ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 22, 1950 (UP) - President Truman today warned world Communism that this country will use "force to defend democracy" if it must.
The President pledged this country to strive ceaselessly for peace. He said the United States is willing to support - through the United Nations - any genuine atomic control plan that would be effective and not a "sham."
But he declared in a Washington's Birthday address here that the free nations must pool their strength to meet communist force with force. Asserting that our task is "fundamentally the same" as George Washington's, he said the first President "strove to make democratic institutions more effective."
"He knew, too," Mr. Truman said, "that there were times when the use of force to defend democracy could not be avoided."
Mr. Truman said bluntly - in what he called a "straight from the shoulder" foreign policy speech - that man's hope of future peace hinges more on successful resistance to Communist aggression and on the spread of freedom than it does on atomic controls.
The President did not mention the hydrogen bomb. But he made it clear that the United States is not putting all its chips on atomic weapons or on efforts to bring them under international curbs.
"The real strength of the free nations," he said, "is not to be found in any single country or any one weapon, but in the combined moral and material strength of the free world as a whole."
All peoples who wish to be free, the president said, must unite to meet the Communist threat "of an armed imperialism which seeks to extend its influence by force."
Mr. Truman spoke at the George Washington National Masonic Memorial here in ceremonies dedicating a statue of the nation's first President.
The 33rd President keyed this country's foreign policy to expansion of democratic institutions throughout the world - by means of the Marshall Plan, his Point Four program to help underdeveloped regions improve their living standards, reciprocal trade, and the yet-to-be-ratified International Trade Organization.
But he also hinged it upon regional defense pacts within the United Nations framework, pacts like the North Atlantic Treaty with its arms-for-free nations corollary.
He stated repeatedly that the free nations must build up enough power to meet Russian force with force if necessary. He did not mention the USSR by name. But he blasted the "false philosophy" of Communism as "a challenge to all peoples who are free or who wish to be free."
Mr. Truman indicated that if Russia wants peace, she can have it and keep her form of government, too. In creating a common defense with the free nations, he said, "we do not seek to impose a way of life on any nation."
Freedom, he said, "is not expanded by conquest." Democracy "is not created by dictation."
But the United States will not let itself be hoodwinked by any bogus peace gestures or "sham" A-bomb control proposals. This and the other free nations want peaceful means for settling international disputes. They know "that another great war could destroy victor and vanquished alike."
But any atomic control plan that provides anything less than "an effective workable system" would, he said, "be a sham agreement." This country, the President said, believes the U.S.-sponsored plan adopted by the United Nations but rejected by Russia "would be effective."
The American atomic plan twice endorsed by the U.N. General Assembly but blocked by Russia calls for international ownership of all atomic facilities. It would provide for inspection of atomic plants at irregular unannounced intervals. The Russians object to the plan to institute this control in stages. The Americans would outlaw atomic weapons only after effective international control is assured.
(The Russian counter-plan provides for twin treaties which would establish an international inspector and outlaw atomic weapons simultaneously. The Russians have indicated a desire for national ownership of atomic facilities and plants and to accept inspection at regular intervals. The Americans object that this would lead to destruction of atomic stockpiles before there is any ironclad guarantee that no other nation would manufacture A-bombs. They contend it will take a period of years to establish an effective control agency.)
But the United States, Mr. Truman added, will not let mere "pride of authorship" stand in the way of any other plan that also would be effective. By implication, he rejected proposals - like those made by Winston Churchill, Sen. Tom Connally, D-Texas, Harold E. Stassen and others for parleys with Russia outside the United Nations.
"We are convinced," he said, "of the necessity for an international agreement to limit the use of atomic energy to peaceful purposes and for a workable international system to assure that such an agreement is effectively carried out.
"We believe that the United Nations is the proper forum in which to reach such an agreement.
"We ask only for a plan that provides an effective, workable system. ... Anything less would increase not decrease the dangers of the use of atomic energy for destructive purposes."
