new principle of the rights, duties and responsibilities of each nation to the other. In tribute to the late Wendell Willkie, Harold Stassen solemnly wrote down his summary "This is one world."

Michigan's Senator Vandenberg had determined to find out exactly where he stood before he accepted President Roosevelt's appointment to the security conference. To make sure there would be no misunderstanding, he wrote a letter to Franklin Roosevelt, asking the score. One point to be clarified: Senator Vandenberg's "right of free action." This week, after what Arthur Vandenberg called an exchange of "cordial and satisfactory letters," he accepted.

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