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Mr. BIRKHEAD. It is three and a half pages, double spaced.
The CHAIRMAN. That is all right.

(Mr. Birkhead's statement is as follows:)

STATEMENT OF AMERICAN VETERANS' COMMITTEE ON THE INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY, PRESENTED BY KENNETH M. BIRKHEAD, AVC EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

The American Veterans' Committee appreciates this opportunity to appear before this committee and to express its views on the Senate ratification of the statute for an International Atomic Energy Agency.

The American Veterans' Committee believes that this action is among the most important that this Congress will take. Our organization strongly endorses Senate ratification of this treaty and urges this committee to recommend ratification to the Senate.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is a step in the right direction-a program designed to provide for the expanded use of atomic energy for peacetime purposes. Whether this program is perfect we certainly cannot tell now, but we do know that it has resulted from years of study and discussion and the most serious consideration by not only the leaders of our Nation but by the leaders of other free nations of the world. It is no hastily conceived spur of the moment proposal.

It has been suggested that this treaty is unnecessary since our Nation has already begun the interchange of materials, technical assistance, and engineering help to other nations of the world to bring the practical, peacetime benefits of atomic energy to them. This treaty would be a step forward in the program we have already started. It would expand this program and result in a coordinated and integrated international exchange of research, information, and understanding between scientists and technicians. It would make it possible for us to spread our know-how of the peaceful uses of atomic energy and, in turn, to benefit from the know-how we receive from the participating nations.

We know that this treaty has been attacked because some fear that enemies and potential enemies in the world might use the Agency to advance their war potential rather than their peace potential. AVC rejects this charge. Our study of the whole structure of the Agency indicates that there are many built-in safeguards against the misuse of any of the program. From the first steps in building any new reactors through each process in the production and use of fissionable material an inspection system is in full operation. Authorities indicate that the inspection program would be instantly able to detect any variance from the normal activities under the Agency's plans.

President Eisenhower has submitted this treaty to the Senate. He and leaders of his administration have endorsed the Agency. AVC does not believe that the President and those working with him on this treaty would be guilty of asking the Senate to ratify any agreement that would jeopardize the security of this Nation.

This Agency and the plans for its establishment were initiated by the United States. For years our Government has sought means to establish such an international body to promote the peaceful use of atomic energy. It seems to our organization that for the United States to back out at this moment would be a severe blow to United States prestige and would give the Communists a telling argument in the cold-war battle for the minds of men. They would be able to put muscle on their false propaganda that the United States is not really interested in peace.

AVC joined on May 11 in sponsoring the resolution adopted in Chicago by the United States Council of the 20-million member World Veterans Federation calling for Senate ratification of the treaty. Former Congressman, Gen. Melvin J. Maas, the chairman of the United States Council, will formally present this resolution to this committee. Our sponsorship of this resolution, as one of the American affiliates of the World Veterans Federation, was partly taken to emphasize to the veterans throughout the world that veterans of this Nation believe in the furtherance of this program to expand the peaceful uses of atomic energy.

Our organization has always supported the strongest possible defense for our Nation, as we are sure all veterans who served in our Armed Forces in time of war do. We have been willing to pay the price for a strong defense and we have opposed those who would try to weaken our defenses.

At the same time we have been equally opposed to putting all our eggs in the defense basket. We have just as strongly favored foreign aid, technical assistance, the United Nations and its various agencies as potent forces to see that our defenses are never tested and that American boys do not have to again face a shooting enemy.

AVC believes that the establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency is an integral part of our efforts to bring the world closer to peace and to improve the lot of man so that he will never again be tempted to join the aggressor in combat.

We urge Senate ratification of the International Atomic Energy Agency Treaty. The CHAIRMAN. Mrs. Gladys Walser, of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

STATEMENT OF MRS. GLADYS D. WALSER, WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR PEACE AND FREEDOM

Mrs. WALSER. Thank you, Senator. I am very glad to be here, for two reasons. One is because I attended that remarkable and historical conference in which the statute was established, and the other reason is because I believe that the support which my organization wishes to give to this Agency is a thing that affects the peoples of the world.

I am Gladys Walser, 41 Greenwich Avenue, New York City, a member of the national board and the policy committee of the United States section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, a nongovernmental organization with consultative status at the United Nations, and I have been its representative there for the past 10 years at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

I appear to record for our members their unqualified support for the immediate and unanimous consent of the Senate to the United States ratification of the statute of the International Atomic Agency, and to give our reasons for that support.

PEACEFUL USE OF ATOMIC ENERGY

At the beginning of this atomic age, there was an all-pervading fear that the atom harnessed by man would produce only disaster. Experience had put a heavy emphasis on the destructive potentialities of this new great source of energy. For the past 3 years, however, the feeling has been justified that the world has made progress along the road of hope and confidence. It has become increasingly clear that by acting together, the nations of the world may be able to put atomic energy to peaceful uses in such a way as to help create economic and social conditions that many of the present reasons for tension and conflict will be eliminated.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF UNITED STATES INITIATIVE

United States initiative has made two particularly outstanding contributions to the progress of the world community, which I believe will go down in history as a sign of greatness, and establish a just claim to the material and moral leadership of which this country, the richest and most powerful in the world, is capable. Inspired by the

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action of the United States by worldwide program of bilateral aid, point 4, the United Nations in 1950 organized its first technical assistance conference, which resulted, as you know, in the expanded program of technical assistance which has undoubtedly become the best known and most widely acclaimed effort so far in the field of international cooperation, and it does it by helping people to help themselves in attaining economic and social stability, which is certainly a foundation of a peaceful world.

Then, in December 1953, President Eisenhower proposed to the General Assembly of the United Nations that an international organization be created to exploit atomic energy for peaceful uses on a worldwide scale. Thus he pushed forward the idea that the industrial revolution which has come in this atomic age will be one in which all nations may participate.

This United States initiative for the pooling of fissionable materials from the world's stockpile to be used for peaceful purposes found almost universal approval, and launched the Atoms for Peace program and earned the United States world leadership in this field as well as generating good will throughout the world.

It is to be hoped that this second initiative, the establishment of the Agency, will convince nations that far more can be gained by a cooperative world effort than by unilateral efforts.

CONFERENCE HELD TO DRAFT STATUTE

As you know, 78 of the 81 governments that participated in drafting the statute at the conference September-October 1956 by the United Nations have signed it, and 5 have ratified this spring. In summing up the accomplishments of the conference, the President, Dr. Muniz of Brazil declared that, notwithstanding the extreme complexity of the subject, the entirely new field in which it was working, the conference found it possible to arrive at unanimous agreement on setting up the Agency. In the midst of political controversies that confronted the world of existing antagonisms, the conference set a pace of sincere cooperation, objectivity, a spirit of compromise and give and take among the delegates, and it is here that I would like to put into the record a tribute to the United States delegation that negotiated on such a high level and accomplished so much, both for this Nation and for the world.

Political and ideological differences did not emerge in the debate, and the concensus among the great powers was particularly significant. With this opinion most of us who have followed closely all the developments since 1953 which culminated in the approval of the statute completely concur.

The most significant aspect of the discussion was to me the following: (1) The development of a new relationship between the highly industrialized big atomic powers who will be suppliers of nuclear materials and the less industrialized nonatomic nations which will be the recipients of these materials for economic progress. The basis of this new relationship was a mutual respect for one another's views and a sense of equality in the give and take which prevailed throughout the discussions.

(2) The establishment of a new alinement of nations deviating from the traditional, geographical, cultural, ideological, and political

groupings. This was evidenced by the sponsorship of many amendments to the statute. To give one illustration: Bolivia, Burma, Denmark, Ethiopia, Iran, Switzerland, Thailand, and Morocco appeared as cosponsors of one of the amendments to the statute.

(3) The progress toward implementation of one of the main purposes of the United Nations Charter-that of international cooperation-was demonstrated by the willingness, even in respect to the most controversial issues, to accommodate the divergencies and diversities that make up the world community in such a way as to make agreement possible. This holds out hope that existing divergencies among great powers in other fields, such as disarmament, may be reconciled.

(4) A deeper understanding of change as a law of life, resulting from the impact of the vitality, enthusiasm, and drive of the newly independent countries upon the long-established Western nations who are more likely to be resistant to change. The insistence of the new nations that there is no place for cosiderations of absolute security in a world where nuclear weapons exist, and of maintaining the status quo, inflexibility, or permanency in a statute of an agency dealing with peaceful uses of a great new source of power-atomic energy-which is continually subject to new scientific and technological developments, resulted in a provision in article 18 which would allow the question of a general review to be paced on the agenda of the fifth session of the General Conference. Ten years' experience in the United Nations has shown that changes occur without basic revision of the charter, as, for example, the increased importance of the vetoless General Assembly rather than the Security Council in meeting threats to the peace and solving conflicts by peaceful means.

It was to us who were there regrettable that the media of mass communication did not carry more information of this historic event, as is often the case, with the development in the future life of humanity. This is no exception to it. It came about with little publicity, but with devoted hard work.

Since you have already heard from distinguished witnesses, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Admiral Strauss, Ambassador Wadsworth, Mr. Murray, and others, I shall say little about the objectives, functions, and powers of the international atomic energy statute. It is here in this book, and answers many of our doubts and many of our questions, and gives I believe complete confidence in this particular point of safeguards and controls over fissionable material.

CONTROLS OF THE AGENCY

But I would like to comment on 1 or 2 things. The Agency will not impose complete international control over nuclear fuel, even less over source of materials produced by member states. The controls of the Agency apply only within the limits of each project and each agreement voluntarily and this word is important-voluntarily set up by the nations concerned, the suppliers and the recipients, and they are designed exclusively to guarantee that they shall not be used for military purposes, only for peaceful and safe use of all material supplied by the Agency or of their fissionable byproducts.

The CHAIRMAN. I am very sorry to say that your time has expired. Mrs. WALSER. All right. Then I will pass on, if I may come to the end and have a few minutes to add this.

The CHAIRMAN. Very well, and the remainder of your statement will be included in the record.

Mrs. WALSER. I am very glad.

REASONS FOR SUPPORTING STATUTE

In conclusion, what I said was this. In regard to why our organization, the Women's International League, supports this Agency so completely, it is because of the two areas in which will be, I believe, the most fine experiment. One, in opening new communications of discussion. This has already been evidenced in the disarmament talks in London where it is much more serious, and the atmosphere is better.

The second is in the link to disarmament, and I believe, as many do, that the safeguards and controls in article 12 will be the beginning of the safeguards and controls that needs may be applied to an eventual disarmament treaty.

Since its founding in 1915 with Jane Addams as its president, we have believed in our international structure and in our international thinking, and I think it is very important that the United States take leadership in what I saw take place there at the conference, and international thinking on the subject of how man can share the benefits of the world.

Secondly, I believe that an aim may be served of both our organization and the world through the creation of an economic and social system that is going to help the needs of all rather than those of a few, and I believe it will do much to allay the fears of those who see what has been called missile diplomacy, the progress toward other weapons, if the United States with its leadership promotes the successful operation of the Agency.

Finally, confidence and unity are the cornerstones of enduring peace, and the Agency contributes to both of these.

Confidence can't grow in a divided, hostile world where fear and distress prevail, and unity cannot be built on constant opposition, but rather on cooperation.

The statute will come in force when 3 of the 5 great nations sign and enough others to make 18. There are reasons that no time should be lost, and all the world looks to the United States for leadership. We do not doubt that the Senate will consent unanimously to the ratification of this charter.

It is unthinkable that any obstruction should be put in the way of the United States fulfilling its leadership, not only because of the promises that have been made to the world, but because a real, positive leadership is necessary for both the Agency and the United States.

I believe that the gentlemen of this committee and of the Senate have the wisdom. I am confident it will be used in making the decision to advise unanimous consent to the United States ratification of the statute.

All of us will then see the validity of Arnold Toynbee's prediction that our age will be best remembered because its is the first age since the dawn of history in which mankind dared to believe it practicable to make the benefits available to the whole of mankind, and this must not only be a belief, but it must be acted on.

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