June 29, 1945

New York Times.

I take this immediate opportunity to make this preliminary report to the Senate upon my two months' official absence as a member of the American delegation at the San Francisco Conference to create an international organization for peace and security.

It has been a difficult and burdensome assignment. But it has had its compensations not only in its privilege of association with earnest peace-seeking pilgrims from every corner of the globe, but also in its promise of a better world. I shall not here undertake a discussion of the vast detail of considerations which must be explored in subsequent debate. I am content today to state my general conclusions and the reasons that impel them.

First, I wish to present my compliments to my fellow-delegates and our advisers and our staff. We have labored together in good spirit and good-will. We have had healthy differences of opinion, but we have ultimately acted in substantial unanimity from start to finish. We have had the generous confidence and helpful cooperation of the President of the United States.

Particularly I wish to commend the Secretary of State, Edward R. Stettinius, Jr. He has been an able and inspiring leader. He has been equal to every emergency we faced. Not only as chairman of our delegation, but also as chairman of the Conference and its key committees, he has been as tireless as he has been efficient in driving to our goal. He has richly earned the grateful, good opinion of his country.

I want also to pay my particular tribute of affectionate appreciation to the distinguished Senator from Texas. the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Connally. Without the faintest hint of partisanship at any time, he made it constantly possible for each one of us, representing the minority, to play our full role in these deliberations. He carried some of the heaviest burdens of the conference with patience, fidelity and eminent success. He was a tower of strength to this great undertaking in every aspect of its labors. He, too, has put the nation greatly in his debt.

Mr. President, I have signed the San Francisco Charter. I believe it represents a great forward step toward the international understanding and cooperation and fellowship which are indispensable to peace, progress and security. If the spirit of its authors can become the spirit of its evolution, I believe it will bless the earth. I believe it serves the intelligent self-interest of the United States which knows, by bitter experience in the valley of the shadow of two wars alone.

I believe it is our only chance to keep faith with those who have borne the heat of battle. I have signed the Charter with no illusions regarding its imperfections and with no pretensions that it guarantees its own benign aims; but with no doubts that it proposes an experiment which must be bravely undertaken in behalf of peace with justice in a better, happier and safer world.

I shall support the ratification of this Charter with all the resources at my command. I shall do this in the deep conviction that the alternative is physical and moral chaos in many weary places of the earth. I shall do it because there must be no default in our oft-pledged purpose to outlaw aggressions so far as lies within our human power. I shall do it because this plan, regardless of infirmities, holds great promise that the United Nations may collaborate for peace as effectively as they have made common cause for war. I shall do it because peace must not be cheated out of its only collective chance.

I think, Mr. President, that I now know rather intimately what was in Benjamin Franklin's soul when, at the end of the American Constitutional Convention in 1787, he put his signature to that immortal document and said:

"I consent, sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better and because I am not sure it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors I sacrifice to the public good. On the whole, sir, I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it would, with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility and, to make manifest our unity, put his name to this instrument * * * and turn our future thoughts and endeavors to the means of having it well administered."

Franklin never had cause to regret his act of faith. I pretend no authentic parallel in the present instance. But in kindred faith I am prepared to proceed with this great adventure. I see no other way. In the event of its unexpected failure, I should prefer to have been associated with its hopeful trial than with a refusal to permit it to prove its expected success.

I revert briefly to Franklin. He also said:

"I doubt whether any other convention we can obtain may be able to make a better constitution; for, when you assemble a number of men, to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does."

Mr. President, if that was true in a limited area among our relatively close-knit colonial States, how much more true is it when we contemplate the San Francisco Conference where fifty nations, gathered from the opposite poles and from the seven seas, separated from each other by race, language and tradition, and dealing with a problem which spans the globe, sought a meeting of minds and found a common denominator to express their common purpose.

Only those who have engaged in such a universal congress-veritably the parliament of man can wholly understand the complications and difficulties. But they must be obvious to any thinking mind. It is no wonder we had many a troublesome day and many a critical night. It is no wonder that none of us can say that he wholly approves the net result. The wonder is that we can all approve so much.

Within the framework of the Charter, through its refinement in the light of experience, the future can overtake our errors. But there will be no "future" for it unless we make this start. I doubt if there could ever be another or a better start. I commend this over-all consideration to all of my colleagues who have any interest in collective security as an instrument of collective peace. I commend it to all who are listening to the prayers for peace which rise from the hearthstones of our land.

My own view regarding collective security is well known. I have repeatedly stated it upon this-floor. While I want a powerful Army and an invincible Navy to make our national defense as impregnable as possible, pending the time when mutual arms limitations can be made dependably effective, I believe that no nation can hereafter immunize itself by its own exclusive action.

I say again that since Pearl Harbor World War II has put the cruel science of mass murder into new and sinister perspective. I say again that the oceans have ceased to be moats which automatically protect our ramparts. I say again that flesh and blood now compete unequally with winged steel. War has become an all-consuming juggernaut. I say again that if World War III ever unhappily arrives, it will open laboratories of death too horrible to contemplate. I say again that I propose to do everything within my power to keep those laboratories closed for keeps; and, Mr. President, they must be kept closed all around the earth because neither time nor space any longer promises to shield the victims of treacherous attack. We must have collective security to stop the next war, if possible, before it starts; and to crush it swiftly if it starts in spite of our organized precautions.

That vital aspiration, Mr. President, is the object of the San Francisco Charter. The Charter is not content merely with this latter sanguinary assignment to meet force with force when there is nothing left to do but fight. It seeks, above all else, to cure the underlying causes of wars: to correct the frictions which lead to wars; to resolve disputes by peaceful means before they take on the suicidal magnitude of war; in a familiar metaphor, to "lock the barn BEFORE the horse is stolen."

You may tell me that I speak of the millennium. I reply, in the words of Holy Writ: "Where there is no vision the people perish." We dare not fail to try. We dare not fail to strive in this direction no matter how far we fall short of the goal.

Here are fifty sovereign nations, each one of which is under the most solemn pledge to do what?

"--to maintain international peace and security; and to that end to take collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace and the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which may lead to a breach of the peace.

"--to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace.

"--to achieve international cooperation in the solution of international problems of an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character and promotion and encouragement of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, language, religion or sex."

You may tell me that I have but to scan the present world with realistic eyes in order to see these fine phrases often contemptuously reduced to a contemporary shambles. You may tell me that some of the signatories to this Charter practice the precise opposite of what they preach even as they sign. You may tell me that the aftermath of the war seems to threaten the utter disintegration of these ideals at the very moment they are born.

I reply that the nearer right you may be in any such gloomy indictment, the greater is the need for the new pattern which promises at least to try to stem these evil tides. The nearer right you are, the greater becomes the importance of this new self-denying ordinance which promises a chastened view. The nearer right you are, the greater is the urgency for invoking the emancipations which the San Francisco Charter contemplates. If the effort fails, we can at least face the consequence with clean hands.

Now, Mr. President, I briefly sketch the Charter's working structure. It will function through four major instruments:

(1) A General Assembly in which each signatory nation has one vote-tomorrow's "town meeting of the world"; (2) a Security Council-the executive agency for action-in which Britain, Russia, America, France and China have permanent seats together with six other nations chosen periodically at the Assembly; (3) an International Court of Justice where all nations will have the option of seeking juridical decisions; (4) a Social and Economic Council, consisting of eighteen nations chosen periodically by the Assembly, which will explore those social and economic dislocations, in the family of nations, that too often breed the wars which might otherwise be avoided through voluntary readjustments.

The Security Council will have at its ultimate potential disposal-when all other recourses have failed to maintain peace and security-an armed force to which the signatory States will be prepared to contribute upon call and in such proportions as shall be determined by collateral agreements made between the Security Council and these States. These agreements will not be negotiated until the new league is in being. Their detail is not involved in the discussion of this primary treaty. But this treaty guarantees that these agreements shall be "subject to ratification by the signatory States in accordance with their constitutional processes." Hence the Senate need have no fear that t his separate obligation will not subsequently be available to its full scrutiny and consent.

There are those, Mr. President, who look upon this final availability of force, to keep the peace, as the real value of this enterprise. They argue that the aggressor of tomorrow, like the brutal aggressors of yesterday and today, will understand no language except guns and ships and planes.

They may be right. Certainly I do not disagree that the United Nations must possess the potential power to fight to keep the peace which they have won by kindred means. I agree that we must "keep our powder dry" and be prepared to "pass the ammunition." But I would not agree that force is the real genius of this new institution. On the contrary, it is my conviction that the great hope which is here held out to humankind stems largely from the solemn formula which the San Francisco Charter creates for the pacific settlement of disputes before they ever reach a fighting stage. It is my profound belief that the pacific contacts and consultations which will constantly be maintained by the Powers-and particularly by the Great Powers-plus the pacific routines which every dispute must exhaust before it is subject to any sort of sanctions, can resolve most, if not all, of the controversies which otherwise might lead once more to war.

What are these pacific routines which thus must be exhausted? (1) Solution by negotiation. (2) Inquiry. (3) Mediation. (4) Conciliation. (5) Arbitration. (6) Judicial settlement. (7) Resort to regional arrangements. (8) Other peaceful means chosen by the disputants themselves. (9) Appropriate procedures or methods of adjustment recommended by the Security Council.

This procedure, among other things, will be a "cooling off" process. It will temper and discourage impetuous wrath which too often flames out of sudden, national hysteria. It allows time for rules of reason to re-endow our sanities. It promises justice as a substitute for force. And all the time it invokes the moral pressures of the organized conscience of the world, functioning through this organization, upon any nation (big or little) which ignores this pacific routine and draws its ruthless sword.

You have heard much about a "big power veto," to which I shall presently refer. There is no "veto"-no self-administered immunity bath-which can void this primary obligation which every member of the United Nations takes when it signs the San Francisco Charter. There will be no doubt about the record. The self-confessed criminal of tomorrow will stand condemned. The Security Council itself cannot go as far against one of the five big Powers as it can against the middle and lesser Powers.

I shall discuss that in a moment. But I assert that there is no escape for any power, however great, from the clear responsibility which it will unavoidably assume before an outraged world if it takes to the warpath before it has exhausted these paths of peace. In my view, the spiritual forces of this earth-when once thus universally aroused and organized and given a mighty oracle for militant expression-will prevail against all enemies. In my view, this is the San Francisco Charter's rendezvous with destiny.

Dumbarton Oaks has been given a new soul. As originally drawn, it avoided any reference to justice-without which there can be no stable peace. San Francisco's Charter fills that void. The Charter names justice as the prime criterion of peace. It repeatedly dedicates itself to human rights and fundamental freedoms. It declines to accept a static world in which yesterday's inequities are "frozen" in a strait-jacket. It tells the General Assembly that it is empowered "to recommend measures for the peaceful adjustment of any situations, regardless of origin, which it deems likely to impair the general welfare or friendly relations among nations, and of situations resulting from a violation of the purposes and principles set forth in this Charter."

Mr. President, this can be a new emancipation proclamation for the world. You may tell me that it is calculated to "keep the word of promise to the ear and break it to the hope." I reply that I know no better hope. I reply that it certainly will be broken if you insist upon denying it a chance, or if you cripple it at birth.

I have had great sympathy, Mr. President, with those among my colleagues who have earnestly argued that we should know the pattern of the final peace before we undertake to create the mechanism that shall sustain this final peace. As the Dumbarton Oaks proposal was originally drawn, this viewpoint was particularly persuasive because the proposal failed to envision any subsequent possibility of peaceful change to overtake error or injustice, in the vast and ramifying decisions and settlements affecting our Allies and our friends, which may creep into the liquidation of this war.

But I submit that the San Francisco Charter greatly alters this conception. I speak with great feeling on this phase of the subject because it is one to which, if I may be allowed to say so, I devoted my persistent efforts. Frankly, I am one of those who look with anxiety upon many of these settlements and decisions, past, present and prospective. But my anxiety will be less acute if I know that the United Nations, meeting periodically in a free and untrammeled general assembly, can "recommend measures for the peaceful adjustment of any situations, regardless of origin, which it deems likely to impair the general welfare."

That is indeed a glorious assignment for tomorrow's "town meeting of the world."

In this and other aspects, I repeat, the San Francisco Charter proposes to avoid a static world. In this and other aspects, the Dumbarton Oaks plan has been greatly liberalized by the progressive labors of this conference. I submit that justice is thus guaranteed its hearing under the healthiest possible auspices available to this distraught and tangled world. I submit that justice is infinitely better off with such a forum than it would be if such a forum were refused.

I suggest that the more one fears the nature of the final peace, speaking not of our enemies but of our friends, the warmer should be one's welcome to an institution which can promise some element of orderly correction. Under such circumstances, the quicker this institution begins to function the quicker justice may hope to find its voice and mobilize its friends.

I am definitely not saying that a good league can compensate for a bad peace. I am not diluting for a single instant the dreadful responsibility which will rest upon those who chart the final peace. But I am saying that, whatever the final peace may be, the protections for human rights and fundamental freedoms inherent in the San Francisco Charter will inevitably make a better, a wiser and a safer job of it in its ultimate impacts upon humankind. We could wish for more assurance than this Charter gives. But we would desert our own ideals if we should permit our desire for the unattainable to blind us to wisdom of embracing the boon which is at hand.

It is said, by way of assault upon this scheme of things, that the San Francisco Charter virtually delivers the world to the domination of a Five-Power Alliance-America, Russia, Britain, France and China-since these nations permanently exercise major authority in the Security Council which we here create.

It is said that this arrangement, in stark reality, becomes a Three-Power military alliance between Russia, Britain and the United States, since they will become its chief instruments of peace enforcement when the need for force arises. So far as peace enforcement is concerned I agree that there is substance to this contention. But I hasten to assert that so far as force is concerned, the world is at the mercy of Russia, Britain and the United States regardless of whether we form this league or not.

Those happen to be the facts of life. But I submit that the world is even more at their mercy without the San Francisco Charter than with it. Without the charter there is no curb upon these great military powers except the rivalry between them-and military rivalry has never yet been the harbinger of peace. With the charter there is at least the restraint of a peaceful contract, for whatever that may be worth, and the grim assurance that the aggressor who breaks this contract will stand in naked infamy before the embattled conscience of an outraged world.

I wish we might have a different plan in which there could be more decentralization of enforcement power. But that is simply equivalent to saying that I wish we might have a different kind of world. The truth of the matter is that we confront a condition and not a theory. The San Francisco Charter deals with this condition. If it did not deal with the "condition" it would not be worth the paper it is written on. The "condition" is that Britain, Russia and America control the dominating force-factors of the earth and are calculated to thus continue for the foreseeable years ahead.

To ignore this realism in our peace plans would be to wander in a wishful dream. To accept this realism and then to seek to harness it-to thus make a virtue of necessity-is to embrace the only concrete hope which logic can defend. Never forget, furthermore, my thesis that the use of force is wholly secondary to the use of the pacific tools which this Charter primarily provides. That is the vital point at which all the United Nations stand at par. "Force" is only the last resort. If needed, it obviously must be found where it exists.

You may say this will not work. I answer that I do not know; but I think it will at least so long as this Charter holds the major powers in harmony. I answer that I propose to try the only chance.

You may say that 2,000 years of history denies this military theme. I answer that there was no precedent for World War No. Two. There is no precedent for the peace-challenge we confront. We must make our own precedent to stop World War No. Three.

The so-called "Yalta voting formula" is part and parcel of this same contemplation. I can understand the critic who, on ethical and moral grounds, condemns a voting system which permits each of these five Great Powers to enjoy the special privileges of a "veto" in the Security Council to protect itself against condemnation and collective restraint if it threatens aggression. I can sympathize with the critic who protests this discrimination. But I cannot understand the critic who permits his disappointment upon this score to sweep him into total opposition to this entire enterprise and into total abandonment of all its precious values.

I cannot understand it because, upon examination, we must admit (1) that this veto formula substantially reflects the world's realities; (2) that the so-called "special privilege" of the great powers is matched by its equivalent in "special responsibilities"; (3) that there is no alternative basis upon which to launch this great adventure; and, last, but far from least, because this veto, which we share with others and which we could not enjoy alone, is a protection against American involvements which many millions of our citizens would require as the indispensable price of our adherence to this treaty.

I say this system reflects the world's realities because if these great powers ever face a war with each other, the world's dream of peace is shattered regardless of any league the wit of man might devise. It will not be shattered because of the "veto." It will be shattered because of the facts. It would be idle to cherish any illusions upon this score. Peace depends, in the final analysis, upon the attitudes of these great powers and upon their mutual relationships

But I assert beyond any shadow of a doubt, that this United Nations organization can minimize the frictions and stabilize the international friendships and channel the orderly contacts which can go infinitely far in saving all of us from any such disaster. If, in spite of everything, the disaster comes upon us, the "veto" will simply have been the next war's first casualty. At least, the rest of us will have the incalculable advantage of our own unity in moving swiftly to our own and the world's defense.

I said, secondly, that there is no alternative opportunity to launch this great adventure. There is no other plan available. There was no other basis available to the American delegation at San Francisco. The late President Roosevelt pledged his country to this formula at Yalta. We Americans have a habit of keeping our country's word-a habit by the way, which needs to become contagious if any sort of world order shall survive. The late President exempted from the formula the right of a Great Power to veto an inquiry by the Security Council into its own dereliction; and we, at San Francisco, successfully resisted an extreme interpretation which would have permitted the use of the veto against full hearing and discussion of any other threats to peace and security.

Otherwise, the Yalta formula was clear. To have denied it at San Francisco would have been to kill the conference before it ever got under way. I doubt whether there ever would have been another conference. The hope for organized peace would have died-what irony! at the Golden Gate. The vast advantage which the San Francisco Charter-regardless of its infirmities-holds for the hopes of humankind would have perished in the wreckage of a broken pledge. I would not have been able to square that tragedy with our promises to our fighting sons and to their mothers. And that, Mr. President, is the choice which, in my humble opinion, Congress and the country now confronts.

I have also said, Mr. President, that there is a strong substantive argument to be made for this Yalta formula. If any effective organization for peace and security in the world as it is and as it is going to be for some time to come-whether we like it or not-the Great Powers must assume special and particular responsibilities. There is no other way. To meet these special and particular responsibilities the Great Powers obviously must have special and particular responsibilities. The Great Powers obviously must have special and particular authority. Without the latter, the former are impossible. This special and particular "authority" may be looked upon as special and particular "privilege."

But, in the last analysis, it is the "privilege" of serving the world. If it ever becomes a selfish "privilege," an exploited "privilege," this organization wild die of cancer. For myself, I decline to write any such obituary in anticipation of a funeral which never need occur. But I do not for an instant blind myself to the overriding fact that these "responsibilities," these "authorities," these "privileges" which the great powers thus accept are the most sacred public trust ever created in the affairs of men. It is indispensable that this obligation be accepted in this spirit by all concerned.

If you tell me that I have no warrant, in today's status of the world, for optimism upon this score, I answer that unless you develop this, or a better, peace prospectus, the drums of another war may thunder in your ears as a consequence of our cynical failure at least to try to silence them.

I have also said that this veto problem invited many deeply devoted Americans to inspect our own American position before they attack this formula. Let it never for an instant be forgotten that this veto granted to the five great powers includes a veto for our own United States. It is our protection against our involvement in any use of our forces against our will. It is our defense against what I venture to believe would be bitterly condemned in many quarters as our "involuntary servitude" if our veto power did not exist.

It is the complete answer to any rational fears that we may be subordinating our destiny to alien commands.

It is the warrant that, though we cooperate wholeheartedly with the United Nations for peace and security, we remain the captains of our own souls. It guarantees our perpetuated independence of international dictation. If the veto is viewed by some of our citizens as a cloud upon the idealism of the San Francisco Charter, let's recognize the vivid fact that for others of our citizens the cloud has a silver lining. Indeed, for millions of our people it is all "silver lining" and no cloud at all.

In my view, Mr. President, we sacrifice none of our essential American sovereignty and none of our essential American rights when, exercising intelligent self-interest, we join ourselves in this international enterprise to seek a peace and a security which are as essential to our welfare as the air we breathe. For example, the San Francisco Charter has found a practical way to integrate regional arrangements with the over-all authority of the United Nations League; and thus to put the international organization in gear with the great inter-American system-once symbolized by the Monroe Doctrine and recently endowed with new vitality at Chapultepec.

For fifty years this inter-American union has been the most successful instrument for peace and security the world has ever seen. We do not surrender its mutual advantages. We build them into the new foundations of the larger system. We integrate them with the larger plan.

Another example: We preserve the right of individual and collective self-defense, inherent in every sovereign state, in the event of summary attack. Another example: We exempt all essentially domestic matters from the jurisdiction of the new international authority.

Another example-commended to those who want American freedom of post-war action in respect to far Pacific Island bases-we have written a trusteeship chapter in the San Francisco Charter which sets up a splendid optional program that shall lift mandates to new levels of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; but-and I quote from the Charter-"it would be a matter for subsequent agreement as to which territories would be brought under a trusteeship system and upon what terms." Here again that which falls short of the compulsory idealism which some of our citizens desire, is an assurance to others of our citizens that America reserves complete freedom of action to herself in this regard.

In a word, we have not created a super-state. We have not organized a "world government." We have not hauled down the Stars and Stripes from the dome of the Capitol. We have simply agreed to cooperate effectively with forty-nine other sovereign states in the mutual pursuit of peace and security. Our own American self-interest in that objective, as demonstrated by two world wars in a quarter century, is as keen and as intimate and as universal as that of any other nation on this globe. Indeed, I know of no land on earth which has a greater stake in this world peace than our own United States of America.

Mr. President, in this brief report I have touched only the rim of this tremendous subject. I have presented only a sketchy outline. It fails any sort of adequate attention to many of the useful functions which the United Nations league will serve. I particularly have in mind the enormous potentialities of the proposed Social and Economic Council which will persistently facilitate "the creation of conditions of stability and well-being which are necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among nations, based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples."

This is one of the most significant and most promising improvements on the old Geneva covenant. I also particularly have in mind the new emphasis which is put upon international law as an institution for human service, substituting orderly justice for the jungle-creed that might makes right. I also have in mind the certainty that, with this organized vigilance, no Axis powers nor any counterpart thereof shall ever rise again.

These and many other considerations will be the appropriate subjects of full investigation by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and of full debate on the Senate floor. I am proud to say that I believe the San Francisco Charter can withstand such scrutiny. I have no disposition to urge precipitous haste in this consideration. I want Congress and the country to know all there is to know about this mighty enterprise.

On the other hand, I should deeply regret any needless or undue delay in proceeding with reasonable expedition to register the Senate's will. None of us can be unaware of the importance which will attach to our decision, nor of the impact which our attitudes will have upon the life of the world in this moment of its greatest flux. History is writing with a rushing pen and we must accommodate its pace. If America is to assume the moral leadership of a better world in which we have fought our way to glorious eminence, we can scarcely be content to be among the last who care or dare to speak when this United Nations' roll is called.

Mr. President, I was still at my conference tasks in San Francisco when Washington had the great privilege of pouring out its tumultuous welcome to General Eisenhower a few days ago. It was a source of deep regret to me that I could not be here with you to join the grateful throng which greeted him up and down our avenues and yonder in the chamber of the House. When I read the text of his modest, moving speech and came upon his devoted tribute to the precious memory of those brave, young martyrs who have given up the last full measure of devotion, and when I found he had said that "the blackness of the grief of those who mourn can be relieved only by the faith that all this shall not happen again," it seemed to me that the San Francisco Charter had a responsive mission which this great commander must have had in mind as he went on to say:

"The soldier knows that in war the threat of separate annihilation tends to hold allies together; he hopes we can find peace a nobler incentive to produce the same unity. He passionately believes that, with the same determination, the same optimistic resolution and the same mutual consideration among the Allies that marshaled in Europe forces capable of crushing what had been the greatest war machine of history, the problems of peace can and must be met. He sees the United Nations strong but considerate; humane and understanding leaders in the world to preserve the peace that he is winning."

That, Mr. President, is the aspiration and dedication of the San Francisco Charter. None of its authors will certify to its perfection. But all of its authors will certify to its preponderant advantages. It is the only plan available for international cooperation in the pursuit of peace and justice. It is laden with promise and with hope. It deserves a faithful trial.

America has everything to gain and nothing to lose by giving it support; everything to lose and nothing to gain by declining this continued fraternity with the United Nations in behalf of the dearest dream of humankind.

I commend it to Congress and the Country.