August 3, 1951 — The San Bernardino County Sun
| The Mossadegh Project | November 11, 2023 |
A lead editorial on U.S. foreign policy, President Truman and the partisan divide in The San Bernardino County Sun newspaper of Southern California.
• Harry Truman editorial archive
• Harry Truman letters, speeches, etc.
Need of Leadership
The United States certainly cannot go on much longer without leadership that unites American thinking on world policy.
Unless the people can agree as to exactly what this country is to do in both Europe and Asia, the nation faces its gravest hour. We cannot continue to disagree and quarrel at home if we are to face crisis after crisis abroad.
On the heels on the wide-open split between the Republican and Democratic parties, comes an open and serious split within the Democratic party. The Republicans already have had their differences as to what should be the nation’s foreign policy. And there have been minor Democratic deflections.
Now comes the criticism from Justice Douglas of the supreme court and Senator Connally of Texas, both with long records of leadership within the Democratic party. [William O. Douglas, Tom Connally]
Senator Connally thunders out a protest against administration foreign aid plans, charging they are trying to “cover the earth” with money squeezed from American taxpayers.
Justice Douglas charges that both the Truman and MacArthur policies toward Asia are “bankrupt.” [Harry Truman, Gen. Douglas MacArthur] The American people, he says, have become “victims of a military philosophy,” which may produce a “crusade against America” in Asia, where too many Americans do not realize revolutionary factors are at work which have produced an intensive nationalism born of a deep revolt against foreign domination.
[LOOK magazine article]
Obviously Senator Connally thinks the time has come when the United States must review and drastically reduce its aid to foreign countries. Addressing his remarks to the head of E.C.A., [Economic Cooperation Administration] the veteran senator shouted:
You fellows who spend all of your time spending the government’s money never think where the revenues come from. The senate finance committee is sitting right down in the hall now trying to figure out ways of taking more money from the taxpayers.
The Texas senator has been a supporter of the Truman policy of foreign aid, and his blast can only mean that he is changing his viewpoint as to just how far the United States can go in attempting to reform and reorganize the affairs of other countries.
And just as obviously Justice Douglas is urging that military action in Asia by the United States is hopeless.
Mr. Truman might be able to shrug off the criticism by Justice Douglas with a crack that perhaps he is a candidate for the presidency which some observers have thought he was in times past. But there can be no such insinuation of politics or publicity-seeking laid at the door of Senator Connally. He is not apt to be a candidate for the presidency.
It has long been said that Americans must halt their politics at the ocean’s edge and face the world with united purpose.
Not in many years, however, have the people of this country been willing to adjourn politics in the interest of presenting a united front to the enemy. A divided opinion in America may have led to two world wars, because of the theory of would-be dictators that the United States was hopelessly split and would therefore be unable to make up its mind what it wanted to do in world affairs.
Senator Vandenberg [Arthur Vandenberg] was the leading advocate of a bipartisan foreign policy in our times, but even before his fatal illness developed, Mr. Truman gave him scant help in seeking to compose the differences between the two parties. It is now obvious that Mr. Truman cannot unite the country on a foreign policy that would point the way clearly as to what the United States can and should do in other parts of the world. He cannot even hold his own party leaders.
The United States desperately needs to know exactly what it intends to do to halt or meet the crisis that looms ever closer. It is probably much later than we think. And there is no clear thought in either the Republican or the Democratic party as to who might become the great leader which the United States so desperately needs—the leader who could rally to his standard the men and women of vision who know what must be done to save this land of ours.
Related links:
Leaders Needed | The Schenectady Gazette, June 19, 1951
We Lead In All But Leadership Says U.S. Foreign Policy Critic (1952 Letter)
More Woe For Britain | San Bernardino County Sun, Oct. 20, 1951
MOSSADEGH t-shirts — “If I sit silently, I have sinned”
