Dear Swede: From a personal viewpoint, the past year has been notable mainly because of unaccustomed illness.1 It is scarcely useful, however, to make this a subject of a letter to you because my "innards" have been pictured, described and discussed in the papers, to say nothing of on the television and radio, until you, along with many others, must be heartily sick of the whole business.
Of course, the two illnesses taken together provide for partisan political opponents a very fine platform from which to "view with alarm." Such people pretend to be astonished that I have not rebounded, within seven weeks, from a major operation, to my pre-operational level of weight, strength and physical activity.
I notice that one man has gone to the trouble of figuring out that, due to my heart attack, I was 143 days absent from duty, while in the second instance he figured I added another 42, at least. Nothing is said about the fact that in Denver, within five days of my initial attack, staff officers were in my room asking for decisions, while in my latest operation I had to be functioning again in the space of three days.2 Actually, after an operation on Saturday morning, I sat up to receive and talk to Chancellor Adenauer for quite a visit on the following Thursday.3
I am, of course, disappointed that no other Republican has come sufficiently to the fore in public opinion as to make of himself a possible Presidential candidate satisfactory to the Party. But this was true before I thought of being sick; I still believe that, had I not suffered a heart attack in September, I could have taken much more dramatic steps than I did to force the Republican Party to consider and accept someone else.4
All that is in the past.
Today the difficult things for me are political, both in the domestic and in the international fields. Nasser and the Suez Canal are foremost in my thoughts.5 Whether or not we can get a satisfactory solution for this problem and one that tends to restore rather than further to damage the prestige of the Western powers, particularly of Britain and France, is something that is not yet resolved. In the kind of world that we are trying to establish, we frequently find ourselves victims of the tyrannies of the weak. In the effort to promote the rights of all, and observe the equality of sovereignty as between the great and the small, we unavoidably give to the little nations opportunities to embarrass us greatly. Faithfulness to the underlying concepts of freedom is frequently costly. Yet there can be no doubt that in the long run such faithfulness will produce real rewards.
One of the frustrating facts of my daily existence is the seeming inability of our people to understand our position and role in the world and what our own best interests demand of us.
The other day I happened onto a copy of McKinley's last speech, delivered the day before he was shot.6 In it he argued for more and freer trade, for reciprocal trade treaties--and made the flat assertion, "Isolation is no longer possible or desirable." What he discerned 55 years ago has grown more true with every passing year, especially as we became more and more a creditor nation. Yet an astonishing number of people today believe that our welfare lies in higher tariffs, meaning greater isolation and a refusal to buy goods from others. They fail to see that no matter what we do in providing, through loans, for the urgent needs of other countries in investment capital, unless we simultaneously pursue a policy that permits them to make a living, we are doomed to eventual isolation and to the disappearance of our form of government.7
Now I do not expect the trend of which I speak to go that far. Before a final disaster of this kind came upon us, there would be greater understanding of the facts and corrective action gradually applied. But I do greatly fear that this trend could continue until we might have lost certain important segments of the remaining free world--a loss which will make our future existence more difficult, and possibly even more dangerous.
Many years ago someone wrote a little novel or story, the central theme of which was that the rich owner of a factory could not forever live on top of the hill in luxury and serenity, while all around him at the bottom of the hill his workmen lived in misery, privation and resentment. In comparatively recent years we learned this lesson nationally. As a result, we have the greatest middle class in the world because there is practically nobody in the lowest or "edge of starvation" group.8 Now we must learn the same lesson internationally--and once having learned the lesson we must study the best ways to bring about better standards for the underdeveloped nations. It cannot be done by grants, it will not be the result of any one specific action.
We must pursue a broad and intelligent program of loans, trade, technical assistance and, under current conditions, mutual guarantees of security. We must stop talking about "give aways." We must understand that our foreign expenditures are investments in America's future.9 A simple example: No other nation is exhausting its irreplaceable resources so rapidly as is ours. Unless we are careful to build up and maintain a great group of international friends ready to trade with us, where do we hope to get all the materials that we will one day need as our rate of consumption continues and accelerates? Possibly the future chemist will make all the materials we need out of crops grown annually, but, if he does, that day will probably come long after our minerals of various kinds are fairly well exhausted.
It just occurs to me that I seem to be thrusting off on to you some of my problems and troubles. I didn't mean to do so, but at least you will see that in the approach to such grave difficulties as the Suez crisis, there is a great need for keeping in the back of the mind the understanding of these broader, long-term issues in the international world.
Give my love to Ibby. As ever
