Dear
Dr. Forkner:1 General Snyder brought to me the notes that you had put down under the title "If I were President." I read it today with the keenest interest.
I cannot see how any individual of good will and some slight understanding of the difficulties in the world could quarrel with your analysis of the case, and I assure you that it would take no particular courage on my part to espouse the platform that you outline.2 In terms of advice to a troubled world it is filled, I think, with common sense and logical deduction. May I point out that time and time again I have insisted that, unless the union of the so-called free world rests solidly on a spiritual and moral base, all the economic, military and political help that we can give to others will assuredly be for naught.
But permit me for a moment to apply your doctrine to a specific case. As an example I will take relationships with Japan.
Japan has 90 million people, with an arable acreage no greater than that of California. It has few natural resources. It can live only through trade; that is, it must perform services for others by obtaining their raw materials, transforming these into items for human consumption, and selling them back in foreign fields. In this way, given markets, this industrious people can make a decent, or even a good, living.
We want Japan to make a good living not merely for the humanitarian and moral reasons of which you speak, but because Japan's membership in that group of nations which supports the concept of human dignity and self-government would be the most important asset our nation could have in the Far East. A friendly, free and reasonably prosperous Japan is an essential to our welfare and security.3
Now, how is she to achieve this status?
As I pointed out above, she must have trade, a trade in real volume.
Beginning almost three years ago, Foster Dulles and I, supported by a good many others, started to develop plans to bring this about.4 (We had a number of nations in mind, but, here, we are using Japan as one example.) Obviously Japan must trade either with us--and we provide the greatest and richest market in the world--or with other nations, particularly those that are her close neighbors. If she attempts to transport her goods all the way to South America, she runs into the sharp competition of American, German and British industry.
It seems obvious that we should do some reasonable part in helping her get markets of sufficient size. But the second that this is suggested, the anguished outcry from sections of our country is immediately heard by the politicians of Washington.5 Often this outcry is caused by fear rather than fact, but it is nonetheless intense. There is no moral argument--no argument of self interest--that we have been able to bring to bear that will really convince affected American manufacturers that it is to our net advantage to make more liberal trade arrangements with Japan. When we appeal to European allies to help out, they normally reply by citing their own poverty, taxes, hardships and unemployment.
The same people are the ones who argue hotly against so-called "foreign aid." Basing our conclusions upon the Christian principle of charity and the common brotherhood of man, some real aid would certainly be justified for the needy. But when we are, through aid, trying to help build up a nation whose strength and friendliness are important to us, there would seem to be an unimpeachable case for generosity.
But with the necessary help, in the amounts needed, coming from neither American trade nor foreign aid, the only other help could come from trade with other nations. As I pointed out before, the logical ones would be Red China and Manchuria. To a lesser extent Japan could trade also with India, Burma, the Philippines and Indonesia, all of which are poor countries. But, again, there are segments of America that believe that any trade with the Communists is vicious and tends to build up the strength and power of our deadly enemies, who thereby will gain the confidence to attack us. The opponents of such trade are indeed vociferous.6
And so we have still the problem of Japan; in spite of the normally generous heart of America.
I assure you that, behind closed doors and on innumerable occasions, I have argued this matter from the very platform that you outline in your letter, and have added to it the arguments of enlightened self-interest. Moreover I have pointed out that the free world has arrived at a juncture when it needs to read and re-read and take to heart the Sermon on the Mount or, indeed, the teachings of any one of the several great religions with which we are familiar. If we do not do so, the future contains many dark clouds.
The point I make is that at this moment the political leader, to advance the kind of thing I have alluded to above, must fight for small concessions. In the case of Japan, he must work to provide a little aid. He must try to lower our own tariff walls just a little. He must try to get other friendly nations to do likewise. And he must use every practical political expedient at his command to get a sufficient number of these small concessions, so that Japan, while still denied the means to grow as strong, friendly and prosperous as we should like, will at least, we hope, not fall prey to Communist enticement and will have the patience to look forward to greater and more sympathetic understanding among the nations opposed to Communistic atheism and dictatorship.
Thank you again for writing.
With best wishes, Sincerely
