Political Process and Foreign Policy: The Making of the Japanese Peace 9781400878536

Table of contents :
Foreword
Preface
Contents
Part I. Introduction
Chapter 1. The Study of Foreign Policy-Making
Chapter 2. The Japanese Peace Settlement: A Brief History
Part II. “Public Opinion”
Chapter 3. The Climate of Opinion
Chapter 4. Types of Public Interest
Chapter 5. The Pattern of Political Communication
Chapter 6. Treaty Coverage in the Press
Part III. The Executive
Chapter 7. John Foster Dulles: Executive Agent
Part IV. The Congress
Chapter 8. The Committee on Foreign Relations
Chapter 9. Debate in the Senate
Part V. Interrelationships
Chapter 10. Public Opinion and Governmental Behavior
Chapter 11. Bipartisanship and Executive-Legislative Relations
Chapter 12. Salt Water Politics
Part VI. Conclusion
Chapter 13. Conclusion
Index

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THE POLITICAL PROCESS AND FOREIGN POLICY The Making of tlie Japanese Peace Settlement

OTHER BOOKS FROM THE CENTER OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PRINCETON UNIVERSITY Gabriel A. Almond, The Appeak of Communism W. W. Kaufmann, editor, Military Policy and National Security Klaus Knorr, The War Potential of Nations Lucian W. Pye, Guerrilla Communism in Malaya Charles De Visscher, Theory and Reality in Public International Law, translated by P. E. Corbett Myron Weiner, Party Politics in India

THE POLITICAL PROCESS AND FOREIGN POLICY Tke Making of the Japanese Peace Settlement

BY BERNARD C. COHEN

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

1957

Copyright © 1957 by Princeton University Press London: Oxfoid University Press All Rights Reserved L.C. CARD 57-8665

Bernard C. Cohen is Research Associate at the Center of International Studies of Princeton University, Lecturer in Pub­ lic and International Affairs at the University, and Managing Editor of World Politics.

Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey

To Toby colleague-at-large

FOREWORD The Japanese peace settlement of 1951 presented an excellent opportunity to study the problems of foreign policy planning, the processes of international diplomacy, and the political processes of foreign policy-making, at close range. A group of scholars in the Center of International Studies accepted this opportunity, and undertook to investigate the various phases of policy-making in this case, which was exceptional both in the amount of agreement that was mobilized on behalf of a policy, and in the speed with which that policy was devised and executed. This volume presents the results of one aspect of this study of the Japanese peace settle­ ment: the domestic political processes involved in the formulation and approval of the peace settlement in the United States. Dr. Cohen examines separately the major elements in the Ameri­ can political system that have foreign policy-making roles—public opinion, interest groups, the media of communication, the Executive branch, and the Congress—to determine the character of their in­ terests in the peace settlement and their actions with respect to it. Then he analyzes the interrelationships among these political fac­ tors, and the patterns of foreign policy-making influence they revealed in this instance. Dr. Cohen has brought a new focus to the tradition of case studies as a means of gaining insight into the political process. This study is part of a continuing inquiry into the political processes of foreign policy-making on the part of the Center of International Studies. The Center was established at Princeton Uni­ versity in 1951; its basic purpose is to bring to bear on the elucida­ tion of foreign policy problems the full resources of available knowledge and modern methods of analysis. The members of the Center work at all times in close association, but each member is free to formulate his research projects in his own way and each published study represents an individual analysis of a problem. FREDERICK S. DUNN DIRECTOR

Center of International Studies Princeton University November 1, 1956

PREFACE This study of the domestic processes of policy-making on the Japanese peace settlement is one part of a larger inquiry into the peace settlement in which the Center of International Studies has been engaged. Other aspects of this larger inquiry deal with the problems of substantive policy formulation with respect to the settlement, the role of the military establishment in this policy formulation, and the nature of the diplomacy required to secure the multilateral instruments of the settlement. I have been vastly assisted in my own work by my colleagues in this research enter­ prise: Frederick S. Dunn, Percy E. Corbett, and Burton M. Sapin. My thanks go to two groups of people—those who facilitated the larger undertaking, and those who have been of particular help in my own research. The first group includes John Foster Dulles, who has maintained an interest in the project since its start, and who gave generously of his time in a lengthy interview a few weeks before the Senate debated ratification of the various treaties; Dean Rusk, who as Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs during the development of the Japanese peace settlement saw its merits as an object of detailed study; G. Bernard Noble and E. Tay­ lor Parks of the State Department's Historical Division, who were the indispensable links between the scholars and their materials; John M. Allison, then Deputy to Mr. Dulles, and Robert J. G. McClurkin, Douglas Overton, and many others then in the Office of Northeast Asian Affairs, who were in daily touch with these ma­ terials; and George F. Kennan, of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., who recalled in an interview the early postwar history of the problem of making peace with Japan. The second group consists of those who have made my own task lighter and more pleasant. Among the many persons on die govern­ mental level who were helpful in personal conversations or in pro­ viding me with useful information, I wish particularly to thank Senator H. Alexander Smith of New Jersey; Francis O. Wilcox, then Chief of Staff of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; H. Schuyler Foster, Chief of the Division of Public Studies, Depart­ ment of State; and Mrs. Burnita O'Day, Personal Assistant to Mr. Dulles during his work on the peace settlement. I am indebted to the Office of Public Opinion Research at Princeton University, the National Opinion Research Center, and the American Institute of Public Opinion for assistance in the collection of opinion materials

PREFACE

and for permission to use certain polls not previously published. I also want to thank Miss Leona M. Alexander, Chief Reference Librarian of the Oakland Public Library, Oakland, Calif, for the many kindnesses she extended in the course of the research. During the more onerous phases of the work, and especially in the various content analyses, I have had the competent assistance of Margaret Brown Cram. A thorough and persistent researcher, her labors were far beyond the call of ordinary duty. Her contribu­ tions to this study were many, and are very gratefully acknowl­ edged. My thanks go also to die following persons who have read the manuscript and have given me the benefit of their comments: Gabriel A. Almond, Percy E. Corbett, Robert A. Dahl, Frederick S. Dunn, Lucian W. Pye, and David B. Truman. Mary Koether performed additional tasks of research assistance; and Geraldine Fletcher and Marjorie Bowler capped the work of many typists by preparing the final copy. Jean MacLachlan edited the text with her customary skill and helped with the index. While all of these people have helped to shape this work, the final responsibility for what is said or not said is mine. Chapter V of this book appeared in slightly different form in The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. XX, No. 1, Spring 1956. B.C.C. Princeton, N.J. September 1, 1956

χ

CONTENTS Foreword, by Frederick S. Dunn Preface PART

vii ix

I. INTRODUCTION Chapter 1. The Study of Foreign PolicyMaking Chapter 2. The Japanese Peace Settlement: A Brief History

1 3 9

PART II. "PUBLIC OPINION"

27

Chapter 3. Chapter 4. Chapter 5. nication Chapter 6.

29 62

The Climate of Opinion Types of Public Interest The Pattern of Political Commu­ Treaty Coverage in the Press

PART III. THE EXECUTIVE Chapter 7. John Foster Dulles: Executive Agent PART IV. THE CONGRESS Chapter 8. The Committee on Foreign Rela­ tions Chapter 9. Debate in the Senate PART

V. INTERRELATIONSHIPS Chapter 10. Public Opinion and Governmental Behavior Chapter 11. Bipartisanship and ExecutiveLegislative Relations Chapter 12. Salt Water Politics

PART VI. CONCLUSION Chapter 13. Conclusion INDEX

94 110 123 125 143 145 170 207 209 231 253 279 281 289

PART

I

Introduction

Ckapter 1 THE STUDY OF FOREIGN POLICY-MAKING The task of the foreign policy-maker in the United States today is ringed with difficulties. Like his counterparts in other lands, he is frequently handicapped by lack of information about some of the most relevant factors in the international environment, and by lack of knowledge about the consequences of his own actions. He has to deal with strange new forces abroad, for which his traditional theories and assumptions prepare him poorly. But another factor of a different kind is rapidly making his job even more complicated than have either the changing international environment or the in­ adequacies of his own conceptions: if knowledge about the course of policy formulation in foreign countries is a necessary part of the expert American foreign policy-maker's equipment, knowledge of the public processes of policy development in the United States is of equal importance, at the very least. PubHc involvement and participation in foreign policy-making, vastly stimulated by World War I, have taken on a new meaning as the costs and risks of foreign policy have appreciably risen since the end of World War II. In consumption of physical and human resources and the at­ tendant sacrifice of other values, the costs of a successful foreign policy have increased pari passu with the more obvious costs of an unsuccessful foreign policy. These altered costs and risks have brought foreign policy more and more into the domestic political arena. The foreign policy-maker thus has to negotiate with impor­ tant political groups at home as well as abroad in his quest for acceptable policy formulations, and he must calculate the domestic political consequences of any policy proposal in addition to the effects it may have internationally. In these circumstances there are compelling reasons for us to improve our understanding of the ways in which foreign policy is made. The conditions of policy-making in the United States todayincluding the urgent need for wide public support for policy choices of any substantial import—are such that the policy-maker cannot operate for very long without some kind of mental picture of the probable future his choices face in the political and public market places. Some of these images are based on extensive personal ex­ perience, and are highly accurate in the short run at least; thus

THE STUDY OF FOREIGN POLICY-MAKING

the policy-maker could predict with considerable success the fate of any proposal he might have advanced between, say, 1950 and 1955 regarding the establishment of formal relationships between the United States and the Communist regime in China. More often, however, his picture of the domestic political process which a given policy will stimulate or encounter is only half formed, nebulous, filled with problematic suppositions, and subject to outright errors of various kinds. Sometimes, of course, it makes little difference what the picture looks like; for policy may have to be cut to fit the cloth of immedi­ ately available resources, or the external world may offer the policy­ maker scant freedom of choice. But whenever there is room for choice, the selection of a policy alternative may be heavily influ­ enced by the image of a probable political process which delights or haunts the mind of the policy-maker. And in these situations there are two kinds of adverse consequences which a distorted or inaccurate image may cast up. The first kind grows out of a lack of knowledge about the difficulties and obstacles that a given kind of political process may put in the way of a policy. Ill prepared for such difficulties, the policy-maker may find that valuable time and opportunities have been lost, or that he has reaped a harvest of political animosity that might easily have been avoided, or that important elements of his policy have had to be sacrificed because the way was not properly prepared for them. The second kind of adverse consequence may be even more important in a day when policy inventiveness and boldness are increasingly necessary; this kind stems from a failure to understand the opportunities for the development of imaginative policy which are inherent in many kinds of political processes. Seeing, in a shadowy way, chiefly the restric­ tive elements in a probable political process, the policy-maker often spins around himself an artificial web of constraint; he thus is in­ hibited from developing new policy ideas and from pressing their advocacy. This is as true of a Senator, who may incorrectly interpret the probable political action of his constituents, as it is of a Secretary of State, who may not visualize correctly the nature of his support in certain circumstances in the country at large. In either case, whether it is the difficulties or the opportunities that are underestimated, a loss of policy initiative is involved, to the nation's immediate or ultimate disadvantage. The aim of re­ search in this area is to improve the nation's policy product, by increasing our knowledge and improving our understanding of the

THE STUDY OF FOREIGN POLICY.MAKING

political processes of foreign policy-making. In a field where mis­ takes may be costly beyond calculation, there is obvious utility in being able to predict or estimate with some accuracy the political future of policy ideas—in knowing what kinds of policy issues, recommendations, or procedures will set off a train of inhibiting consequences, and what kinds will meet a rapid consensus; in know­ ing what the real opportunities for decisive and positive interna­ tional political action are, and where the real as distinct from the imaginary obstacles to political initiative lie. But while there may be widespread recognition of the desirability of knowing more about how foreign policy is made, it is a far from simple task actually to build up a useful body of relevant knowledge about over-all processes. Because of limited resources, personal taste, or any other of the countless factors that affect the course of research, studies of policy-making tend to be partial, focusing on some relevant factors to the exclusion of others. Thus the field of political science knows many excellent studies of the institutions of government, of official policy-makers themselves, of public opinion and pressure groups, and of specific historical cases of foreign policy­ making from start to finish. Some of these are landmarks in the literature of the discipline, and nearly all of them contain useful concepts and insights. But the impact of even the best—apart from those describing institutions—has been more individual than cumu­ lative. Because each one is based on a different set of assumptions and examines a different aspect of policy-making, there has been no steady accretion of knowledge of the different combinations of forces that shape different kinds of foreign policy. Even the case studies of specific instances of policy-making have been more narra­ tive-descriptive than analytical, with the result that progress in understanding through comparison has been fortuitous rather than systematic. This study of the political process that shaped the Japanese peace settlement is partly inspired by the hope that it may in some small way help to remedy this situation. Like all other studies of foreign policy-making, it is based on some specific assumptions which should be made explicit at this point. The first and most obvious one is that substantial advances in understanding and hence in predicting the nature of the forces that converge on foreign policy proposals can be made through the systematic comparison of the factors and the relationships comprising the over-all political processes covering a wide range of policy issues arising in a variety of different circum-

THE STUDY OF FOREIGN POLICY-MAKING

stances. The comparisons should be specific, however, which means that the classifications employed in the analyses of different issues should be standardized and detailed. Another assumption is that in the present state of knowledge about foreign policy-making the most useful technique is to examine all the major elements that might help to shape policy, rather than to decide in advance that some are worth studying and others not. In this way the chances of missing important relationships are minimized. This is particularly important, for example, in those cases where the apparent absence of influence from a customary source of policy-making leads to an increase in the influence or the discretion of another source. The temptation is great to omit this factor from all consideration, but to do so might be to miscalculate a most important relationship. The major factors, the participating elements, in the process of foreign policy-making are conceived here to be the following: a general and somewhat amorphous climate of public opinion; articu­ late private citizens and political interest groups; the media of mass communication; specific agents and agencies in the Executive branch; and specific committees of the Congress, informal political groupings in the Congress, and the two Houses themselves. This has proved to be a highly useful and productive way of organizing for analytical purposes the chief foreign policy-making actors; it is through the participation of these types of groups that the countless considerations bearing on the substance of policy itself actually achieve effective political expression. And since these elements are involved in one form or another in the making of virtually all foreign policy, their use provides a basis for systematic comparison. This study, then, describes and analyzes the contributing ele­ ments in a singularly successful instance of foreign policy-making, and the interrelationships among those elements; but it is also pre­ sented in the hope that it may suggest a way of studying foreign policy-making so as to yield cumulative propositions about domestic political relationships in matters of international policy. After a brief chronological survey of the development of the Japanese peace settlement (Chapter 2), it considers the climate of opinion (Chap­ ter 3 ) , articulate political interest groups (Chapters 4 and 5 ) , and treaty coverage in the press (Chaper 6). The major figure in the Executive branch, John Foster Dulles, is examined in Chapter 7, followed by a discussion of the treatment of the settlement in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Chapter 8) and in the

THE STUDY OF FOREIGN POLICY-MAKING

Senate as a whole (Chapter 9). The relationships between the public and the governmental factors are treated in Chapter 10, and Chapter 11 takes up the question of bipartisanship and the relations between the Executive and Legislative branches. An illu­ strative "case study within a case study"—the story of the develop­ ment of the North Pacific Fisheries Convention—is presented in Chapter 12 as an interesting and revealing footnote to the preced­ ing analyses. And, by way of conclusion, Chapter 13 draws some additional generalizations from this study as a whole, and speculates on a few of their research implications. While it is the presumption of this study that other foreign policy cases can be examined in the same fashion as this one, it would be foolish to deny that the Japanese peace settlement had much to recommend it as the subject for this kind of analysis. In the first place, it was a remarkably successful job of policy-making from the point of view of its acceptance by the various groups interested or involved in it. The very smoothness of the entire operation, coming as it did in a period of high political tension and recrimina­ tion over foreign policy matters, presented a problem of great intrinsic interest. Why was it so easy to secure agreement on the Japanese peace settlement when it was so difficult to obtain it on other and in some ways similar issues of foreign policy? Secondly, despite its substantive complexity there was a procedural simplicity to the peace settlement. It was comprised almost wholly of treaties, which meant that the House of Representatives did not formally consider it. Furthermore, the fact that no appropriations were re­ quired simplified matters considerably, in comparison with some­ thing like fie European Recovery Program, for example, which had to go over the double hurdles of enabling legislation and then ap­ propriations legislation in both the Senate and the House. Finally, at the time the study was begun the treaty was a current issue. This carried the double advantage that the impressions of policy-makers and other participants and observers were still fresh, undistorted by the passage of time and the creation of legend, and that those who worked on the study were themselves sensitive to contemporary evaluations of persons and events connected with the settlement and with the other foreign policy issues of the day. All of these represent considerable advantages; there is no doubt that many other policy cases, particularly those that took place some time ago, would be more difficult to analyze by means of the cate­ gories and conceptions used here. Although the scholar's vision of

THE STUDY OF FOREIGN POLICY-MAKING

the future is sometimes clouded, it does not seem beyond the bounds of reason that there may be a time when enough will be known about the various types of foreign policy-making processes as a result of studies of this kind so that the probable processes awaiting new policy issues can be predicted from a brief analysis of only a few of the attendant factors and their relationships and of some of the other variables involved—for example, the substantive char­ acteristics of the issues themselves. With this as a prospect, the diffi­ culty of analyzing more complicated issues of foreign policy could well become a challenge rather than a deterrent. This, then, is a case study of the domestic political process that helped to shape one foreign policy issue. In the following chapters we shall explore in detail the characteristics of that process. We will see there the permissive nature of the climate of opinion and the substantial indifference displayed by political interest groups and by press coverage; and we will note the significance of these factors in the large amount of discretion exhibited at the governmental level. And on that level we will examine the factors at work in the Senate and those operating on John Foster Dulles himself which gave him a personal as well as an official commanding position in the develop­ ment of the peace settlement. The process here was a limited one; interest was low, involvement and participation were shallow, and basic political factors played a distinctly minor, sometimes even inactive, role in the construction and elaboration of treaty policy. On the Executive side, a forceful personality with an extraordinary political sensitivity made the most of these circumstances in a skill­ ful exercise of policy-making initiative. The result was the Japanese peace settlement: rapidly devised, widely admired, briefly debated, and scarcely criticized.

Ckapter 2 THE JAPANESE PEACE SETTLEMENT: A BRIEF HISTORY To the citizens and parliaments of over forty countries, the Japa­ nese peace settlement consisted of a formal document returning sovereignty to Japan after six and a half years of occupation. To the American people and their Congress, however, that settlement was a web of international agreements, multilateral and bilateral, attempting to regulate some future relationships in the Pacific area. To them, it included, in addition to the Peace Treaty, a Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippine Islands, a Security Treaty with Australia and New Zealand, a Security Treaty with Japan, an Ad­ ministrative Agreement implementing this Security Treaty, and a Convention, with Canada and Japan, for the High Seas Fisheries of the North Pacific Ocean. This is an imposing list of international obligations; in terms of commitments and responsibilities the burden is at least as great upon the United States as upon Japan. One would imagine, having in mind the foreign policy debates in this country since the end of World War II, that the channels and procedures of American foreign policy-making were strained to the limit by the process of formu­ lating and approving undertakings of such magnitude and conse­ quence. Yet the very opposite seems to have been more nearly true. Except for the brief drama of the San Francisco Conference in September 1951, which was transmitted to the nation by the first tele­ vision relay to span the continent, the Japanese peace settlement hardly broke into the consciousness of the American people, or onto the front pages of their newspapers. The legislative history of the North Pacific Fisheries Convention reflects, although it does not wholly represent, the smoothness and ease with which the policy­ making processes of government operated with respect to the peace settlement. The last of the documents to be approved, the conven­ tion slipped through the Senate as inconspicuously as a single salmon going up the Columbia River. It was discussed and ratified, along with eleven other treaties, on July 4,1952, a day that saw the passage of hundreds of other bills in a successful effort to speed Senators to Chicago for the opening, three days later, of the Republican Na­ tional Convention.

THE SETTLEMENT: A BRIEF HISTORY

On subsequent occasions we shall be dealing with the question, "Why were the Pacific treaties enacted so quickly and with compara­ tively little controversy?" First, however, a story has to be told—a very brief history of the Japanese peace settlement, from the time it was first proposed until it received the sanction of the American Senate. This review is intended as a corrective for the fact that we shall be forced to do chronological violence to the course of events in our close inspection of some of the elements that comprise a foreign policy-making process. The King's horses and men might even have been able to patch up Humpty Dumpty, if they had had firmly in their minds a picture of what he looked like before he came apart. To provide some depth to this history, several of the outstanding contemporaneous events might usefully be sketched in here. The Korean War, of course, was the most important of these; in its various phases—the initial retreat, then the spectacular advances and reverses, and finally stalemate and negotiation—it dominated the news throughout the period covered by this study. Of general signifi­ cance also was the atmosphere of political warfare which increas­ ingly surrounded both foreign and domestic policy-making. Senator Joseph McCarthy's 1950 charges of communism in the State Depart­ ment were a background to the political struggle which culminated in the 1952 general election. Other happenings at this time are per­ haps familiar, too. In December 1950, in the midst of the most serious reverses in Korea, General Eisenhower was appointed to the command of SHAPE. In the spring of 1951 two investigations at­ tracted nation-wide attention: first came Senator Estes Kefauver's investigation into organized crime, quickly followed by the Senate's hearings on the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur from his Far East commands. And in that spring the British-Iranian oil crisis began its long ferment. Truce negotiations were started in Korea in the summer of 1951, and through the time when the Pacific treaties were finally ratified these negotiations remained the major continuing news event; at the start of 1952, however, the news from Korea began to share the spotlight with the political maneuvering attendant on the 1952 primary elections. And in March 1952, while the Senate was debating the ratification of the settlement, the head­ lines were occupied with General Eisenhower's display of political strength in the Minnesota Republican primary, where he was a write-in candidate. These were the leading national and international events during

THE SETTLEMENT : A BRIEF HISTORY

the months when the Japanese peace settlement was taking shape. The recollection that the history of the times was mostly concerned with other problems will give a necessary perspective to the various chapters in the story of the settlement. THE FORMULATION AND RATIFICATION OF THE PEACE SETTLEMENT It is of considerable importance that the Japanese peace settle­ ment, unlike most of the complex foreign policy measures of our recent past, was composed almost entirely of treaties. Not one of the six documents required passage in the House of Representatives, nor did any of them need to be supported at a later stage by the appropriation of funds. The Administrative Agreement, handled as an executive agreement, did not have to be formally approved by either the House or the Senate. From the point of view of domestic policy-making, then, the settlement was comparatively simple in its basic formal design. It consisted fundamentally of Executive respon­ sibility for the formulation of treaty documents, and consent by the Senate to their ratification. Simplicity of design is not, however, an automatic guarantee of swiftness and ease in the task of construc­ tion. That the pattern of settlement was developed with great finesse was the consequence of many factors, not the least of which were the personal skills of the foreign and domestic negotiator-in-chief, John Foster Dulles. The "modern history" of the Japanese peace settlement began in one sense with the appointment of Mr. Dulles, Republican foreign policy expert, as a consultant to Secretary of State Dean Acheson, on April 6, 1950. Serious steps in the direction of a peace treaty had been taken twice before. The first attempt, in 1947, was abandoned in the face of Soviet insistence that the Council of Foreign Ministers, rather than the eleven-nation Far Eastern Commission, was the proper forum for treaty discussions, and in view of both Soviet and Chinese opposition to a veto-free conference under any auspices. The second effort was announced in November 1949, after a delay of nearly two years, when the Executive branch renewed active study of the problem. The context had changed, however, in at least two important respects. In the first place, the treaty itself was no longer thought of in restrictive terms. As a result of a shift in occupation policy, restrictions on the Japanese government and econ­ omy were becoming increasingly unnecessary and even out of place:

THE SETTLEMENT: A BRIEF HISTORY

the emphasis had changed from control to reconstruction. Secondly, Commimist successes in China, along with a general tightening of the cold-war lines, were intruding some new notions about general American and Allied security in the Pacific into what had earlier been thought of as merely a treaty of peace with Japan. As a conse­ quence of these new considerations, the wheels of the drafting machinery became mired soon after they started, reportedly in a dis­ pute between the State Department and the Defense Department on the issue of how to time a peace treaty so as to give maximum protection to American security in the Far East.1 It was at this juncture that John Foster Dulles entered the State Department in a consultative capacity. His appointment and that of John Sherman Cooper, another Republican, were made in an effort to shore up an almost disintegrating structure of bipartisan­ ship.2 The following month, in May 1950, Mr. Dulles was assigned the task of handling a Japanese peace treaty, and the wheels began to turn again. Mr. Dulles brought with him some fundamental con­ victions from which he never departed during his work on the treaty. One of these was the "lesson of Versailles": the firm belief that a punitive treaty sowed the seeds not of peace but of war, and that the only sure way to secure the friendship of the Japanese people in the future was to return sovereignty to them in as simple and generous a document as possible. "Reconciliation" became his watch­ word, and in the end it was the term most often used by observers to describe the treaty he produced. Another crucial element in Mr. Dulles' thinking was his sense of the need for bipartisan preparation for the inevitable day of reckon­ ing when the Senate would have to vote on a resolution of ratifica­ tion. This conviction was supported by his observation of the fate of the Versailles Treaty, by his unique position as the opposition party's most authoritative voice on foreign policy matters, and by his brief experience in the Senate when that body was debating the North Atlantic Treaty. With unwavering concern Mr. Dulles consulted the Senate and House Committees specializing in foreign affairs at every major turn in the negotiations; beyond this, he repeatedly sought 1 For a fuller discussion of these early efforts to prepare a peace treaty, see Burton Sapin, "The Role of the Military in Formulating the Japanese Peace Treaty," in Gordon B. Turner, ed., A History of Military Affairs in Western Society since the Eighteenth Century, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1953, pp. 751-62. * Growing Republican dissatisfaction with the bipartisan foreign policy is described in The Private Papers of Senator Vandenberg, ed. by Arthur H. Vandenberg, Jr., Boston, Houghton MifiSin Co., 1952, pp. 546ff. Unaccountably, this book does not mention the appointments of Dulles and Cooper.

THE SETTLEMENT: A BRIEF HISTORY

the informal advice and consent of individual leaders of his party before making any decisions of great political moment. Mr. Dulles' first major move was made on June 14, 1950, when he left for a two-week trip to Japan and Korea, accompanied by John M. Allison, then director of the Office of Northeast Asian AfiFairs in the State Department, and soon to become Mr. Dulles' trusted adviser on Japanese treaty problems. On a journey made more than normally momentous by the start of hostilities in Korea, Mr. Dulles conferred in Tokyo with Defense Secretary Louis Johnson, General Omar Bradley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General MacArthur, SCAP Commander. Out of these talks, and under the shadow of the Communist attack in Korea, emerged an intra-governmental agreement recognizing the necessity of a liberal treaty settle­ ment that included adequate safeguards for both American and Japanese security. This agreement was formalized several months later in a joint memorandum prepared by the Departments of State and Defense; its approval by the President on September 8, 1950, gave the State Department the authority to initiate informal dis­ cussions with other powers on a peace settlement for Japan.8 The news of the September 8 decision was made public by Presi­ dent Truman at a press conference on September 14, and Mr. Dulles almost immediately became the focal point of public and Congres­ sional interest in different aspects of the peace settlement and in more inclusive Far Eastern policy. With Presidential authority and support Mr. Dulles proceeded to New York where, as a member of the American delegation to the United Nations General Assembly, he quietly canvassed the statesmen of other interested powers on a seven-point memorandum that he had prepared, outlining the ob­ jectives of American policy: a non-punitive, non-restrictive settle­ ment, including the use of Japanese bases by the United States in the interests of the military security of Japan, the United States, and the rest of the free world. Although the Soviets eventually proved hostile to these principles, the reaction of other powers represented on the Far Eastern Commission indicated that general agreement along those lines might be possible, at least on the part of the non-Communist world. Then came another delay, this time occasioned by the intervention of the Chinese Commimists in Korea and their subsequent offensive, 8 Ibid., pp. 546£F. See also John R. Beal, "Bull's Eye for Dulles," Harper's Magazine, Vol. 203, No. 1218, November 1951, pp. 88-94. Mr. Beal's article seems to be based on conversations with "well-informed sources."

THE SETTLEMENT: A BRIEF HISTORY

which carried them from the Yalu River down to Seoul. Irresolution was brief this time, however, and the State and Defense Depart­ ments quickly reaffirmed their decision to proceed with treaty negotiations; on January 10, 1951, Mr. Dulles was appointed Special Representative of the President with the personal rank of Ambassador, and was given his formal instructions. On January 22, following discussions with the Far East Subcom­ mittees of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Dulles departed for a month of treaty talks with General MacArthur, and with the governments of Japan, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand. In the course of these negotiations he secured the tentative agreement of these Pacific nations on formal security ties with the United States, and made exceptional headway on a peace treaty itself. The proposal of a security pact with Australia and New Zealand was part of the reassurance offered these two countries that a sovereign Japan would not pose a renewed threat to their security. Mr. Dulles made such progress that he was able, shortly after his return to the United States, to draw up, discuss with the Senate Far East Subcommittee, and then circulate among the interested powers a draft treaty text. This was in the last week of March 1951. On April 11, without prior notice, President Truman relieved General MacArthur of all his commands in the Far East. The politi­ cal fury this act unleashed seemed likely, for a moment, to sweep down the treaty structure that was carefully being erected, by knock­ ing out the props of bipartisan agreement that were supporting it. Mr. Dulles acted swiftly. Knowing that General MacArthur, what­ ever he might think of other aspects of the Administration's Far Eastern policy, favored and had long advocated the kind of settle­ ment that was in process, the Ambassador talked with leading figures in the Republican Party and received their pledges that the Japa­ nese peace treaty would remain outside whatever area of political controversy developed from MacArthur's removal. In anticipation of a Presidential request that he go immediately to Japan to notify the Japanese government and people that no change was contem­ plated in American policy toward Japan, Mr. Dulles also secured from the Republican leaders their sanction for such a trip. The re­ quest came, and Mr. Dulles departed for Japan on April 13; ten days later he was back, having successfully overcome as great a threat to unity as domestic politics could have thrown in his path. The best measure, perhaps, of the strength of the two-party agreement at that

THE SETTLEMENT: A BRIEF HISTORY

time is found in the hearings on MacArthur's removal: the Japanese treaty negotiations were only barely mentioned, and never in censure or disapprobation.4 The next four months were given over to the task of revising successive drafts of a treaty in the light of objections and reserva­ tions expressed by different countries. The first draft to be made public appeared on July 12, although Mr. Dulles had indirectly re­ vealed most of the terms of the earlier March text in a California speech on March 31; another version was released on July 20, and the final draft was published on August 15. In the light of subse­ quent moves taken to maintain and nourish domestic political sup­ port for the peace settlement, one aspect of these four months of negotiation deserves special mention. In early June Mr. Dulles and Mr. Allison left Washington for London and Paris to discuss some unresolved problems with the British and French governments. Most of the important differences between the United States and Britain—for example, over the ques­ tion of whether to maintain shipping and other economic controls over Japan—had been satisfactorily disposed of by this time. The chief remaining concern of Anglo-American diplomacy was the explosive question of which Chinese government should be invited to the forthcoming conference at San Francisco to sign the peace treaty. Agreement between the two nations on this issue seemed to be a prerequisite to the successful conclusion of a treaty, yet the American stand in opposition to the Chinese Communist regime was as forceful and vociferous as the British resistance to the claims for recognition of Nationalist China. A compromise solution was finally worked out on this London trip: neither Chinese government would be invited to sign the treaty, and, in the spirit of sovereign equality that ran through most of the treaty text, Japan would be allowed to make her own choice of the Chinese government with which she might wish in the future to negotiate a bilateral treaty along the lines of the present multilateral one. This middle ground had been bought as a satisfactory basis on which to proceed with a conference for the signature of the treaty; but the price included the dissatisfaction of some articulate and powerful Americans who felt that the Nationahst Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek had been "betrayed" for the second time in six years. * Military Situation in the Far East: Hearings before the Committee on Armed Serv­ ices and the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 82nd Congress, 1st Session, Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1951, 5 parts.

THE SETTLEMENT: A BRIEF HISTORY

In San Francisco, on the evening of September 4, 1951, the Con­ ference for the Conclusion and Signature of the Treaty of Peace with Japan held its ceremony of welcome for the fifty-one partici­ pating nations. The purpose of the meeting, as its official title em­ phasized, was to secure the signatures of as many of these nations as possible to a treaty negotiated during the eleven preceding months. Three Communist delegations, the Soviet Union, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, attended with the expressed and quickly evident intention of introducing changes in the treaty text. The ensuing debate was a public spectacle in adroit parliamentary tactics, with millions of American citizens watching on television as the Soviets and their satellites were outmaneuvered and outvoted at every turn. On September 8, 1951, exactly one year from the day on which Mr. Dulles was authorized to initiate informal discussions on a peace treaty, the document was signed by the representatives of forty-eight nations, the three Communist states abstaining. Immediately following the signature of the peace treaty, the names of American and Japanese plenipotentiaries were affixed to a Security Treaty between the two countries. Earlier, on August 30 in Washington, a Treaty of Mutual Defense between the United States and the Philippines had been signed, and on September 1, in San Francisco, a tripartite Security Treaty received the signatures of the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. In accordance with Mr. Dulles' convictions about the necessity for bipartisan participation in all phases of his work, both the chair­ man and the ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Rela­ tions Committee, Senators Connally and Wiley, were full members, along with Secretary Acheson and Mr. Dulles, of the American delegation to the Conference, although Senator Connally was un­ able to attend the affair. There were six Alternate Delegates, each political party contributing two Senators and one Representative; the four Senators on this list comprised the total membership of the Far Eastern Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee. There were, in addition, nine accredited Congressional Observers, five of whom were Republicans. Party lines disappeared, also, in the surge of approval that greeted the outcome of the Conference. Praise came abundantly from all sides, and from some unexpected directions. Senators who had made a hobby of criticizing Secretary of State Acheson were discovered paying tribute to him as Conference President for his masterly con­ trol of a confused situation that had been potentially dangerous to

THE SETTLEMENT: A BRIEF HISTORY

the success of the Conference. Mr. Dulles, in proportion to the role he had played, received the Hons share of the plaudits. Typical of the sentiments expressed were those in a letter he received from a Democratic Senator: "You have scored a signal triumph, one of the greatest triumphs of diplomacy of this generation or any generation." A month later Harold Stassen was to call him "the greatest statesman in the world," and to describe his work as "the greatest year's ac­ complishment in American history." IMPORTANT TREATY PROVISIONS Despite their brevity, the peace and security treaties are complex documents. All we need mention here are the salient features of these contracts, particularly those that stirred Congressmen and public groups into political activity. In subsequent chapters we shall meet all of them again, in their proper settings. In the preamble to the peace treaty, Japan declared her inten­ tion to apply for membership in the United Nations, to conform to the principles of its Charter, and "to strive to realize the objectives of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," approved by the U.N. General Assembly on December 10, 1948. This statement of intentions was subsequently viewed as constituting an indirect at­ tempt to secure general approval of the United Nations' human rights program, and thus it was bitterly attacked as a threat to American sovereignty. Japan, in Article 2, renounced all right, title, and claim to most of her former territories outside of the home islands; these included Korea, Formosa, the Pescadores, the Kurile Islands, South Sakhalin, the Spratly Islands, and the Paracel Islands. No final disposition of these areas was made in the treaty, but it was later argued that Japan's renouncing of the Kuriles and South Sakhalin amounted to a de facto cession of these areas to the Soviets, who had occupied them at the time of Japan's surrender, in fulfillment of agreements made at Yalta. Japan was not required to surrender its sovereignty over the Ryukyu and Bonin Islands and several other island groups, but agreed to "concur in any proposal of the United States to the United Nations to place [these islands] under its trusteeship system, with the United States as the sole administering authority. . . ." Because of the possibility that Japan's application for membership in the United Nations might be accorded the Soviet veto-treatment, Japan accepted in the peace treaty "the obligations set forth in

THE SETTLEMENT: A BRIEF HISTORY

Article 2" of the U.N. Charter, including, with an eye on Korea, an obligation to assist the U.N. "in any action it takes in accordance with the Charter and to refrain from giving assistance to any State against which the United Nations may take preventive or enforce­ ment action." The legal basis for the United States-Japan Security Treaty was laid in this same article, by Allied recognition of Japan's inherent right of individual or collective self-defense, according to Article 51 of the U.N. Charter. All Allied occupation forces were to be withdrawn from Japan not later than ninety days after the coming into force of the treaty; this provision did not apply, however, to the "stationing or retention" of foreign troops in Japan in consequence of agreements negotiated with Japan for this purpose. Here was further authority for the Secxirity Treaty between the United States and Japan. In Article 9, Japan agreed to negotiate promptly, with the "Allied Powers so desiring," agreements providing for the regulation of fish­ ing and the conservation of fisheries on the high seas. The severe competition that had existed before the war between Japanese and American fishing interests still rankled in the memories of the latter, and throughout the negotiations they displayed an intense interest in various means of regulating the fisheries in the future. Under Article 10, Japan renounced all special rights and interests in China. The reparations provisions of the treaty are strikingly moderate. Owing chiefly to the insistence of the Philippines and Indonesia, Japan was obligated, in Article 14, to negotiate reparations agree­ ments with "Allied Powers so desiring" whose present territories she had occupied and damaged in the war. To protect Japan's foreign ex­ change position, reparations were to take the form of services by the Japanese people in production, salvaging, and other work. The treaty specifically stated that where reparation took the form of manufacturing of raw materials, the materials themselves "shall be supplied by the Alhed Powers in question, so as not to throw any foreign exchange burden upon Japan." The treaty also sanctioned, under Article 14(a)2, the wartime seizure by the Allied Powers of certain properties, rights, and interests of Japan and her nationals. Beyond this, however, the Allied Powers waived all claims of their own or their nationals arising out of Japanese action during the war. This generosity on the part of the American government, which believed that American taxes would eventually have to pay any Japanese reparation bill, was not fully shared by a few American

THE SETTLEMENT: A BRIEF HISTORY

taxpayers, who estimated that the Japanese government owed them in reparations considerably more than the American government might ever have to tax them for that purpose. Japan also recognized, in Article 18, the obligation to pay the debts on bonds and other contractual obligations acquired by the governments and nationals of the AUied Powers before Pearl Harbor. In Article 21, China was specifically entitled to the benefits of Articles 10 and 14(a)2 of the treaty, even though she was not a signatory and thus not an "Allied Power" as defined by the treaty. The ambiguity as to which China was meant was deliberate, in view of the existing international disagreement on that question. This wording was subsequently seized upon by treaty opponents as an indication that Communist China was to inherit Nationalist China's reparations claims. Two additional articles, procedural in nature, should be men­ tioned, since part of the public debate turned on their interpretation. The treaty was to come into force for the States which had ratified it, when instruments of ratification were deposited by Japan, the United States, and any five of the following: Australia, Canada, Ceylon, France, Indonesia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom. If the treaty was still not in force nine months after Japan had ratified it, any individual State that had ratified it could bring it into force as between itself and Japan. This meant, then, that the United States had the power to delay the coming into force of the treaty, but only for a period of nine months following Japan's ratification. Finally, by Article 26, Japan was obligated to conclude, with any State that had not signed the present treaty but had adhered to the United Nations Declaration of January 1,1942, and was at war with Japan, a bilateral treaty of peace "on the same or substantially the same terms" as those of the present treaty. Thus the way was open for Japan to make a separate treaty with the China of her choice. Significantly, however, the Allied Powers protected themselves and, in a measure, Japan as well from exorbitant claims from "China" or any other non-signatory by specifying, in this same article, that should Japan make a bilateral peace or claims settlement giving any State greater advantages than those provided by the present treaty, those same advantages would automatically accrue to the signatories of the latter document. The Security Treaty between the United States and Japan con­ tained only four substantive articles. The preamble restated Japan's

THE SETTLEMENT: A BRIEF HISTORY

inherent right of individual and collective self-defense, referred to the external danger facing Japan because "it has been disarmed," expressed Japan's desire that the United States maintain armed forces in Japan "so as to deter armed attack upon Japan," and em­ phasized the provisional character of the United States response, "in the expectation . . . that Japan will itself increasingly assume responsibility for its own defense against direct and indirect aggres­ sion. .. ." In Article I, Japan granted and the United States accepted the right to station American forces in and about Japan. These forces were authorized to contribute to Japanese security against external attack and, "at the express request of the Japanese Government," to assist in putting down "large-scale internal riots . . . caused through instigation or intervention by an outside power or powers." Under Article II, United States consent was required before Japan could grant to any third power any similar rights to maintain troops in Japan or to use Japanese bases. By Article III, the conditions governing the disposition of Ameri­ can forces in Japan, including such items as criminal jurisdiction, taxation, and contracts, were to be determined by Administrative Agreements between the two governments. This provision was force­ fully attacked later on the grounds that the Executive was arrogating the Constitutional powers of Congress in respect of the military establishment. Article IV stated that the Security Treaty should expire "whenever in the opinion of the Governments" of the United States and Japan "international peace and security in the Japan Area" could be satis­ factorily maintained either by United Nations arrangements or by "alternative individual or collective security dispositions." The essence of the Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippines is found in Article IV, wherein each party stated that an armed attack in the Pacific on either of them would be, in the words of the Monroe Doctrine, "dangerous to its own peace and safety," and added that "it would act to meet the common dangers in accordance with its constitutional processes." Article V specified that Article IV encompassed armed attack not only on the metropolitan area of each party, but also on their island territories, armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft in the Pacific. Articles IV and V of the Security Treaty with Australia and New Zealand were virtually identical with the corresponding articles of the Philippine treaty. The tripartite Security Treaty made provision

THE SETTLEMENT: A BRIEF HISTORY

in Article VII, however, for a Council of Foreign Ministers or their Deputies, "so organized as to be able to meet at any time," for the purpose of considering "matters concerning the implementation of this Treaty." This Council met for the first time in Honolulu in the summer of 1952. With the signing of these four treaties, the curtain fell on the main act in the drama of the Japanese peace settlement; but a lot of difficult and less exciting work had yet to be done, some of it behind the scenes. The most important task ahead was securing the Senate's approval of the treaties; partly to assist this process of ratification, and partly to round out a peace settlement not yet complete, it was necessary to engage in further diplomatic negotiation. However, since the formulation both of the Administrative Agreement to implement the Security Treaty with Japan and of the Fisheries Convention with Japan and Canada overlapped the ratification process in time as well as in significance, we shall consider them together. THE RATIFICATION OF THE PEACE SETTLEMENT

Four and a half months were to pass between the signing of the treaties in San Francisco and the opening of public hearings on them by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and it was two months after the hearings when the Senate finally gave its consent to the ratification of the documents. This delay of over half a year was not part of the timetable that the treaty-makers had in mind when matters were running so well at San Francisco. It was hoped then, and immediately afterward, that the Senate would sustain the momentum by moving ahead swiftly toward ratification. The brakes were soon applied, however, but not by the Upper House. Barely two weeks after the signing, the Executive branch, resolving a snarl of its own over the issue of timing, decided not to submit the treaties during the current session of Congress, but to hold them back until that body reconvened for its second session. In the slower tempo of the days that followed, Mr. Dulles was able to review his experiences of the past few months and to present some of his conclusions in a number of addresses to audi­ ences in various American cities. In the latter part of October 1951, he was given the job of handling the coming ratification from the Executive end, making his knowledge available to those who were going to guide the treaties through the Senate. His two conditions for accepting the assignment had been met: the treaties were to be

THE SETTLEMENT t A BRIEF HISTORY

presented to the Senate when it reconvened in January, and consent to their ratification was to be sought as a bipartisan matter. On October 23, the State Department announced that the United States had accepted a Japanese invitation to participate, along with Canada, in negotiations for a North Pacific Fisheries Convention. Preceded by several months of informal negotiations between the governments themselves, and also between the State Department and politically powerful American fishing interests, the negotiations began in Tokyo on November 4. There were five advisers to the United States delegation; four of them were members of the Execu­ tive Committee of the Pacific Fisheries Conference, an organization representing most phases of the West Coast fishing industry. The negotiations ended on December 14, producing a Proposed Inter­ national Convention for the High Seas Fisheries of the North Pacific Ocean. The Fisheries Convention is a complex document, befitting the technical subject with which it deals. In brief, it recognized the principles of conservation long practiced by the United States and Canada, and established a mechanism whereby the needs for con­ servation would be assayed and the measures for conservation ap­ plied. Japan agreed to abstain initially from fishing for certain types of conserved fish "off the coasts of Canada and the United States," but the Convention offered her a regulated means of re-entering North Pacific fishing areas without arousing the conflict and hostility that attended her prewar fishing efforts.5 At the beginning of December 1951, while the fishery negotiations were still in progress, Mr. Dulles went again to Tokyo in the com­ pany, this time, of Senator H. Alexander Smith, Republican of New Jersey, and Senator John J. Sparkman, Democrat of Alabama. High on the list of their concerns was the forthcoming debate in the Senate and the rocky road that ratification faced unless Japan's future relations with China were clarified. The two Senators ex­ plained to the Japanese leaders the negative attitude of many of their colleagues to any Japanese dealings with Communist China, but reiterated the American position that Japan's choice in the matter was to be her own. Premier Yoshida acted on this information shortly after the visiting Americans had left Japan. In a personal letter to 8 Cf. William C. Herrington, "Problems Affecting North Pacific Fisheries: Tripartite Fisheries Conference at Tokyo, November 4-December 14, 1951," Department of State Bulletin, Vol. xxvi, No. 662, March 3, 1952. Mr. Herrington's article is followed by the texts of the Convention and several related documents, pp. 340-46.

THE SETTLEMENT χ A BRIEF HISTORY

Mr. Dulles, written on Christmas Eve, Mr. Yoshida expressed his government's intention to conclude a bilateral treaty of peace with tiie National government of China, and gave specific assurances of no similar intention with respect to the Communist regime. Quickly labeled the "Yoshida letter," this statement was made public in Japan and the United States on January 16, 1952. Five days later, on January 21, 1952, the Senate Foreign Rela­ tions Committee opened hearings on the peace and security treaties in the Caucus Room of the Senate OflSce Building. Mr. Dulles' fre­ quent consultations with Committee members reaped an early harvest of good will, soft words, and amiable questions. The first two days were devoted to interrogating Administration witnesses, chiefly Mr. Dulles, and then two more days were required for the public witnesses to present their views. It is perhaps indicative of the rapport the Ambassador had established with the Committee that the Senators were more evidently in conflict with some of the public witnesses than with the representatives of the Administration. Early in the hearings, General Bradley reported the Defense Department's belief that the peace treaty might interfere with the Korean operations unless the Administrative Agreement, regulating our security forces in Japan, went into effect at the same time. For that reason he felt it would be desirable if the Senate took no action on the treaties until the negotiations on the Agreement, which were about to begin, had ended with a signed document. Mr. Dulles' re­ joinder was that Senate approval did not mean the treaty would come immediately into force, that the State Department's expecta­ tion was that the Agreement would be concluded before enough countries had ratified the treaty to make it effective, and that the Senate could thus act on the treaties without delay. However, the Defense Department's position seems to have carried more weight on Capitol Hill on this issue, since the Senate did not schedule its debate on ratification until after the Agreement had been signed. On February 5, the Foreign Relations Committee voted unani­ mously to report the four treaties favorably to the Senate. The Com­ mittee attached to its resolution of ratification a two-part "reserva­ tion," under the urging of Senator Watkins, Republican of Utah, who announced that he would otherwise propose one himself. The first part stated that nothing in the peace treaty was deemed to diminish Allied or Japanese rights in and to South Sakhalin, the Kuriles, and several neighboring islands, in favor of the Soviet Union, and the second part said that nothing in the treaty implied United

THE SETTLEMENT: A BRIEF HISTORY

States recognition of the provisions of the Yalta Agreement regard­ ing Japan that favored the Soviet Union. A potential opponent of treaty ratification was thus disarmed in advance, and by a device which the Committee regarded as an explanatory declaration rather than a modification of the text. There were a few weeks in February when it seemed to some that the treaties might receive a virtually unanimous vote of approval in the Senate. One reporter forecast the probable favoring majority as "better than ten to one," and added that "there may be no dissent at all."® The months of preparation had been well used, and as the time for debate drew closer, there was nothing but silence from the benches of the few who had been critics the previous August and September, just before and after the San Francisco Conference. This unusual calm was shattered quite suddenly, however, on February 20, as Senator Jenner, Republican of Indiana, rose in the Senate to denounce the treaties, warning that he would propose a number of specific reservations. The Administrative Agreement was signed in Tokyo on February 28, and the last of the formal and informal obstacles had been hurdled. On March 14, the Senate began five days of debate on the peace treaty and related security pacts. The Senate opposition to the treaties was numerically small, but it was none the less bitter. Senator Jenner, in conjunction with Margaret Chase Smith, RepubHcan of Maine, introduced four reser­ vations to the peace treaty, one reservation each to the Philippine and tripartite pacts, and three reservations to the United StatesJapan Security Treaty. They dealt, in brief, with questions of Japa­ nese and American sovereignty, Soviet rights acquired at Yalta and Potsdam, American reparations claims, the recognition of Nationalist China, the Administrative Agreement, and the expiration of the Security Treaty with Japan. The Indiana Republican fought hard for his points, assisted by a handful of supporters, including Senator Dirksen, Republican of Illinois, who introduced a modification of one of the Jenner-Smith reservations after the original had been rejected. Although the vote on several was close, all of the reserva­ tions except that originally introduced by the Foreign Relations Committee were turned down. The four documents were then ap­ proved by the Senate in the afternoon and evening of March 20, 1952, the peace treaty by a vote of 66 to 10, the United States—Japan 6 William

S. White, New York Times, February 6, 1952.

THE SETTLEMENT: A BRIEF HISTORY

Security Treaty by 58 to 9, and the other two security pacts by voice votes. The remaining aspects of the settlement were quickly concluded. Shortly after the Senate acted, Mr. Dulles sent his resignation to Secretary Acheson, and after a few more days spent in cleaning up his desk, he headed off for the 1952 political wars, which were al­ ready shaping up. President Truman signed the treaties on April 15, and announced that the United States would deposit its instrument of ratification on April 28. On that day, the requisite number of deposits having been made, Japan recovered her full sovereignty, and World War II came to an end in the Pacific. As an epilogue, the North Pacific Fisheries Convention, negotiated and initialed by the United States, Canada, and Japan in December 1951, was signed by the three powers on May 9, 1952. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a one-day public hearing on it on Jvine 27, and reported it favorably to the Senate, where it was quickly approved on July 4, 1952; it came into effect the following year, on June 12, 1953, upon the exchange of ratifications by the three governments at Tokyo. The peace treaty with Japan had been the first treaty, and the fisheries convention was the last, to reach the Senate in the second session of the 82nd Congress.

PART

II

" Public Op m i o n

Cliapter 3 THE CLIMATE OF OPINION Any item of public policy in a democratic society has in its making an ingredient called "public opinion." It may have been measured by the spoonful or by the carload, but some traces of it are always discoverable. One can distinguish, in gross terms, two types of "public opinion" —two forms, that is, in which the "people" can penetrate the policy­ makers' circle and leave an impress on public policy. The first is the background or climate of opinion which, by creating in the policy-maker an impression of a public attitude or attitudes, or by becoming part of the environment and cultural milieu that help to shape his own thinking, may consciously affect his official behavior. The "isolationism" of the 1920's and 1930's was this sort of public opinion; the winds all blew so strongly in an inland direction that the policy-makers could hardly have moved abruptly against them if they had wanted to. Many officials, sharing the values and senti­ ments of the society from which they were recruited, were not so much buffeted by the winds as they were busy blowing them, or unconsciously reflecting their pressures.1 The second type of public opinion is made up of the active and articulate expressions on policy of specific individuals and organized groups, including the media of communication. These are the identifiable voices that interpret the mood and the strivings of differ­ ent segments of the general public in terms that have some opera­ tional meaning for the policy-makers in government. Significant trends of thought among the general public are publicized in this way, but not in any wholly representative fashion. This kind of public opinion will occupy our attention in succeeding chapters. The function of the present chapter is to examine in detail the 1 Contrary to popular legend, even the first two Roosevelt Administrations reflected an inbred "isolationism"; see, for example, William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Challenge to Isolation, 1937-1940, New York, Harper and Brothers, 1952, p. 16; Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History, New York, Harper and Brothers, 1948, p. 124. Frank L. Klingberg, "The Historical Alternation of Moods in American Foreign Policy," World Politics, Vol. iv, No. 2, January 1952, pp. 239-73, advances the thesis that the American foreign policy mood has regularly alternated between "introvert" and "extrovert" phases throughout American history, each phase lasting from two to three decades.

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

first of these forms, the climate of opinion with respect to Japan that formed the backdrop for policy-making on the Japanese peace settle­ ment. While the focus of this inquiry is on Japan, it will frequently be necessary to consider the relevant attitudes and opinions in a wider context of public reaction to other political challenges that marked these difficult years. The technique that gives some struc­ ture—however artificial—to the indeterminate mass of American public opinion is the national cross-section survey. Unhappily for the task at hand, surveys or polls that have plumbed our attitudes toward Japan, while numerically adequate, are unevenly distrib­ uted through time. In the approximate decade from Pearl Harbor to the ratification of the Japanese peace treaty, about 200 questions were asked of samples of the American population on subjects deal­ ing directly with the Japanese nation and people, and with Ameri­ can policy toward that country. Understandably, the greatest num­ ber of these were asked in the first half of this period, during the war and in the immediate postwar years; the second half of the decade, the years of quiet reconstruction in Japan and ferment elsewhere, saw fewer questions on these subjects. Though obvious and unfortunate gaps exist, the big points are still covered in some fashion. We are able thus to do as children do in their early work­ books: draw lines from point to point until a crude but recognizable picture takes shape. THE PROFILE OF A DECADE OF OPINION ON JAPAN "On a memorable Sunday in December 1941, the sound of bombs dropping a thousand miles from our shores blasted the American people out of the sleepy and peaceful contemplation of their private pursuits into the turmoil of an angry war." So runs the accepted legend about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the effects it had on public opinion in the United States. It is a dramatic story and one that is technically accurate as to the circumstances of America's formal entry into World War II. Yet it is a misleading ac­ count of the state of public opinion at the time, for it implies, erroneously, that the American people moved instantly from relative apathy to the highest intensity of psychological involvement in a struggle that was already several years old. Actually the situation was considerably more complex than that. In the tension-ridden months that preceded Pearl Harbor, Ameri­ can opinion was slowly facing up to the implications of Japanese aggression in the Pacific area. In November 1940, one-half of a

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

sample of the adult population felt that the time had come for the United States to take "strong measures against Japan," and a little more than one-half of these included military measures among the moves they were willing to accept.2 By the following March nearly 60 per cent of a national sample were of the opinion that the United States should "take steps now to keep Japan from becoming more powerful, even if this means risking a war with Japan."3 Around this same time two out of three Americans favored declaring war on Japan if she attacked the Philippines, and three out of four favored the same step in case of an attack on Hawaii.4 The hardening of purpose that was occurring in American opinion about Japan did not take place in isolation. Indeed, the most apparent threat to the peace in those months came not from Japan but from Germany, whose submarines between May and November 1941 fired on four American ships, the S.S. Robin Moor, the U.S.S. Greer, the U.S.S. Kearney, and die U.S.S. Reuben James, sinking two of them. In November of that year, 85 per cent of Dr. Gallup's re­ spondents believed that the United States would enter the war in Europe before it was over;5 in contrast, a poll released by Gallup on December 7,1941, revealed that only 52 per cent felt the United States would go to war against Japan sometime in the near future.® The public reaction to the events at Pearl Harbor cannot be interpreted, then, simply as the fury of a nation that thought itself safe, only to have the dream disintegrate in the morning sun over Hawaii. The American people were already living with the expecta­ tion that catastrophe lay not very far ahead—but they believed it would show its face in the Atlantic sooner than in the Pacific. It may seem irrelevant in the present context to dwell at this length on the mood of the American people in the last days of peace; yet that mood or, rather, certain components of it had a greater influence on the development of American attitudes toward Japan in the following years than did the anger of the opening moments of the war. The odd fact is that the collective sense of outrage of the American citizenry against the Japanese people and nation did not 2 The remaining half of the sample was divided almost evenly between those who did not feel that strong measures were warranted and those who had no opinion. Fortune poll released in November 1940. 8 Office of Public Opinion Research of Princeton University (hereafter cited as OPOR) poll sent out March 29, 1941. * American Institute of Public Opinion (hereafter cited as AIPO) poll released April 8, 1841. 5 AIPO poll sent out in November 1941. 8 AIPO poll released December 7, 1941.

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

sustain itself long enough or at a white enough heat to harden into stable, severely hostile attitudes toward Japan. The violence of the initial reaction proved to be only the hot spark that started the fire; the flames of revenge and retribution did not really begin to flicker upward until many months had passed, months of smoldering resentment against the length and the conduct of the war in the Pacific. There can be little doubt that the American people, in their selfconfidence and optimism, underestimated at first the character of the Japanese foe; in the first few months the median expectation about the length of the war with Japan was slightly under two years.7 Even more important, however, than the feeling of a "push­ over war" in dulling the edge of antagonism toward Japan was the situation created by the German and Italian declarations of war against the United States. Coming only four days after Pearl Harbor, these acts seem to have reaffirmed for the American people their earlier judgment that the United States had more to fear from Ger­ many than from Japan. The decision reached by President Roosevelt and American military leaders in December of 1941 that "notwith­ standing the entry of Japan into the war, . . . Germany is still the prime enemy,"8 was well supported by American public opinion during the first year of our participation in the conflict. Then, as the vulnerability of the Germans was exposed in North Africa and later at Stalingrad while in the Southwest Pacific the Japanese were demonstrating how fanatical their resistance would be, the tide of opinion turned against the enemy in the Pacific. Table I shows the progress of this changing sentiment from the first hours of the war until the summer of 1944. Another indication of this new appraisal of the Japanese war effort is found in popular predictions of the length of the Japanese war; the median expectation had risen by February 1943 to two years, and remained there until mid-1944, when it declined to a year and a half.9 Japan's emergence as the "greatest threat" or the "chief enemy" signaled the beginning of a new stage in American opinion on Japan; attitudes became more hostile and judgments on the future of Japan more severe. The trend in antagonism was generally up­ ward until the fall of 1945, by which time the level of animosity seemed to approximate the heights that were so impulsively reached 7 AIPO

8 Sherwood, op.cit, p. 445. poll released May 30, 1942. question was posed repeatedly in wartime surveys of the AIPO and the Na­ tional Opinion Research Center (hereafter cited as NORC). 9 This

TABLE I

Which country is the greatest threat to America's future, Germany or Japan? (AIPO) Which do you think we should consider our number one enemy, Japan or Ger­ many? (NORC) Which do you think the United States should consider its number one enemy, Japan or Germany? (NORC) WTiich do you think the United States should consider its number one enemy, Japan or Germany? (NORC) Which do you think is our number one enemy in the war, Japan or Germany? (AIPO) Which country is the greatest threat to America's future, Germany or Japan? (OPOR) Which country is the greatest military threat to the United States, Germany or Japan? (OPOR) Which country is the greatest military threat to the United States, Germany or Japan? (AIPO) In this war, which do you think is our chief enemy, Japan or Germany? (AIPO) Which country is the greatest military threat to the United States, Germany or Japan? (AIPO) Which country is the greatest military threat to the United States, Germany or Japan? (OPOR)

December 10, 1941

August 30, 1944

March 24, 1943

February 3, 1943

November 17, 1942

July 15, 1942

June 17, 1942

June 9, 1942

March 28, 1942

March 2, 1942

January 28, 1942

Question

Date Sent Out

30

25

34

28

49

40

50

46

41

56

64%

G ermany

52

53

53

56

31

33

25

35

37

30

15%

Japan

Japan's Emergence as the "Chief Enemy" in the War

12

18

11

15

23

23

12

15

6%

Both

10

15%

Don't Know

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

and briefly maintained in December 1941. Yet the sharply critical evaluations in that final summer of the war, even though they had been developing for three years, were not much more stable than the spasms of anger four winters before. The rising American antipathy was punctured easily by Japan's surrender and by her swift and almost eager compliance with the orders of the occupation. By the end of that fateful year, Americans were thinking about Japan in terms that scarcely reflected the unhappy experience of war. Early in 1946, for example, only 9 per cent of a national sample thought that Japan would like to dominate the world; she ran a poor fourth, behind Russia (39 per cent), Britain (19 per cent), and Germany (15 per cent).10 The years from the end of the war to the formal restoration of peace and sovereignty are marked by a rather steady, and in some respects increasing, leniency toward Japan and toward measures designed to restore her to a respectable position in the international community. There were, to be sure, some strong remnants of sus­ picion; throughout 1949, particularly, public opinion recaptured some of the spirit of combat days. Whether motivated by the high costs of waging peace, the uncertain future of Asia, or perhaps a general dissatisfaction with the state of the world, the American people dragged their heels for a short time on a liberal policy toward Japan. In July of that year, for example, opinion was almost equally divided on the question whether Japan had been punished enough for its part in the war; 43 per cent felt she had, 39 per cent thought she had not, and the rest had no opinion.11 The most striking advances in opinion favoring the restoration of Japan occurred as the peace settlement became a reality; under the combined pressures of a Communist military threat in the Far East and a barrage of official praise of Japan's progress under the occupation, that country began to look to many Americans like a friendly and even dependable ally. As Table II shows, the shift in the direction of more friendly attitudes toward the Japanese con­ tinued even after Japan regained her independence. And just before the Senate opened hearings on the treaties, two out of every three respondents reported their belief that Japan could be counted on to cooperate with the United States; only 17 per cent were skeptical, while the remainder had no opinion.12 10 AIPO

poll sent out January 23, 1946. poll sent out July 22, 1949. 12 NORC poll sent out December 28, 1951. 11AIPO

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

TABLE II

Friendly Feelings toward the Japanese before and after the Peace Settlement % WHOSE FEELINGS TOWARD THE JAPANESE PEOPLE ARE:

AIPO, April 17, 1949 (released) AIPO, August 24, 1951 (sent out) AIPO, January 29, 1953 (sent out)

Friendly

Neutral

Unfriendly

34%

30%

51 56

18 23

29% 25 15

Don't Know 7%

6 6

The "fever chart" quality of public sentiment during this decade of war and peace can perhaps be better appreciated by reviewing briefly the course of opinion on a few important topics. Japanese Armaments

On the crucial issue of the amount of weapons to be permitted Japan in defeat, American opinion reversed itself over a ten-year period in response to the pressure of world events. In early 1943, before the unconditional surrender formula was enunciated at Casablanca, there was significant but by no means unanimous agree­ ment that the enemy nations should be completely disarmed. Seventy-seven per cent of a sample favored such action, but one out of every six respondents was not yet ready to accept it. What was extreme then became commonplace by 1945, however, when the "permanent" disarmament of Germany and Japan was advocated in several surveys by nine out of ten Americans. With the demobili­ zation of Japan's armed forces an accomplished fact soon after the surrender, the question disappeared from the public opinion polls; five years later, however, it returned, but in a different context. The war in Korea, so close to Japan that American fliers could perform their missions and be home for supper, introduced new considera­ tions into American thought about Japanese rearmament. Yet it is suggestive of the persistence of the 1945 attitude that in the face of a new international alignment of power, the American people conceded only reluctantly, by a bare plurality, that the Japanese should be allowed to "set up an army of their own." But any distrust of Japan that may have remained gave way to fear of com­ munism when respondents were questioned about Japanese rearma­ ment in the specific framework of strengthening the defenses against communism or protecting Japan from a Communist attack. When this new power reality was deliberately called to their attention,

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

as many as three out of four Americans were willing to see their country assist in the build-up of a Japanese army. It may be too much to conclude from this that in the American view the redemp­ tion of Japan was complete, but it does suggest that popular senti­ ments pertaining to that country had been revised in the light of a changed international situation.13 Postwar Political Treatment of Japan

World War II, it will be recalled, was fought by the United States on a victory-first, politics-later basis; whatever other consequences it may have had, the absence of official postwar policy statements left the American people with few clearly defined magnets around which their opinions on the political fate of their enemies could cluster. Thus, in mid-1942, respondents to a survey question sug­ gested a multiplicity of things to do about Japan after her defeat, ranging from redemption through prayer to annihilation. The predominance of open-ended poll questions throughout the war mirrored the sense of uncertainty and even ambiguity that sur­ rounded public thinking on this subject. Two generalizations are possible, however, on the basis of these minimally structured re­ sponses. In the first place, more Americans suggested a middle road of supervision and control over Japan than favored either the harsh or the soft extreme; and secondly, the proportion advocating comparative leniency was invariably double that which recom­ mended drastic measures like torture or extermination. Yet there is little doubt that postwar "control" of Japan was interpreted more and more strictly as the war dragged on. The Japanese soldier's willingness—indeed eagerness—to die for the policies reached by the Japanese government under the authority of the Emperor was reflected in a steady increase in the number of Americans who would deny the Japanese the right to choose their own form of government when the fighting stopped. Early in 1942, 36 per cent of survey respondents, and in July 1945, 60 per cent, flatly opposed any such exercise of political freedom by the Japanese. That the limits of "control" had been extended in the public mind is also suggested by the apparent disappointment with which the first Allied surrender policies, including the retention of the Emperor, were received. Even as the Japanese were formally 18 NORC polls sent out January 11, 1943, September 20, 1950, December 28, 1950, and October 2, 1951; AIPO polls sent out January 17, 1945, January 31, 1945, and July 25, 1945, and polls released August 16, 1950, and February 4, 1951.

THE CLIUATE OF OPINION

acknowledging defeat aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay, nearly seven out of every ten Americans polled were expressing their opinion that "the Allied program for the treatment of Japan" was "not hard enough." But any dregs of bitterness left behind by war were soon over­ come by the pleasant taste of victory and the return, temporarily, of peace. By November 1945, 51 per cent of a national sample were satisfied with the handling of our occupation policy, and two months later the proportion of those "well satisfied" increased to 72 per cent. This confidence in the course of Japanese affairs generally persisted, although, as has already been noted, a trough of skepti­ cism appeared briefly in 1949. Throughout the postwar period, however, American public opinion remained adamant on one point: about 80 per cent of suc­ cessive samples, whether through fear of an ultimate revival of Japanese militarism or apprehension over the spread of militant communism, insisted first that American troops be maintained in Japan, and later, but before the security treaty was formulated, that the United States keep some military bases in Japan after the occu­ pation ended. The unflagging strength of this belief suggests that at least part of the satisfaction with the occupation, and indeed of the air of optimism and leniency with respect to American policy toward Japan, may have derived from the comfortable knowledge that Japanese democracy was growing under the watchful eyes of American soldiers.14 The Japanese People Public views on the character and personality traits of the Japa­ nese people themselves are markedly labile; the frequent swings between mild and harsh appraisals of various facets of the "Japanese character" indicate that American judgments in this sphere have a high emotional content which can be readily shaped by a well14Polls on the postwar treatment of Japan: OPOR poll sent out June 17, 1942; NORC polls sent out in February 1944, August 1945, and September 1945; AIPO poll released December 20, 1944, and poll sent out July 25, 1945. Polls on Japanese elections: NORC polls sent out in February 1942 and April 1945; AIPO poll sent out July 25, 1945. Polls recording satisfaction with occupation: AIPO polls sent out September 19, 1945, May 15, 1946, and September 10, 1946; Fortune polls released November 30, 1945, and in January 1946; NORC polls sent out October 5, 1945, in February 1946, and in December 1946. Polls on maintaining troops and bases in Japan: AIPO poll sent out August 28, 1946, and poll released November 16, 1949; NORC polls sent out June 29, 1948, in March 1949, and June 14, 1950.

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

structured and "loaded" question. The National Opinion Research Center, by asking respondents the same question at different inter­ vals from 1942 to 1946, filtered out the more obvious manifestations of this instability, leaving a trend that follows in broad outline the up-and-down path already familiar. As Table III reveals, at least a plurality and usually a majority of the American people believed, until the end of 1945, that the Japanese were inherently warlike; by the spring of 1946, however, more moderate conceptions of the Japanese gained enough support to relegate the warlike stereotype to second place, behind a view of the Japanese as not necessarily Uking war but too easily misled by powerful leaders. The progress of this change of heart is not recorded after May 1946, but the evidence presented above in Table II clearly indicates that the trend continued in favor of a view of the Japanese as civilized, through the time of the signing of the peace settlement. THE STRUCTURE OF OPINION ON JAPAN A profile of public opinion over a given period of time, however neat and symmetrical it might be, provides at best an incomplete description of the opinion milieu in which policy-makers operate. For one thing, it glosses over the often substantial differences in outlook on public affairs that are found from group to group, espe­ cially in an open and diversified society. The data of public opinion surveys unfortunately do not lend themselves to an examination of opinion differences among groups with varying levels of political interest and participation; instead, the polls are concerned primarily with groups that are distinguished by broad social characteristics, such as age, sex, education, social class, and region. Nevertheless, exploring the contours of opinion in these social groups yields a better understanding of the temper of the times than is afforded by an outline of "general public opinion" alone; one gains, by this means, some insight into the way particular opinions and attitudes are distributed within the population at large. Age

The real scarcity of available breakdowns of polling samples into age divisions makes it difficult to write with any great certainty on the "Japanese opinions" of different age groups. The opinion differences between younger and older respondents are in any case relatively minor, and in some instances statistically insignificant. Yet there is one apparent line of cleavage between the generations

25

11

23

14 13 7

57%

50%

June 1943

46%

29

12 13

28

12 8

Aug. 1944

52%

Feb. 1944

10 10

24

56%

Dec. 1944

45%

32

16 7

29

12 7

Nov. 1945

52%

July 194S

19 7

39

35%

May 1946

* This table is adapted from a chart in Japan and the Post-War World, Report No. 32, NORC, Augrust 1946. In its original form, the figures were expressed as percentages of persons with opinions. The question asked was, "Which of the following state­ ments comes closest to describing how you feel, on the whole, about the people who live in Japan?" The dates in the table refer to the months in which the questions were asked.

The Japanese people will always want to go to war to make them­ selves as powerful as possible. The Japanese people may not like war, but they have shown that they are too easily led into war by powerful leaders. The Japanese people do not like war. If they could have the same chance as people in other coun­ tries, they would become good citizens of the world. Undecided

Sept. 1942

American Views on the Attitude of the Japanese People toward War

TABLE III*

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

that merits some attention. The younger respondents tended to be more unyielding in response to questions of a general nature, in which the political content was not specific and the penalties in store for the Japanese severe but imprecise. Older people, on the other hand, were more exacting when the questions dealt with con­ crete restrictions, such as reparations, to be imposed on the Japanese. It would seem, then, that the younger age groups, lacking a time perspective and having had their lives disrupted by the imminence or actuality of military service, were inclined to be generally and diffusely resentful of the Japanese as an obvious if partial cause of their personal unhappiness; while the older respondents, with more personal security and somewhat fewer war-born frustrations, tended to favor the more pointed although stylized remedies for Japanese misbehavior. There is some reason to think that even time has not assuaged the bitterness of the generation which bore most heavily the direct and indirect costs of Japanese aggression; in early 1953, respondents in their thirties—the men and women who were in their twenties during the war—displayed less friendliness toward the Japa­ nese people than the respondents in all other age groups. Only 51 per cent of a Gallup sample then in the age bracket 30-39 said they had friendly feelings toward the Japanese, as compared with 61 per cent of those who were then in their twenties.15 Sex

Generalizations about the differences between male and female attitudes toward Japan, like age differences, are based on relatively few breakdowns; they are therefore equally tentative, advanced more in the hope that they may stimulate further inquiry than in the belief that they reveal fixed truths. There is, however, a striking uniformity of implication in the data at hand. Although women manifested a greater lack of interest, as evi­ denced by their higher proportion of "don't know" and "no opinion" responses, they were harsher than men in their judgments of the Japanese, and were less willing to display the supposedly feminine traits of mercy and charity. In April 1945, for example, 50 per cent of the men and only 35 per cent of the women polled by the Na­ tional Opinion Research Center thought we should let the Japanese vote in a free election after the war to choose the kind of govern­ ment they wanted. Nine per cent of the men and 13 per cent of the women were classed as "undecided." Again, in the beginning of 15 AIPO

poll sent out January 29, 1953.

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

1953, 10 per cent more men than women had friendly feelings toward the Japanese people.16 One can only speculate on the reasons for female hostility of this magnitude—a surprising phenomenon when one considers that women tend generally to be more idealist and internationalist than men in their foreign policy views.17 During the war, there were fewer opportunities for women to contribute in a direct and sustained way to the war effort; pent-up emotions, barred from expression through other means, may have found their release in a more intense anti-Japanese sentiment. The persistence of this greater antipathy in the postwar years suggests that the picture of the world formed in the minds of many women during World War II, when their involvement in foreign affairs was deeply personal, has not been effaced by the impact of the international difficulties since 1945. Education

The "great divide" in opinion on matters affecting Japan is found when the formal educational attainments of the American popula­ tion are· taken into account. The views of the college-educated differed sharply from the views of those whose schooling was termi­ nated by the eighth grade; the gap between them was bridged by the high school-educated portion of the population, whose opinions came closest to the national average. Americans who had been to college were comparatively well in­ formed on the issues and implications of Japanese-American rela­ tions, they were more likely than those with less schooling to have definite opinions on the policy issues, and their views were more balanced and frequently more liberal. The greater interest and more thorough exposure to information of the college-educated group were revealed in a survey taken shortly after the Japanese Peace Conference; 92 per cent of the college-educated sample, and only 57 per cent of the grade school group, had heard or read anything about the treaty signed in San Francisco.18 (See Table IV.) The college-educated respondents tended to approach Japanese problems in a spirit of tolerance, and to favor internationalist solu­ tions. They were substantially more willing than the others to see American-born Japanese treated without discrimination in the job 16 AIPO

poll sent out January 29, 1953. Gabriel A. Almond, The American People and Foreign Policy, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1950, pp. 117-22. 18 NORC poll sent out in October 1951. 17 Cf.

THE CLIKATE O F OPINION

TABLE IV*

Opinion on Japan: Educational Differences Questions

College

% who favor giving white people the first chance, over Japanese living in the United States, at jobs after the war. (September 1944) 44% % who would like to see Japanese workers trade places with some United States workers for a few months. (April-May 1947) 62 % who think the United States should govern captured Japanese islands for the United Nations, rather than own them outright. (Fall 1945) 66 % who think the Allies should try to make Japan pay as much as possible toward what the war has cost the Allies. (July 1942) 31 % who think we should let the Japanese vote in a free election after the war to choose the kind of government they want. (April 1945) 57 % who think we are not being tough enough in our treatment of the Japanese. (September 1945) 46 % who think we should blame only the Japanese military leaders for the cruel­ ties in the war. (July 1945) 32 % who think the Japanese people would not like to get rid of their military leaders. (April 1945) 51 % who think it is possible to re-educate the Japanese people to a peaceful way of life. (November 1946) 70 % who think the United States should do more to help Japan get back on her feet. (April 1949) 43 % who think we ought to give Japan the same opportunity to sell her goods in this country that we give to other na­ tions. (October 1951) 93 % who think Japan will fight on the side of the United States if there is another war. (November 1949) 45 % who think Japan will fight against the United States if there is another war. (November 1949) 28 (continued on next page)

High School

v

Grade School

Y

'

70%

42

32

60

50

45

53

41

35

63

68

39

45

48

39

57

43

33

35

86

74

42

33

34

40

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

TABLE IV (continued) Questions

% who think the Japanese people will always want to go to war to make them­ selves as powerful as possible. (May 1946) % who think the Japanese people are too easily led into war by powerful leaders. (May 1946) % who think the Japanese should be allowed to set up an army to help strengthen the defenses against Com­ munism. (October 1951) % who feel friendly toward the Japanese people. (April 1949) % who feel friendly toward the Japanese people. (January 1953) % who have heard or read anything about the Japanese peace treaty signed in SanFrancisco. (October 1951)

College

High School

Grade School

23%

35%

39%

50

41

31

82

71

57

50

33

30

71

57

49

92

75

57

* Adapted from public opinion surveys of the American Institute of Public Opinion and the National Opinion Research Center..

market, and to welcome Japanese workers to this country in a pro­ gram for the exchange of industrial persons. Even in the midst of war they counseled moderation in the placing of restrictions on a defeated Japan; less than a third of the college-educated, for exam­ ple, as compared with more than one-half of the grade school group, supported the extraction of maximum reparations from the Japa­ nese.19 The better-educated portion of the population tended also toward a greater political realism, viewing Japan as a complex polity, as a nation where government decisions were actively supported rather than merely obeyed by a populace under pressure. In their thinking about Japan's position in the postwar world, the well-educated group has consistently demonstrated an optimism and flexibility greater than those of the other educational levels. Not only have they held higher hopes and expectations about the ulti­ mate redemption of Japan, but they have also endorsed in larger proportions those policy measures the objective of which was the rapid reconstruction of that country. Ninety-three per cent of the college-educated, for example, favored equal opportunity for Japa­ nese trade in this country at the time the peace treaty was signed, a sentiment shared by 86 per cent of the high school-educated and 19

NORC poll sent out in July 1942.

TBE CLIMATE OF OPINION

74 per cent of the grade school contingent in the sample.20 Finally, the highest educational bracket was less attached to the popular stereotypes of the Japanese in the war period, and abandoned them in considerably larger ratios when the fighting stopped. By 1953, for instance, 71 per cent of the college-educated group and 49 per cent of the grade school sample had friendly feelings toward the Japanese people.21 The less education a person had, the more likely he was to hold attitudes and subscribe to opinions at variance with those attributed above to the best-educated segment of the population. If the welleducated people can be described as generous and forgiving, extend­ ing a helping hand to a nation that had to learn an obvious lesson the hard way, then the poorly educated, those who never got beyond the eighth grade, might be depicted as suspicious and hostile, dis­ believing that the fight was over and reluctant therefore to shake hands and walk away. The substance of the opinions of these people seems to reflect their intellectual and perhaps social distance from reliable sources of foreign policy information, analysis, and interpretation; they were frequently uninformed, were quite rigid in their thinking, and tended to base their choices on emotion even when it led them into contradictory positions. They tended, for example, to simplify and personalize Japanese politics, and thus to emphasize the singular culpability of the military leadership in that country; yet, when their attention was focused on the Japanese people alone, the poorly educated were more apt than other groups to ascribe to them an ingrained belligerency and a fervid desire to fight us again another day. They were also extremely skeptical about the possibility of Japan's regeneration; more than a year after the war's end, only 43 percent of this group, as against 70 per cent of the college-educated, believed in the re-educability of the Japanese people to a peaceful way of life.22 The poorly educated segment of American society tended to view problems of Japanese-American relations in terms of assertive na­ tionalism, tinged with an instinctive fear that the Japanese, unless restrained, would undermine by economic and political means what little security and stability the lives of this group contained. Only a third of them was willing to have Japanese workers come to this country for a few months to trade places with American workers, 20 NORC 22 NORC

U

poll sent out October 2, 1951. 21AIPO poll sent out January 29, 1953. poll sent out in November 1946.

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

while nearly two-thirds of the college-educated, few of whom would be involved in such an exchange, welcomed the idea.23 The gulf in attitudes and opinions between the college sample and the grade school group was wide; yet a caveat should be entered here lest the gap be interpreted too literally. There were, of course, many college graduates who did not subscribe to the liberal, inter­ nationalist views characteristic of their group, just as there were many poorly educated who did not conform to their group standard. One is entitled to say, however, that on questions involving Japan the better-educated were more likely than the poorly educated to express friendship, trust, and willingness to aid in the recruitment of Japan to the standard of the free world. Occupation and Social Class

The income breakdowns of the public opinion surveys are too few to support a detailed discussion of the distribution of opinions among different social classes. What little data are at hand suggest, however, that one can safely rely in this instance on the close cor­ relation established between educational attainment and social class. The lower income groups, like those on the lower educational levels, were most inclined to be hostile toward the Japanese. Fifty-two per cent of the lower income category, as compared with 53 per cent of the grade school sample, thought the Allied powers should try to exact maximum payments from the Japanese toward the cost of the Allied war effort;24 and an identical 32 per cent of both the lower income and educational groups were kindly disposed toward the plan for an exchange of workers with the Japanese.25 Persons on the upper income levels were most likely to soft-pedal the demand for war costs and to favor an exchange of workers, but their propor­ tions in each case did not quite match the liberality of the collegeeducated. The differences, then, between the educational and in­ come patterns of thinking about Japan seem to be small, of degree perhaps rather than of kind. Another distinction that is related to social class and yet meaning­ ful in its own right is occupation. Occupation contributes to social status by the dual channels of prestige and income, and thus should reflect in some measure the differences between income groups sketched above. But occupational pursuits also create political in28

NORC survey taken in April and May 1947. poll sent out in July 1942. 25 NORC survey taken in April and May 1947. 24 NORC

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

terests of their own, which can reasonably be expected to modify the income-educational distribution of opinions in discrete and specific ways. Professional, business, and white-collar people—middle and upper middle class "mental" workers generally—were more inclined than other occupational groups to be generous toward Japan, particularly when confronted with questions having no apparent economic relevance. But their generosity broke down in the light of potential Japanese business competition. This group, most willing of all to let the Japanese vote in free elections to determine their postwar form of government, most willing to give food to the Japanese people if they were starving after the war, proved to be the most unwilling, in the event that Japan could pay reparations only in goods, to accept any Japanese goods which could undersell similar domestic products.28 (See Table V.) The views of manual and service workers—lower income "physical" labor—were very similar to those of the poorly educated; these people were generally unfriendly and antagonistic toward the Japa­ nese. Yet there seemed to be a small conflict of economic interest within this group. They were deeply concerned about their job security, and were reluctant, for example, to change places with Japanese workers even for brief periods; but as hard-put consumers they were considerably more inclined than the business and pro­ fessional groups to accept lower-priced Japanese goods as repara­ tions. Farmers and farm workers were a markedly conservative group, distrustful of the Japanese yet willing to deal with that industrial nation on the time-honored basis of selling high and buying low. Politically the farm community demonstrated little tolerance of the Japanese, sharing to a high degree the sentiments of the manual workers; economically, however, the farmer's self-interest revealed itself both in a sustained preference for selling food to a potentially starving Japan rather than giving food as a gift or withholding it entirely,27 and in favoring, more than any other occupational group, the acceptance of cheaper Japanese goods as reparations payment. Fear of economic competition seemed to play a big, if not always articulated, role in American thinking about Japan. Even though certain occupational groups exhibited a greater generosity than others on particular economic problems offering some perceived 26 NORC 27

polls sent out in January 1943 and April 1945. NORC polls sent out in January 1943 and March 1946.

v

v

—ν 54 62

Y

33 42

'

'

80

77

36 37

46%

61%

Business

60

53

77

White Collar

37

33 50

25 24

74a 63b

37%

γ 52

Manual Labor

33

34 36

35

26

57

'

37%

Domestic and Service

* Adapted from surveys of the American Institute of Public Opinion and the National Opinion Research Center, a SkiUed b Unskilled

> who think we should sell the Japanese only what food they could pay for, if they were starving after the war. (January 1943) (March 1946) b who would like to see Japanese workers trade places with some U.S. workers for a few months. (April-May 1947) ο who have friendly feelings for the Japanese people. (January 1953)

> who are willing to send food as a gift if the Japanese were starving after the war and could not pay for it. (January 1943) (March 1946)

> who think we should let the Japanese vote in a free election after the war to choose the kind of government they want. (April 1945) > who are unwilling for U.S. to accept Japanese goods which could be sold cheaper than similar U.S. goods, if only way Japan could pay us for our cost of the war would be in goods. (April 1945)

Questions

Professional and Managerial

Opinion on Japan: Occupational DiflFerences

TABLE V»

60

36

39 51

25 31

56

33%

Farm

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

advantage, all occupational groups tended to be more severe and unyielding on economic issues than on other, and perhaps more abstract, subjects. Business, managerial, and professional groups, however, having a larger measure of financial security and a greater optimism and sense of control over their own future, could perhaps better afford to separate their opinions on economic problems in­ volving Japan from their political and moral judgments about Japan, and to be kinder in the latter than in the former. This was not quite as easily accomplished by the groups whose employment was on the margin, so to speak; both emotionally and analytically they found it difficult to make such clear and sharp distinctions between economic and other spheres. Region Statistical differences in opinion on Japanese affairs from region to region in the United States were relatively small; on a percentage basis, the regional variations were smaller than those among educa­ tional, income, and occupational groupings. Regional differences sometimes have a significance greater than they merit statistically, however, if only because the folklore of such differences serves occasionally to magnify their importance. It is commonly asserted that the Western part of the United States, whether as a result of geography or history, is oriented toward the Far East in a manner different from that of the rest of the country. That orientation is sometimes described in terms of anti-Japanese sentiment, and at other times as merely a greater interest and involvement in Asian affairs. To take the latter supposi­ tion first, there is some quantitative support for the assumption that residents of the Western United States are more involved in Pacific problems than are the residents of other areas of the country. The extent of their deeper interest is not large, but it was consistently demonstrated by the higher proportion of people in the Western states who had opinions on a variety of topics dealing with Japan. (See Table VI.) It is questionable, however, whether one is entitled to widen the assumption to read, "People in the West are more interested in Asian affairs and less interested in European affairs than are people in other parts of the country." If the North Atlantic alliance is an adequate test, then the Far West led the nation in its involvement in European policy also. In two surveys in 1949, one on the desirability of a mutual defense pact for the North Atlantic taken before the text of the Atlantic Pact was made public, and

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

TABLE VI*

Opinion on Japan: Regional DiflFerences N.E.& Questions

% who are willing to send food as a gift if the Japanese were starving after the war and could not pay for it. (January 1943) (March 1946) % who think we should sell the Japanese only what food they can pay for, if they were starv­ ing after the war. (January 1943) (March 1946) % who are unwilling for the U.S. to accept Japanese goods which could be sold cheaper than simi­ lar United States goods, if the only way Japan could pay us for our cost of the war would be in goods.a (April 1945) % who think it possible to re­ educate the Japanese people to a peaceful way of life.b (November 1945) % who think we should let the Japanese vote in a free election after the war to choose the kind of government they want.c (April 1945) % who think that, before the Japanese peace treaty is ratified, Japan should agree not to carry on trade with Communist China.d (September 1951) % who think the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the Philippine Islands should join in a mutual defense pact.e (January 1952) (continued

Far West

M.A.

Midwest

33% 31

29% 30

31

29% 28

29 41

37 53

35 45

37 44

76

69

54

75

55

62

45

53

45

45

30

48

75

69

71

75

71

79

72 72 on next page)

South

28%

* Adapted from polls of the American Institute of Public Opinion and the National Opinion Research Center. N.E.& Mid­ Far M.A. west South West a Undecided 9 11 IS 8 b Don't know 10 13 17 12 ο Undecided 12 12 12 9 d No opinion, no answer 10 12 15 7 e No opinion 14 IS 16 11

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

TABLE VI (continued) N.E.& Questions

% who think the Japanese people will always want to go to war to make themselves as powerful as possible. (June 1943) % who think the Japanese people are too easily led into war by powerful leaders. (June 1943) % who think the Japanese people do not like war.' (June 1943) % who favor giving white people the first chance, over Japanese living in the United States, at jobs after the war. (September 1944) % who would like to see Japanese workers trade places with some United States workers for a few months.8 (April-May, 1947) % who have friendly feelings toward the Japanese people." (January 1953)

t No opinion s No opinion, don't know h No opinion, no answer

M.A.

Mid­ west

South

Far West

56%

61%

53%

61%

27

23

27

21

11

10

56

58

68

66

47

42

41

39

56

53

52

64

2V.E.&? M.A. 6 15

Mid­ west 6 19

South 11 17 9

Far West 4, 17 S

6

6

14

another on the advisability of Senate ratification of the Pact itself, the Far West had the highest proportion both of people with opin­ ions, and of opinions favoring United States participation in the alliance.28 The depth of Western interest in policy toward Japan is perhaps of less importance than its substance; and here the myth of an antiJapanese bias in the West loses its basis in fact. The data of the public opinion polls indicated just the opposite: that the acute and even violent antipathy of Westerners toward the Japanese, an emo­ tion that is generally presumed to have spanned the years from before the "Gentlemen's Agreement" through the Oriental exclusion provisions of the 1924 Immigration Act, was all but gone and for­ gotten.29 In its place were cautious attitudes, to be sure, and even 28 AIPO 29 The

polls released March 27 and July 8, 1949. growth of sentiment in the West favorable to the Chinese during the war is

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

restrictive ones on occasion when old memories were stirred, but where the West differed most from other parts of the country was not in the strictures it placed on Japan, but rather in the positive signs it evinced of a growing sense of reconciliation with that country. The most obvious traces of Western hostility toward the Japanese were found in the economic sphere, the area most prominently identified with the discriminatory excesses of past generations. On job competition, particularly, residents of the Far West ranked among those who were most likely to blackball the Japanese, and they were similarly reluctant to accept competitive Japanese goods as reparations. In each case, however, the sentiments of the West­ erners were matched almost evenly by the people in at least one other section of the country.80 It is in the realm of political relations with the Japanese nation and people that the distinctive character of Western opinion revealed itself. The people in that region led all others in favoring a mutual defense pact for the Pacific, as they did for the Atlantic, and in welcoming Japan as an ally in such an undertaking.31 An even more impressive demonstration of this new­ found trust in Japan lies in expressed attitudes toward the Japanese people. In early 1953,64 per cent of the respondents in the Far West said they had friendly feelings toward the Japanese, a substantial 8 per cent more than both the national total and the average for the second most favorable section, the East.32 The role assigned by legend to the West was in this instance usurped by the South, that traditional bastion of internationalism. The South was the repository of the greatest ill-will harbored by any region against the Japanese. The only sign of the customary South­ ern attitude was found in that section's greater receptivity, as a basically agricultural area, to Japanese reparation goods which could undersell similar American manufactures. Three-quarters of both the Eastern and Western respondents were unwilling to accept these goods, but only 54 per cent of the Southern sample drew the line at that point.88 In other respects, however, the South was more cited by Fred W. Riggs, Pressures on Congress: A Study of the Repeal of Chinese Exclusion, New York, King's Crown Press, 1950, as one of the factors speeding the repeal of Chinese exclusion laws. These new attitudes toward the Chinese may have opened the way for the reappraisal of the Japanese, by tending to lessen discrimina­ tion against Orientals generally. 80 NORC polls taken in September 1944, April 1945, and April-May 1947. 81 AIPO poll sent out January 4, 1952. 82 AIPO poll sent out January 29, 1953. 88 NORC poll sent out in April 1945.

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

discriminatory than any other part of the country, and its high proportion of people without opinions suggests that as a region it was poorly informed about Japanese-American relations and psy­ chologically remote from them. This circumstance may have been a reflection, perhaps, of the social structure of the South, for we are dealing here with opinions toward a non-white race. In any case, the people of the South were most reluctant to allow the Japanese to determine their form of government in a free election, and later to believe in the possibility of re-educating the Japanese people to a peaceful way of life. In the first instance they deviated from the national average by 12 per cent, and in the second by 9 per cent.84 And at the beginning of 1953, Southern feelings toward the Japanese people were the least friendly of any area of the country.35 The views of Midwestern residents, as of those in New England and the Middle Atlantic states, were by and large undistinctive. There was little sign of the legendary isolationism of the Midwest; the people of that region were coupled as frequently with the generally liberal East as with the restrictive South. The Japanese peace settlement, then, provides further evidence that one cannot always explain or predict public reactions to international issues on the basis of traditional regional differences; the period in the history of American public opinion when that may have been possible, at least with respect to Japanese affairs, seems to have ended in World War II. INTEREST, INFORMATION, AND STABILITY OF OPINION Of equal importance with the substance and social distribution of opinions on Japan is the amount of foreign policy awareness and involvement that lies behind them. Identical significance cannot be attached to two expressions of opinion if one is the product of inti­ mate knowledge and careful analysis, and the other an unthinking reply to an interviewer's prodding on a subject about which the respondent feels obliged to "know something." Because the polls do not always contain the relevant information, it is not possible to evaluate each respondent's knowledge, analytical ability, and psy­ chological involvement with respect to different issues; yet all the polls together, plus several "informational surveys," do allow a dis­ cussion of the general state of American interest in and attachment 34 NORC 85 AIPO

polls sent out in April 1945 and November 1946. poll sent out January 29, 1953.

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

to problems affecting Japan, of the knowledge on which American opinions were based, and of the stability of those opinions. Japan, together perhaps with the rest of the Far East, appears to have been on the periphery of the narrow circle of attention that Americans pay to foreign policy, in significant contrast to Germany, for example, which has frequently been right in the center of that circle, along with other European problems.86 The rapid fluctuations in both the direction and the intensity of judgments on Japanese affairs, which are the outstanding char­ acteristic of American public opinion in this area during the past decade, are hardly suggestive of a deep and sustained concern with the course of United States-Japanese relations, or of a dispassionate and reasoned approach to the problems arising from them. These casual reversals of sentiment on fundamental issues indicate, rather, a superficial and tenuous connection with problems that seemed to have neither a discernible past nor a predictable future, but only an ephemeral present. The "no opinion's" as well as the opinions them­ selves point to the transitory character of the American people's thinking about Japan. Under the full impact of the war, very few Americans were caught without some ideas on how to treat the Japanese when peace should be restored. Many of these views had an emotional rather than intellectual base, to be sure, but even emotion presupposes interest. Once the fighting stopped, and the basic Japanese threat to American security was laid low, the stimulus to interest began to dissipate; the number of respondents unable to choose even a simple "yes" or "no" answer rose rapidly to around 20 per cent. A fuller sense of the lack both of concern and of information, hidden by the concise and positive phraseology of the run-of-themine poll question, is amply conveyed in the few investigations which candidly probed the apathy and ignorance of the American people. In the beginning of August 1945, at the climax of the war, approximately 50 per cent of the population admitted that they had not heard or read anything about the surrender terms the Allied powers had presented to Japan the week before.37 At the 86 The public opinion polling agencies themselves have paid relatively little atten­ tion to Japanese affairs, if the number and type of the questions they have asked since the end of the war are valid criteria. Since part of the job of any pollster who claims policy significance for his work is to be attentive both to policy problems and to public interest in them, the scarcity of questions on Japan suggests that in the experienced view of these agencies, Japan has been of marginal concern to the American people. 87 NORC polls sent out July 28 and August 1, 1945; 43 per cent of the July 28

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

end of that year, when more than seven out of every ten respondents in a Fortune sample declared they were well satisfied with the way our occupation of Japan was going,38 55 per cent of a sample polled by the National Opinion Research Center confessed that they did not have even a "fairly clear idea" of what American policy was toward Japan. When pressed further, 38 per cent of the sample attributed their ignorance to the fact that they had not followed the policy very closely, while the remainder of the uninformed, 17 per cent of the total sample, chose the alternative excuse that the policy itself was not very clear.39 A year later, between 70 and 80 per cent of an NORC sample were expressing satisfaction with the disarmament, demilitarization, and re-education aspects of the occupation of Japan;40 but another NORC question asked at the same time revealed that 43 per cent of the respondents took a "great deal of interest" in the occupation, 43 per cent "only a little interest," and 12 per cent "no interest at all."41 Since no penalty attaches to a respectable up-grading of one's avowed interest under the circum­ stances of a public opinion poll, there is some reason to believe that these figures give an inflated picture of the real state of public attention to the occupation at that time. One can easily guess at the simple empirical referents, such as the stature of General MacArthur or the presence of a relative in the Army of Occupation, which might justify an individual's response of a "little interest" rather than "none at all." General MacArthur, strangely enough, may have been on balance a greater stimulus to public inattention than to interest. The Ameri­ can people, in polls42 and elsewhere, repeatedly signified their con­ fidence in the General and their approval of his stewardship in the Allied occupation of Japan. His presence in Tokyo may have com­ pounded, if it did not create, the urge of many war-weary Americans to relax their unprecedented vigilance over the Pacific, by con­ vincing them that their watch had been officially relieved, that competent hands were now at the helm in Tokyo. The absence of an "opposition press" in Tokyo, and a steady stream of publicity sample, and 54 per cent of the August 1 sample, were unaware of the surrender terms. 88 Fortune poll released in January 1946. 89 NORC poll sent out December 12, 1945. 40 NORC poll sent out in December 1946. 41 NORC poll sent out in December 1946. 42 NORC poll sent out in September 1945; AIPO polls sent out October 17, 1945, and poll released April 15, 1949.

54

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

favorable to the conduct of the occupation, could hardly fail to reinforce whatever tendencies there were in this direction. There is little evidence, at least in the public opinion polls during the period covered here, of stability in American attitudes toward Japan and the Japanese people. There are few signs of a consistent and enduring involvement in the affairs of that country which could produce a set of abiding images, a catalogue of signs and symbols, to give the mythical average American a continuity of judgment. Without these images there is no steadfast perspective on Japanese policy; events are transient and unidentified phenomena, much of the meaning of which is lost because there is no context. The hazard­ ing of opinion in these circumstances is Uttle more purposive or rewarding than trying to make a jig-saw puzzle with some of the pieces missing and no idea of what the picture would look like if completed. These characteristics of American public opinion are not uniquely operative toward Japan; in some respects they describe the views of the general public toward a wide range of foreign policy prob­ lems. Yet in the Far East as a whole these tendencies seem to be not only more pronounced, but also attributable even to many of those who are interested in and informed about foreign policy issues elsewhere.43 The belated violence of the political debate over China, for example, has tended to obscure the very conditions which gave rise to the controversy: the apparent lack of concern in the United States over the fate of China until the time had passed when real choices were available and when American influence might have been used to stave off the Commimist conquest. Among the general public, certainly, there was a widespread detachment from what was happening in China. A great many people were uninformed and without opinions at all; others were unwilling to recognize the Chinese Communists and simultaneously reluctant to support the Nationalist regime. The number of people who saw any policy significance for the United States in Chiang's defeat, and who faced up to its implications, was very small indeed.44 Popular attitudes toward Japan, volatile because they were the product of a comparatively low level of interest and information, were in rather striking contrast to attitudes toward Germany. The 48 Cf. the discussion of "regional and cultural attention biases" among American foreign policy elites in Almond, op.cit., pp. 145-46. 44 E.g., AIPO polls released December 15, 1948, May 27, 1949, July 10, 1949, September 18, 1949, and June 2, 1950. In September 1949, the National Opinion Research Center asked this question: "How much interest do you take in each item

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

sentiments of the American people toward both these countries were considerably harsher during the war than after it; yet the paths of these two bodies of opinion did not run a parallel course. Early in the war, Germany was an object of greater fear and hostility than Japan; in the midst of the conflict Japan caught up with and then passed her European ally as possessor of this dubious honor. Later, however, when severity began to yield to leniency in the early dawn of peace, the paths of these two crossed again; popular attitudes toward Japan mellowed much more than did attitudes toward Ger­ many. Throughout this period the American people were less prepared to offer opinions on almost all phases of policy or suggested policy toward Japan than on such toward Germany. The only subject, in fact, on which more opinion was expressed about Japan was occupa­ tion policy. Not the least of the reasons for this would appear to be the contrast between the unambiguous, uniformly favorable com­ munications that emanated from General MacArthur's headquarters, buttressing the impression of solidarity and single-mindedness of purpose in a command run by Americans, and the confusing flow of information about the complex and ever-changing occupation of Germany originating in the headquarters of a number of different powers and people, none of them having either the public stature or the continuity in office of General MacArthur. The comparative stability of American attitudes toward Germany seems to have been pegged at a level of hostility that might be judged rather low for a "total war" and rather high for a peacetime "cold war" in which Germany has been an ill-concealed prize. A reasonable if partial explanation for the differences in this respect between Japan and Germany might be that developments in Japan were recorded on a tabula rasa of American opinion, so to speak, while events in Germany fell on a sensitive and well-developed body of opinion. The American image of Japan, uncomplicated by ties of culture, ancestry, and historical experience, was too indistinct to below—a great deal of interest, some interest, or practically none?" The results were as follows: Great Don't Deal Some Know None England's present financial crisis Our policy toward China The United Nations organization A possible depression Our relations with Russia What is going on in Germany

17¾ 17 33 62 49 25

46¾ 43 41 28 35 46

35% 38 24 9 15 27

2¾ 2 2

1 1 2

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

etch itself into the national consciousness, but the stereotype of Germany had been formed decades ago, and was governed by the proposition that the land of the Kaisers was aggressive to the core. CONCLUSIONS We have seen something now of the trends in American public opinion on Japan, its structure, and its depth. But what was the significance of this opinion milieu for policy-making on the Japanese peace settlement? After the end of 1945, but particularly in the 1950's, American opinion on Japan was permissive and tolerant, giving policy-makers wide latitude in their search for internationally acceptable policy substance. Popular restraints on their freedom to decide in concrete terms how Japan should be treated were few. In the two outstanding instances where restrictive opinion on policy had a high specific gravity, the curbs which were suggested had long-standing ad­ vocates on the governmental level. The Pentagon had a stout ally in public opinion to support its argument that American military forces should be retained in Japan even after the occupation for­ mally ended, although it is by no means certain that this common conclusion was reached by similar processes of reasoning. It is illustrative of the pragmatic overlap of interest which facilitates agreement in a democracy, however, that the same armed forces which satisfied the military requirements for defense against militant communism in Asia also gave reassurance to the part of the popula­ tion that still feared the revival of Japanese militarism. And, for reasons which were basically identical, many members of the United States Senate agreed with nearly three-quarters of a national sample in 19514S that the Senate should not ratify the Japanese treaty until it had assurances that Japan would not carry on trade with Communist China. Beyond these two reservations, however, the reins of popular opinion were slack. This is not to say that they had necessarily to remain so, but rather that the political process developed, as we shall see, in such a way as to keep the reins loose and, perhaps more important, to sustain the conviction on the part of both Executive and Congressional leaders that they were not taut and binding. That there was popular support for the peace treaty at the time of its signing is certain; yet the measure of that backing must have come as a surprise to the architects of the treaty, in whose ears the din of acclaim from the press, public and political leaders, and 45 AIPO

poll sent out September 19, 1951.

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

foreign diplomats echoed long after San Francisco. How unsettling, after such a satisfying experience, to discover that only half of the people interviewed on the subject thought the Japanese treaty was a "good treaty." What the full figures show, however, is not opposi­ tion, but unconcern. Fifty-two per cent of the sample thought it was a "good treaty," and only 3 per cent thought it was a bad one; 16 per cent had no opinion on the merits of the document, and 29 per cent had heard or read nothing about it.48 Even the great public praise was not able to penetrate the disinterest of a substantial minority of the American people. To some the treaty was a novel and dramatic gesture, unequaled on many counts in the annals of diplomacy; but to others it was a dull legal routine, not at all com­ parable to the excitement of the National League pennant race of that year. And, of course, to nearly a third of the population the peace treaty did not seem even to exist. These figures, furthermore, measured the state of opinion while the San Francisco Conference was still somewhat fresh in memory; and by recalling the issue to the respondents, the questions them­ selves undoubtedly exaggerated the dimensions both of interest in and of favorable opinion about the settlement. A corrective, which possibly errs in the other direction, is supplied in a different kind of measure of public reaction to the treaty; this was taken six months after the Conference, in March 1952, the month when the Senate approved the settlement. At that time respondents were asked to cite some of the "good things" the government had done in its foreign policy since World War II. Foreign economic aid led the list, being spontaneously mentioned by 45 per cent of the sample. The entire postwar treatment of Japan, however, from the success of MacArthur's occupation through the peace treaty, was mentioned by only 8 per cent of the sample. A negligible proportion mentioned the postwar treatment of Japan as a "mistake."47 Had their memories been prodded just a little bit, undoubtedly more people would have responded favorably; yet the very few spontaneous references sug­ gest how little salience the issue had in the public mind even as the Senate was completing action on it. Public support for the network of security treaties linking the United States, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippine Islands, and Japan seems to have been more widespread than for the peace treaty itself. This may have been due to a greater public interest in 48

NORC poll sent out in October 1951. poll sent out in March 1952.

47 NORC

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

issues dealing with security against external attack, or it may have been a simple function of the fact that the question referred only to a hypothetical mutual defense pact rather than to a series of already signed alliances with these countries. Seventy-three per cent of a Gallup sample favored in early 1952 a mutual defense pact among these countries,48 but it is quite unlikely that an equal num­ ber were aware of the specific pacts which at that moment were awaiting consideration by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As important as the number of people favoring the treaties is their location on the American social scene. Our earlier look at the structure of public opinion on Japan suggests that sentiments favoring the peace settlement were most abundantly held by the groupings which were politically alert and attentive: men, the welleducated, those on the upper socio-economic levels, and the resi­ dents of the Far West. The last factor may even have had strategic significance, for it would be difficult to imagine great success for a treaty policy toward Japan if it had been consistently and articu­ lately opposed by the people in the Western states.49 It is, perhaps, support from all these quarters, or at least the lack of their opposi­ tion, which strengthened the belief prevailing in many circles that the peace settlement was almost universally admired. Is there, finally, any evidence of a popular disposition in the United States to undergo sacrifice and deprivation if such should be required to sustain the arch of the peace settlement—a demo­ cratic, economically stable, Western-oriented Japan? Much of the answer to this question depends on the costs, economic and political, of the measures that might be called for, and it is as difficult to spell out the appropriate policies as it is to predict their costs. Yet there is a general basis for estimating "willingness to sacrifice," derived from polls on assistance to Japan. Since the end of the war the American people have revealed in their expressions of opinion a sizable willingness to "help Japan" in her process of industrial reconstruction. And consistent with this has been a popular acceptance of normal trade relations with that country. At the time of the peace settlement and after, eight out of every ten people queried thought we should give Japan the same opportunity to sell her goods in this country that we give to other nations.50 48 AIPO poll sent out January 4, 1952. Thirteen per cent opposed such an alliance, and 14 per cent were without opinions. 49 See Chapter 12, "Salt Water Politics." 50 NORC polls sent out October 2, 1951, and October 15, 1952.

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

But, as is so often the case, there is a fly in the ointment in regard to this attractive prospect: magnanimous gestures in the direction of "help" are not matched by equal dispositions to sacrifice, once it is made clear that "help" might mean higher taxes and possibly other forms of privation. Fifty-four per cent of an NORC sample thought it was possible to re-educate the Japanese people, but only 34 per cent favored the expenditure of "fifteen million dollars a year for several years" to accomplish the job.61 Similarly, 61 per cent of another sample wanted to see the American government 'Tielp Japan get her peacetime industries going again," but only 39 per cent thought Congress should appropriate "more money so supplies can be sent for this purpose."52 Such ambivalence is not rare in the American people's approach to foreign policy, but it should provide ample warning that when and if particular policies are required to implement the spirit of the Japanese peace settlement, seeds of political opposition may be nourished in the soil of public reluctance to bear the costs. The ground for one unhappy future choice is already partly prepared in the public mind. Seventy-two per cent of a Gallup sample wanted to make ratification of the peace treaty dependent on Japan's dis­ avowal of trade relations with Communist China53—a course sub­ stantially being pursued at that time by Japan in conformity with the Mutual Defense Assistance Control Act of 1951, the so-called Battle Act. If other channels of commerce are not available, how­ ever, to sustain Japan's economy in the coming years, the American people may be face to face with a decision of the first magnitude: whether to support moves to free Japan's trade in non-strategic goods, at least, with the Asian mainland, or to pay Japan's deficit from their own pockets. Such a choice might, in the light of the record of American public opinion, be a hard one to make; it would, in any event, openly test American readiness to pay the price of its security system in the Far East. This, then, was the character of American public opinion on the issues raised by a peace settlement with Japan: not very interested or well informed, yet quite tolerant of the new, more generous approach to Japan. But to a policy-maker, public opinion is more than the mood of the people made determinate at periodic intervals 61 NORC

polls sent out in November 1946. poll sent out in December 1946. 58 AIPO poll sent out September 19, 1951.

52 NORC

THE CLIMATE OF OPINION

by scientific surveys; it is also the voices, loud or soft, gentle or angry, selfish or altruistic, of particular human beings who articulate their own or someone else's concerns about policy. To many policy­ makers, this is the most important expression of public opinion, for it has both political substance and political location, a combination of attributes lacking in opinion polls but of vital significance to a sensitive holder of public office. What was the pattern of this kind of public opinion on the Japanese peace settlement?

Ckapter 4 TYPES OF PUBLIC INTEREST The men and women who speak out on any issue of foreign policy play a unique role in the process of policy-making. This group of politically articulate people reveals, through its make-up and through the ways it functions, both the seamless nature of public participa­ tion in democratic government, and the difficulty of finding a thread that may unravel the problem of characterization. The composition of such a group is constantly shifting as different issues make their debuts on the political stage. Yet within the fluc­ tuation there are certain constants. The group that forms on any issue will consist both of organized political interest associations and of private individuals. Strictly speaking, it will also include represen­ tatives of the media of communication, but the media are sufficiently important to warrant separate treatment later. Organizations, like citizens, will act in varying capacities, such as experts, bearers of ideology, or bearers of special interest. Some of the private citizens will be stimulated to act by organizations or associations, and others will be motivated by strands of interest leading only to themselves. There is no existing terminology that satisfactorily describes this group. The whole is obviously larger than mere "interest groups," as that term is generally employed, and yet it is something less than an "opinion elite."1 In the absence of a suitable label we shall for convenience refer to this disparate body of organized groups and private citizens who speak out on any given issue of public policy as the "articulate public." The active and outspoken variety of public opinion that emerges from the articulate public has a number of all-important qualities which serve to distinguish it from the pollster's kind of opinion and to give it at least potentially greater significance for policy-making. In addition to its attributes of political substance and location, which have already been mentioned, this opinion is voluntarily expressed, suggesting rightly or wrongly an intensity of motivation or convic­ tion surpassing that of poll opinions. These articulations, moreover, consist of structured thoughts and reasoned, individualized argu­ ments; they reflect more or less faithfully what an individual or 1 Gabriel A. Almond, The American People and Foreign Policy, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1950, Chapter VII. See also David B. Truman, The Govern­ mental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion, New York, A. A. Knopf, 1951.

TYPES OF PUBLIC INTEREST

group itself believes, in contradistinction to the public opinion polls, which often sacrifice clarity and fidelity of original idea on the altar of standardization and simplicity, or sometimes impute clarity where it does not really exist. Finally, and perhaps obviously, a major goal of all these individuals and groups is to influence policy directly, by trying to shape the decisions of policy-makers, or indirectly, by seeking to mold the public environment of decision-making. This is hardly true of poll opinions; if there is an aura of political influence surrounding them, it is due more to the democratic zeal of the pollsters or to the influence of polls on policy-makers than it is to the political activism and determination of the sample respondents. Let us now look at the public combatants on the field of the Japa­ nese peace settlement, who sought by words to Mdn over the policy­ makers and thus gain acceptance of their values in public policy. Actually, we shall be taking two looks, and from two angles. In this chapter our concern is essentially with the "Who?" and the "What?" of public participation in policy-making—who was involved in the peace settlement, and what was the nature or substance of their attraction to it? This more or less descriptive pattern of public in­ terest is preliminary to a second appreciation—the "How?" of public participation—which will be undertaken in the following chapter.2 The task at hand, thus, is primarily one of describing the cast of public characters. But before they are described individually and by types, it may be useful to view them as a group—to discuss some of the characteristics of the articulate public that formed around this policy issue. Such an over-all view will give some context and per­ spective to our later portrayal of the individual members of the group. SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THIS BODY OF ARTICULATE OPINION The pattern of articulate opinion can perhaps be best summarized 2 These

two designs, one of interest and the other of action, are the products of a detailed canvass of the sources of evident and acknowledged interest in the peace settlement, as well as of those groups which customarily take part in discussions of foreign policy problems but no trace of which could be easily discovered on this particular issue. Information was gathered from the Department of State's files on the Japanese peace settlement, from the published records of Senate hearings and debates, from newspapers, and from personal correspondence with officials in about fifty political interest groups. No one, of course, can maintain that the picture thus drawn is absolutely complete; there is, however, good cause to believe that it is reasonably comprehensive, and that no organizations of major consequeince in American public life, nor any public sources that have left an impression on policy itself, have escaped the net.

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—and hypotheses about the effects of such a pattern on policy-makers subsequently advanced—by looking at two different sets of char­ acteristics displayed by the public discussion of the Japanese peace settlement. The first set of characteristics is "substantive," for it relates to the content of the views and opinions which were ex­ pressed by the various groups; the second set may be termed "process characteristics," for they describe some non-substantive aspects of this body of articulate opinion which affect its role in the political process. Substantive Characteristics There is a clear line of division between those groups that ex­ plicitly supported the treaty settlement and those which openly urged its rejection. The favorable side included most of the broad national membership organizations that took a stand on the issue. Public statements of support for the treaties as negotiated came from the National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber of Commerce, from the A.F. of L. and the C.I.O., from the National Council of the Churches of Christ and from some of the separate denominations within the Council, from the American Legion and the American Veterans Committee; in brief, support was forth­ coming from groups that can be said to represent the politically significant interests of large and important sectors of the American population. The groups that called for the outright defeat of the treaties were smaller and of a very different sort. Almost without exception they were on the ideological fringes, both "left" and "right." Their opposition to the peace settlement was wholly consistent with their practice of uncompromising opposition to the means and ends of American foreign policy at least since the end of World War II. The organizations on the "left," particularly pacifist groups like the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, objected to the security orientation of American policy in the Pacific; while those on the "right," particu­ larly the "patriotic" women's groups and the isolationists and archconservatives of the National Economic Council persuasion, objected to the internationalist and cooperative character of this country's security policy for the Pacific. It would be misleading to suggest, however, that most of the statements made by interested groups or persons were declarations of favor or disfavor for the treaty. On the contrary, the majority of

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utterances had no immediate reference to any stand taken on the issue of final acceptance or rejection of the settlement. Rather they were policy comments, criticisms, suggestions, and analyses per­ taining to specific features of the settlement which were of direct and immediate concern to the groups involved. Thus some organiza­ tions confined their participation to discussions of a fisheries treaty, for example, while others talked only of some probable consequences of Japanese rearmament. It is true, of course, that such remarks often grew out of special points of view; and it was usually when these viewpoints were the narrowest or most ill-concealed that they drew the fire of the guardians against 'lobbyists" or "pressure groups." Yet it also seems to be true that these organizations, as a group, performed a most important function when they commented on specific aspects of the peace settlement: they raised for public discussion a number of problems that would otherwise have been considered only from the viewpoint—no less special—of the government official. This is not to argue here that such organizations are the best public agents to raise these issues; rather it is to say that they were often the only ones to do so, and that without their participation there would at times have been no "public voice" on matters of great consequence to a number of public groups. The significant role in democratic foreign policy-making of political discussion by organized interest groups will be illustrated in Chapter 12, when we consider in de­ tail the case of the fisheries convention. Process Characteristics

Articulate public opinion on the peace settlement displayed a number of non-substantive characteristics that help to define the role it played in the policy-making process. These may be described as volume, representativeness, accuracy, and relevance. 1. VOLUME. The numerical indicators point clearly to a volume of articulate opinion on the treaty issue lower than that on most other major issues of foreign policy in the six years from the end of the war to the ratification of the Japanese treaty. In the course of the Foreign Relations Committee's hearings, for example, only 18 private witnesses participated; 13 of these gave testimony in person, while 5, not appearing, sent in written statements. Of these 18, 10 represented organized groups and 8 were individuals speaking mostly for themselves. For purposes of comparison, the ratification of the North Atlantic Treaty seems to be an appropriate issue, both

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because it involved only one set of hearings which were held in the Senate, and because it dealt substantively with problems of mutual defense which were similar to those handled in the Pacific security treaties. In the hearings on the North Atlantic Treaty, 127 private witnesses participated; approximately 90 of these testified in person and the rest sent in written statements. Of the 127 witnesses, 91 represented organizations of some description, and the remaining 36 spoke for themselves.3 The relative paucity of outspoken opinion on the peace settlement is also indicated by the mail on that issue which was sent to the White House and the State Department. Persons familiar with the mail situation there have described the mail on Japan as very low in volume, an extremely small percentage of the total number of letters received in the fiscal year 1952, which began July 1, 1951. The Japanese mail was said to have retained its "dribble quality" even during the San Francisco Conference, when the treaty received its greatest and most dramatic publicity. Throughout this period the mail on Japan was about equal in volume to the mail on Ger­ many; yet Germany at that time was a relatively dormant problem while the Japanese issue was more alive politically than at almost any time since the end of the war. 2. REPRESENTATIVENESS. Articulate opinion on the peace settle­ ment does not appear to be representative either of the major types of political interest groups in the United States, or of general public opinion as suggested by the polls. The organized groups that participated in the treaty-making process are only formally representative of the major types of political interest groups in the United States. That is to say, each type was represented by at least one organization, the sole exception being agricultural groups, which seem not to have participated at all. There is, of course, no generally accepted base or standard by means of which one could measure the statistical representativeness of interest group participation; but we might note, in passing, the 8 These data were gathered by Robert G. Abernethy for his case study, The North Atlantic Treaty, unpublished paper prepared for the Graduate Research Seminar of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, June 1952. This comparison of participation in the hearings on NATO and the Japa­ nese peace settlement does not take into account the extent to which the Foreign Relations Committee, or the Committee staff, or even the State Department, made efforts to produce testimony in each case. The testimony of one large organization seems to have been solicited on behalf of the Japanese peace treaty, and while no direct evidence is available one would expect this to have been true of several organi­ zations in the NATO case.

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predominance of religious, commodity, and ideological fringe groups among the total organized participants. The ideological deviants, furthermore, were most in evidence at the Foreign Relations Com­ mittee's hearings; of the ten organizations represented there either in person or by written statement, eight were ideologically deviant in one direction or another. Insofar as it is possible to compare the findings of public opinion polls with the utterances of articulate groups and individuals, in order to see if the latter are representative of the former, it seems quite clear that articulate opinion on the Japanese peace settlement bore no necessary relation to "general public opinion." On the twin issues of Japanese rearmament and the maintenance of American troops and bases in Japan, for instance, between 75 and 80 per cent of the samples polled favored the stand of the military, whereas a sizable proportion of group opinion was loudly and persistently de­ voted to the cause of Japan's disarmament. In a similar fashion, only half of the women respondents in an early 1953 poll expressed friendly feelings for the Japanese people, while virtually all of the women who spoke voluntarily on the matter shared this friendly sentiment. The public opinion polls show, furthermore, that the residents of the Pacific Coast, when they were most hostile, were no more restrictive than the residents of other regions in their attitudes toward the Japanese, even when "bread-and-butter" issues were being considered; yet members of the West Coast fishing in­ dustry were, as we shall see, the most active of all the groups that proposed treaty restrictions on the Japanese. 3. ACCURACY. To speak of the accuracy of articulate opinion on the treaty is really to hazard judgments on two different aspects of the treaty discussion: the quality of the information base on which it rested, and the validity of the interpretations and inferences ad­ vanced in support of the several arguments. Considering the complex nature of the treaty, one would have to rate as high the amount and quality of information pertaining to it that circulated among the participants in the public debate. For example, there was good knowledge of the economic provisions of the treaty, including the sections on claims, which are among the most difficult parts of the document to understand. There was good comprehension also of the meaning of the territorial clauses, even though some of them introduced new and unfamiliar techniques to solve legal and political dilemmas never before encountered.

TYPES OF PUBLIC INTEREST

Only in rare cases was there clear ignorance or misunderstanding of treaty provisions or their significance. One has immediately to qualify this conclusion, however, by rec­ ognizing that those who knew or thought they were unable to discuss the treaty competently or knowledgeably often refrained from giving an opinion on any aspect of it, while those, for example, on whom the treaty impinged the most in an economic sense had the greatest motivation to inform themselves on the economic clauses. In other words, the public debate on the treaty seems to have been well informed, but this condition may have been simply the bright side of the coin, the reverse of which was the lack of active participa­ tion by less-specialized and less-informed persons and groups. Judgments on the validity of inferences and interpretations can­ not be so boldly made, since only the future can establish the relevance of many criteria employed in the drawing of inferences and interpretative conclusions. Yet one can have little faith in the validity of interpretations that seem to be apocalyptically rather than analytically derived, and it is unhappily the case that the Japa­ nese peace settlement seemed to stimulate the former method of deriving them. Among the treaty's supporters and detractors both, there were frequent analyses in which policy consequences were spun out to their most illogical extremes; the resulting debate ranged from flights of fancy, wherein the settlement was to be the bridge to an unparalleled era of peace in the Pacific, all the way over to prophecies of black disaster, in which the peace settlement was portrayed as the instrument of doom for Western civilization. Ex­ perience alone, if not sober and thoughtful analysis, could have demonstrated how improbable these prognostications were. There were many, of course, who tempered their enthusiasm or their despair, pointing out both the hopeful and the unpromising portents for the future in order to offer a balanced judgment as to the con­ sequences of the settlement; but evaluations of this kind were too few and not compelling enough to take the debate away from those who made it look like a contest between good and evil. 4. RELEVANCE. The final characteristic of articulate opinion that interests us here is its relevance; that is to say, to what extent were pertinent issues aired by individuals and organized groups during their discussion of the settlement? Again, of course, it is not possible to establish uncontrovertible criteria of relevance; yet the following might reasonably be considered to be among the most important issues that the peace settlement raised for the American people: How

TYPES OF PUBLIC INTEREST

were American security interests in the Pacific being affected by the terms of the treaties? What were the short-run costs of the settle­ ment? What were the long-run costs? What did these costs consist of? Were they in some tolerable proportion to treaty-born incre­ ments of security, if such there were? What alternative policies were available, and what were the costs and advantages of each? The treaty discussion rarely concerned itself explicitly with these particular questions; more to the point, however, is the fact that even the underlying issues raised by these questions were only infrequently the subject of detailed and thoughtful consideration. The possible or probable effects of the treaty on American security were asserted more often than analyzed, and asserted usually in an unequivocal, unqualified fashion. Costs, when they were mentioned at all, were often discussed in the currency of group rather than national interests, and were expressed in thinly veiled financial terms as often as in more inclusive political terms. In other words, the quality as well as the quantity of the articulate public's treaty discussion was on the low side; value judgments were made, to be sure, and information was offered, but these statements of preference and information were not often directed to the more significant and difficult choices that were involved in the Japanese peace settlement. This was in part a reflection of the fact that many groups with narrow interests displayed deep concern over the settlement, while many groups with broader outlooks were often only casually inter­ ested in it. It may also reflect the lack of sustained attention to these more difficult but germane questions in the governmental discussion and debate on the settlement. TYPES AND SOURCES OF INTEREST Having seen some general characteristics of the forest of articulate opinion, we can turn now to a closer inspection of the trees that comprise it. What kinds of people and groups were sufficiently alert, informed, and aroused to undertake programs of persuasion designed to shape or alter the Japanese peace settlement? To what aspects of the proposed documents were their interest and their efforts directed? How resolute were they in the pursuit of their goals? In the process of answering these questions, a more or less con­ ventional typology of political interest groups will be employed. The reader will quickly note some of the difficulties attendant on its use—for example, where should an organization be placed if it

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fits into more than one conventional category? These problems are familiar, however, and thus are perhaps preferable to those which would arise if we were to attempt to create here a new and more precise system of classification.4 Business and Labor Organizations

Economic groups, both business and labor, were among the most strenuous participants in the public discussion of the peace settle­ ment. But the traditional interests that have often ranged these groups against each other were nearly dormant in this foreign policy instance. The real lines of division were drawn not between the two types of organizations, but rather across them, separating the large national spokesmen of both sides from the smaller associations more intimately concerned with special industry-wide problems of equal relevance to owners, management, and labor. The two major national business organizations, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States and the National Association of Manufacturers, which together claim to speak for the bulk of Ameri­ can entrepreneurs, lent their broad support to the government's policy in seeking a Japanese treaty. The Chamber was the more forceful of the two. In a Policy Declaration on Japan, in May 1950, it urged the government to intensify its efforts to obtain a formal Pacific peace, and approved the early steps in that direction;5 in November of the same year the National Chamber's Board of Directors reiterated the desirability of an early peace settlement with Japan. A year later, almost on the heels of the San Francisco Conference, the Board went on record as favoring the ratification of the peace treaty.® The N.A.M., politically more conservative than the Chamber, commended negotiations leading to an early signing of a treaty with Japan "to help lead her on the road to representative selfgovernment based on individual liberty."7 In its statement, the N.A.M.'s Board of Directors also urged the "judicious continued rehabilitation" of Japanese industry so that Japan might become self-supporting, and recommended that a Treaty of Commerce and 4 For a discussion of the limitations of the conventional classifications of political interest groups, see Truman, op.cit., pp. 63-65. s Chamber of Commerce, Policy Declarations of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, Washington, D.C., July 1950, pp. 97-98. 6 Business Action, Vol. 8, No. 37, November 24, 1951, p. 1. 7 International Relations Committee, National Association of Manufacturers, State­ ment on the Far East, approved by the Board of Directors, April 10, 1951.

TYPES OF PUBLIC INTEREST

Friendship with Japan be concluded together with the peace treaty or soon after it. Promotion of the peace settlement by the giants of labor, the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the American Federation of Labor, was on a par with the efforts of their business counter­ parts. At its 13th Annual Convention in November 1951, the C.I.O. passed a spirited resolution praising the treaty proceedings and expressing the hope that the document would be speedily ratified.8 Just as the N.A.M. singled out Japanese industry and trade for special mention, the C.I.O. resolution pledged its support to organized labor in Japan, and admonished the treaty signatories not to permit any infringement of new trade union rights in that country. The A.F. of L. pursued the treaty project with greater vigor than the C.I.O., spurred on by what it apparently regarded as a choice opportunity to shore up the reforms that had been made in Japan under the occupation. Early in 1951 the Executive Council of the A.F. of L. adopted a statement urging that peace treaties be signed with Japan and Western Germany;9 in May of 1951 in another state­ ment, the Executive Cotmcil welcomed American initiative toward a Japanese treaty, and proposed that educational and agrarian re­ forms be maintained, that Japanese governments be responsible solely to the lower House in the Diet, and that the treaty provide for Japan's protection from external aggression.10 Meeting in con­ vention in San Francisco in September of 1951, after the Treaty Conference delegates had left the city, the A.F. of L. heard its President call the treaty a strategic victory for the free world;11 and in February 1952, the Executive Council called for ratification, adding a plea for action to stave off a return to reaction in Japan.12 The leaders of these four organizations are, in a sense, the com­ manding generals of power and prestige in the armies of business and labor; they work in an atmosphere of uneasy compromise be­ tween group interest and national responsibility. Out on the firing lines, however, where the need for such compromise is less strongly felt, a few battalions of business and labor were allied in pointed endeavors to protect the special interests of their particular com­ mands against damage or destruction by what they regarded as a 8 Congress of Industrial Organizations, Resolution on Foreign Policy, 13th Annual Convention, New York, November 5-9, 1951, p. 8. 9 A.F.L. Weekly News Service, January 30, 1951, p. 1. 10 Ibid., May 25, 1951, p. 2. 11 Ibid., September 18, 1951, p. 1. 12 A.F.L. News Reporter, February 6, 1952, p. 2.

TYPES OF PUBLIC INTEREST

too-liberal peace policy toward Japan. Their assaults were made in strength on the fronts of shipping and fishing—spoiling attacks, as it were, to prevent the full mobilization of Japanese competition. In February 1951, nine organizations, members of the IntraIndustry Maritime Committee and sparkplugged by the National Federation of American Shipping, issued a joint protest against the "unwarranted expansion of Japanese shipping and shipbuilding out of proportion to other Japanese industries or out of proportion to the revival of her foreign trade, especially when financed directly or indirectly by the United States, including counterpart funds." Such a lack of balance, they argued, "would create a serious and unfair economic disadvantage for American shipbuilding, merchant shipping and maritime labor," all essential elements in American national defense.13 The substance of this protest was repeated, on the eve of the San Francisco Conference, in a hastily issued letter signed by the National Federation of American Shipping's represent­ ative on the Intra-Industry Maritime Committee, and approved on short notice by six other member associations.14 Between these two major assaults several patrols were sent out, the mission of which was to get proscriptions on the revival of Japanese shipping written into the peace treaty. In late March 1951, the National Federation of American Shipping issued a report detailing the growth of Japan's merchant marine,15 and tried to enlist the aid of the Chamber of Shipping of the United Kingdom in protesting Japan's rapid shipping advances.16 In May the restrictions favored by the N.F.A.S. were put forth by steamship operators representing fourteen major American flag lines of the West Coast.17 And these same operators made a final, futile effort to alter the treaty draft even as the delegates were en route to San Francisco.18 The offensive launched by the fishing industry, management and 13 New York Times, March 1, 1951, p. 55. The nine organizations included the National Federation of American Shipping, the Shipbuilders Council of America, the Association of American Ship Owners, the C.I.O. Maritime Committee, the LaborManagement Maritime Committee, the Mississippi Valley Association, and the Pro­ peller Club of the United States; also signing were the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, and the American Legion through its National Merchant Marine Committee. 14 The Shipbuilders Council of America, the Propeller Club, the Waterman Steam­ ship Corporation, the A.F. of L. Metal Trades Department (whose President later witnessed some sessions of the Peace Conference and praised it highly), the V.F.W., and the American Legion. New York Times, August 31, 1951, p. 35. 16 Ibid., March 25, 1951, Section v, p. 8. 16 New York Herald Tribune, March 25, 1951, Section v, p. 3. 17 New York Times, May 28, 1951, p. 41. 18 Ibid., August 31, 1951, p. 35.

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labor alike, was of even greater proportions and longer duration than the foray by the shippers. Since it was the most intense and sustained effort by any interest group to put its special stamp on the peace settlement, a discussion of the entire operation will be presented later, in Chapter 12. Let it suffice here to say that the battle was spearheaded by the Pacific Fisheries Conference, an organization which claims to represent most of the fishing industry, including labor unions and business associations, on the Pacific Coast from Seattle to San Diego. The objective of the Conference, as stated in a resolution passed at its annual meeting on November 29,1950, was to secure provisions "in the treaty of peace with Japan, or in a separate treaty to be concluded prior to or at the same time, . . . which will ensure that Japanese fishermen will stay out of the fisheries of the Northeast Pacific Ocean which have been developed and husbanded by the United States and the other countries of North America."19 Making fresh points almost daily, scoring some and losing others, the Pacific Fisheries Conference relaxed its pres­ sure only when the tripartite North Pacific Fisheries Convention had been successfully negotiated. Below the generals and the battalion commanders (to run the metaphor into the ground) were a few rank-and-file soldiers: busi­ ness concerns and labor unions that spoke out independently on issues that struck them as important. The Domestic Sewing Machine Company of New York, for instance, without taking any position on the settlement itself, protested against a hidden Japanese competi­ tion in the sewing machine industry,20 and the Brotherhood of Rail­ road Trainmen, extending their sympathy to Japanese railway workers in their "struggle against reaction," suggested that perhaps General MacArthur, Mr. Dulles, and others had not really fostered democratic progressive government in Japan after all.21 Several Communist-controlled unions passed resolutions opposing the re­ armament of both Germany and Japan, and condemning any re­ building of their war industries. And at least one private business concern tried to press a financial claim against Japan. But these independent ventures by businessmen and labor groups at the pri­ mary or "grass-roots" level were rare, and were overshadowed by the activities of their bigger and better-organized brethren. 19

Pacific Fisherman, Vol. 49, No. 1, January 1951, pp. 15-16. its advertisement in the Wall Street Journal, November 20, 1951, p. 19. 21 Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, Trainman News, Vol. 6, No. 8, February 18, 1952, p. 4. 20 See

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Religious and Pacifist Groups Second only to business and labor in point of widespread and intense interest in the Japanese peace settlement were religious groups, and both religious and secular pacifist agencies. These organizations, more than any other, judged the settlement by explicit moral standards—criteria that nonetheless permitted wide differences of opinion. Church organizations and publications treated the peace settle­ ment with considerable favor, but through their discussions ran a strong undercurrent of skepticism about the durability of a settle­ ment based on an expediential mixture of Christian principles and political exigencies. No trace of these doubts appeared, however, in the stand taken by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States.22 In a statement adopted on November 28, 1951, the National Cotmcil supported prompt ratification of the peace treaty, praised the "spirit of fellowship" in which it had been negotiated, gave its approval to the security features of the treaty and to the provision giving residual sovereignty over the Bonin and Ryukyu Islands to Japan, and expressed the hope that Japan would be given assistance and opportunity to develop her economy.23 This massive support from the largest church organization in the land was reaffirmed during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's hearings on the treaties,24 and again as the Senate was about to cast its ratification vote in March 1952.25 Some of the religious denominations which are members of the National Council were more guarded in their appraisals of the settlement than the statement of their nominal spokesman would suggest. The Methodists, for example, coupled a hope for early ratification of the treaty with an expression of disappointment that 22 In a statement delivered to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Walter W. Van Kirk, Executive Director of the Department of International Justice and Goodwill, National Council of Churches, described the organization as "the officially constituted agency of the 29 Protestant and Orthodox denominations of which it is comprised," and added that the position taken on the treaty by the Na­ tional Council reflected "the convictions of the overwhelming majority of the members of its related denominations." Japanese Peace Treaty and Other Treaties Relating to Security in the Pacific: Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 82nd Congress, 2nd Session, Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952, p. 74. (Hereafter cited as Hearings on the Japanese Peace Treaty.) 28 The statement is printed in ibid., pp. 74-75. 24 Ibid., pp. 73-76. 26 Telegram from W. W. Van Kirk to Senator Wiley, March 18, 1952, printed in the Congressional Record, Vol. 98, No. 45, March 19, 1952, p. 2548. (In this and in all other instances, reference is to the daily edition of the Congressional Record.)

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Japan could not have been permanently disarmed.26 A month later the Commission on World Peace of the Methodist Church endorsed the treaty and urged its ratification, but also added some warnings. Japan, the Commission felt, had a severe economic problem which would have somehow to be solved; the Japanese Constitution should be respected, particularly since the Japanese were sensitive about their sovereign rights; and Japan must not be forced to align against any of her Oriental neighbors.27 In the ambiguous language appropriate to such a resolution, the Methodist Board seemed to be suggesting that Japan might have to be allowed to trade with Com­ munist China, that Japanese rearmament should not be forced through in opposition to the Japanese Constitution, and that Japan should not be pressed into signing a subsequent treaty with Na­ tionalist China at the expense of her relations with the Communist regime on the mainland. The United Lutheran Church, expressing its views in its publica­ tion The Lutheran, was extremely pleased with the Japanese peace treaty, calling it "uncommonly generous" and "a unique cooperative effort."28 The Lutheran-Missouri Synod, the largest constituent part of the Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America but un­ affiliated with the National Council of Churches, was less convinced of the worth of the settlement; dissatisfied with the military pro­ visions of the treaty, the Synod expressed doubt that the peace would be lasting.29 The American Baptist Convention disagreed extensively with the National Council, of which it is a member. In June 1951 through its publication Missions it stated its opposition to the rearmament of Japan,30 and in September it questioned the justification of taking away from Japan territory that had belonged to her for centuries.81 Two months later, in a Thanksgiving Day editorial, the Convention questioned whether the President could suggest that the American people give thanks for a treaty with Japan that lacked the signatures of China, India, Burma, Russia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.82 26

Christian Advocate, Vol. 126, No. 40, October 11, 1951, p. 11. Commission on World Peace of the Methodist Church, Words and Deeds, Resolu­ tions adopted by the Commission on World Peace of the Methodist Church in Annual Session, Evanston, 111., November 13-15, 1951. 28 The Lutheran, Vol. 33, No. 48, August 29, 1951, p. 9, and Vol. 33, No. 49, September 5, 1951, p. 12. 29 Lutheran Witness, Vol. 70, No. 19, September 18, 1951, p. 312. 30 Missions, Vol. 149, No. 6, June 1951, p. 352. 31 Ibid., No. 7, September 1951, pp. 394-95. 32 Ibid., No. 9, November 1951, p. 543. 27

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The position recorded by the Congregational Christian Church sums up, in a sense, the dual nature—ethical and political—of the religious outlook on the peace settlement. Writing in Advance, Robert W. Wood cited the Japanese treaty for representing "a high measure of international moral achievement" in dealing with an enemy in defeat, and then went on to warn that the treaty aggra­ vated a number of Japan's economic problems, and that Japan might find it necessary to arrange a modus vivendi with Communist China.83 It will be readily noted that these comments all came from Prot­ estant sources. Catholic groups, while they may have had thoughts on the peace settlement, do not appear to have spoken them publicly. The prominent CathoHc organization in the field of foreign affairs, the Cathohc Association for International Peace, took no position on the treaty and undertook no study or other activity in connection with it. The same is true of the major Jewish groups, Zionist and non-Zionist alike, which have foreign policy interests. Pacifist organizations, no matter whether the wellsprings of their persuasion were religious or simply humanitarian, formed a phalanx against an eventual rearmament of Japan. Apart from several groups parroting the Commimist line on the Japanese peace settlement, the avowed pacifists were virtually the only fighting opponents of Japanese rearmament. Some of the church bodies were "dissatisfied" and "disappointed" with the military provisions of the treaties, but few opposed the settlement on their account, and none actively campaigned to alter them. This fact is testimony of a sort to the development of security-oriented thinking among organized political interest groups in the United States in recent years. One has only to recall the public soul-searching that occurred over major issues of American foreign policy between 1945 and 1950 to be impressed with the tidiness and dispatch with which the outbreak of Com­ munist violence in Korea swept away some persistent cobwebs of doubt and inhibition in the American approach to international politics. The Fellowship of Reconciliation, the National Council for the Prevention of War, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom were the main contributors to the pacifist protest against a policy of fostering the rearmament of Japan. It would not be fair, however, to treat this as an organized campaign; despite the similarity of their ss Advance, Vol. 144, No. 9, April 28, 1952, pp. 11-12.

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arguments and the occasional use of one another's published ma­ terial, there are no signs of a major coordinated effort on the part of these organizations such as took place among the associations in­ terested in the fishing and shipping provisions of the treaty. The Fellowship of Reconciliation worked nearly as long and as hard as John Foster Dulles, in a vain attempt to counter the military implications of the latter's peace mission. As early as September 1950, it began issuing and reproducing statements detailing reasons why it felt that a rearmament policy for Japan was both politically unwise and morally wrong.34 Among the Fellowship's many actions was one which earned considerable recognition and praise from sympathetic organizations. In February 1951 a memorandum had been given to Mr. Dulles in Tokyo by the women members of both Houses of the Japanese Parliament. The statement was a moving plea to transform "this beautiful God-made land" into the "Switzer­ land of the Pacific" by waiting still longer for the kind of final peace treaty "under which Japan will not deem any nation a potential enemy nor indulge the slightest inclination toward rearmament." The Fellowship of Reconciliation translated this statement, pub­ lished it together with a commentary in the early summer of 1951 under the title "The Women of Japan Speak," and gave it a wide distribution. Substantively, the Fellowship declared itself satisfied with the non-punitive and conciliatory aspects of the peace treaty, but ob­ jected to its military orientation for a plenitude of reasons. Political and economic factors played a large part in the Fellowship's think­ ing, but behind them lay a strong moral revulsion against the very existence of instruments of violence and against their use in the affairs of men and nations. The organization argued that the security terms of the treaty signified the continuation of the occupation of Japan, and thus, despite all official descriptions, denied real inde­ pendence to the Japanese. It stressed, further, that the security pro­ visions constituted a violation both of the victors' pledges to keep Japan disarmed, and of the Japanese Constitution itself which, with the approval of the occupation authorities, formally embodied the pacifist dream by renouncing forever "the threat or use of force . . . as a means of settling disputes with other nations." To bolster this ethically inspired position the Fellowship invoked a series of political calculations; these were designed to show how a policy of Japanese 84 E.g., Fellowship of Reconciliation, "How to Keep Japan from Going Communist," mimeographed copy of letter from Tokyo, September 26, 1950.

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rearmament, by imposing heavy costs on the United States, by incurring the resentment of Asians, and by giving us undependable Japanese allies, would work against America's interests in stopping Russian expansionism. The proper course for the United States, the Fellowship concluded, was the faithful and consistent practice of non-violence, and the literal conversion of swords into plowshares for poverty-stricken countries.85 The substantive arguments of the Fellowship of Reconciliation comprised a major theme in the pacifist fugue, the counterpoint being supplied by other organizations with slightly different doc­ trines. Perhaps the most important difference among these groups is found not in their doctrines, however, but in the structure of the political reasoning they advanced. The structure of their reasoning assumes its special importance because pacifism as such is not part of the mainstream of American political thought. Among people who reject pacifism but who still differ widely in their policy views, it can make a great difference whether an organization advances a policy recommendation on the ground that it conforms strictly to the tenets of pacifism, or whether it ignores these principles and stresses instead the pragmatic and overtly political merits of the pacifist case. The United States Section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom maintained a position close to the Fellowship of Reconciliation, both in the content of its disputation and in the manner in which these arguments stemmed unequivocally from major premises about the moral unassailability of pacifism. Miss Elsie Picon, President of the United States Section of the Women's International League, in a letter to Mr. Dulles dated July 2, 1951, and later made public, stated explicitly the basis of her organiza­ tion's stand: "The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom has always opposed militarization and armaments any­ where in the world. We therefore view with great alarm the course of your actions in arranging for a peace settlement in Japan."36 As an alternative to rearmament and remilitarization, the League offered three recommendations: the conclusion of a peace treaty with the full participation of "the Asian nations," followed by the withdrawal of "foreign military power" from Japan; the acceptance 35 The most concise presentation of the Fellowship's viewpoint is contained in the statement of its National Secretary, the Reverend A. J. Muste, to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. See Hearings on the Japanese Peace Treaty, pp. 77-80. 36 Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, mimeographed copy of letter to Mr. John Foster Dulles, July 2, 1951.

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of Japan into the United Nations; and the rechanneling of Ameri­ can resources from military expenditure in Japan into the "work of reconstruction and social and economic recovery."87 The National Council for Prevention of War did not oppose the Japanese peace settlement. On the contrary, it openly supported ratification when the Executive Secretary, Mr. Frederick J. Libby, appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Council, which strives not only for universal disarmament but also for progressive world organization and for world-wide education for peace, serves as a clearing house for a number of pacifist groups including the Fellowship of ReconciHation and the Women's Inter­ national League for Peace and Freedom. Unlike these organizations, however, the National Council put its hopeful and determined pacifism at the service of political necessity, supporting the treaties because "they will serve well enough to meet the immediate situa­ tion until the inevitable changes in the direction of equal justice can be made."38 The Council, recognizing and accepting the peace settlement as a temporary solution to the perplexing dilemmas con­ fronting both Japan and the United States, invoked the standard pacifist policy ideas not as substitutes for the treaties or as reasons for rejecting them, but rather as guidelines indicating a direction for "inevitable changes" in the settlement. The Friends Committee on National Legislation, representing the foreign policy views of the Society of Friends, opposed the peace treaty by implication only. While deeply concerned over the politi­ cal and economic consequences if Japan should be rearmed, the Friends Committee appears to have stopped short of outright con­ demnation, urging Senators instead to consider the issues carefully and apart from the pressures that might be exerted by military and other non-elected officials. The Committee repeated the main pacifist arguments against Japanese rearmament, but couched them mostly in terms of rational policy calculations; the risks of both economic and political disaster in Japan, it felt, were being courted by a policy of rearmament, and could be lessened only by cultivating Japanese nationalism, by supporting the integrity of the Japanese govern­ ment, and by recognizing that trade with China was essential to 37 Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, "Statement on Japan: Rearmament and Peace Treaty," Spring 1951. 38 Statement by Frederick J. Libby, Executive Secretary of the National Council for Prevention of War, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Hearings on the Japanese Peace Treaty, p. 154.

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Japan's economy.88 Summarizing the work of the second session of the 82nd Congress, in July 1952, the Friends Committee wrote of the Japanese peace treaty: "It is not a vindictive Treaty, but neither does it solve the heavy problems which Japan must meet. As long as Japan must exist as a military island in the cold war, cut off from her natural relations with the rest of Asia, so long must she face the threat of economic collapse and a new Tojo."40 Religious and pacifist groups together comprised a substantial portion of the organized American public actively interested in the Japanese peace settlement; yet it cannot be said that the community of organized custodians of ethical judgments on public affairs was deeply stirred by the moral components of American policy in the Pacific. Neither Catholic nor Jewish spokesmen contributed visibly to the public debate, and even the Protestant denominations were content, on the whole, with brief and passing comments directed to their congregations. Equally suggestive of such lack of interest was the silence of the Brethren Service Commission, Church of the Brethren, and of the Post War World Council, pacifist organizations ordinarily eager to give wide circulation to their views on a foreign policy issue of this magnitude. Neither can it be said that there was a "Christian" point of view on a peace treaty highly advertised and praised as a "Christian" document. Even the spokesmen for non-pacifist church organiza­ tions, although they were practically undivided in their recognition and approbation of the spirit of the treaty and its basis in Christian ethics, were not able to agree on the political or moral superiority of its substantive terms. And as for the pacifists themselves, they invoked the same system of ethics to damn both the treaty and its underlying conception that some of the church congregations drew upon to commend it. Women's Organizations Three different kinds of women's groups were noticeably inter­ ested in the Japanese peace settlement. The first kind, represented by only one organization, was pacifist; and we have chosen to discuss it with its ideological brethren rather than with its sister groups. 39 Friends Committee on National Legislation, Washington Newsletter, No. 98, March 10, 1952; letters from Rhodes Murphy, Friends Committee on National Legis­ lation, to Senator Herbert Lehman, February 27 and March 14, 1952, printed in the Congressional Record, Vol. 98, No. 46, March 20, 1952, pp. 2605-06. 40 Friends Committee on National Legislation, Washington Newsletter, No. 104, July 25, 1952, p. 2.

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The second kind was "patriotic"; they disliked the treaty as much as the pacifists, but for radically different reasons. And the third kind was general, a complex of civic, social, cultural, professional, and educational interests; these groups seemed to be satisfied with the treaty policy, but never came out openly and said so. Webster defines a patriot as "one who loves his country and zealously supports its authority and interests." There is nothing in this ambiguous definition to belie the undoubted claim of most organizations discussed in this chapter to patriotic motives for their political actions. The "interests" of the nation, certainly, are subject to wide interpretation according to the standards, the values, and the objectives of groups of its citizens. Yet those associations which take unto themselves the title of "patriotic" are usually distinguished by the ultra-conservative and nationalistic character of their inter­ pretations; they seek to protect their version of the "authority and interests" of the nation against almost any kind of derogation, whether from ally, international organization, or even domestic groups whose chief concern is human and social welfare in a demo­ cratic society. Patriotic women's groups saw in the Japanese peace treaty signs of a concerted assault against their conception of American interests and sovereign power. In January 1952, 32 organizations participated in the 26th Women's Patriotic Conference on National Defense, and in the course of their proceedings adopted a resolution listing their objections to the peace treaty and suggesting certain changes as prerequisites to ratification.41 In the eyes of the Women's Patriotic Conference, the Japanese treaty was insufficiently anti-Communist and inadequately protec­ tive of American sovereignty. The omission of Nationalist China as a party to the treaty it regarded as a "grave injustice," one which would arouse the antipathy of all non-Communist Asians. It be­ lieved also, and incorrectly, that the Soviet Union as a non-signer would reap great benefits from the economic treatment Japan was to accord to Allied Powers for a period of four years, pending the conclusion of separate commercial agreements.42 Ever alert to any 41 Resolution adopted by 32 Participating Organizations at the 26th Women's Patriotic Conference on National Defense, January 26, 1952; printed in Hearings on the Japanese Peace Treaty, pp. 181-82. rHie following groups are perhaps typical of the participating organizations: American War Mothers; Blue Star Mothers of America; Daughters of the United States Army; National Society, Patriotic Women of America, Inc.; Navy Club, U.S.A. Auxiliary; Women of the Anny and Navy Legion of Valor of the U.S.A. 42 The rights of the Soviet Union as a non-signer were the subject of some con-

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moves which might encroach upon the power of the United States freely to make its own decisions in the international arena, the Women's Patriotic Conference pointed out what it felt were two infringements of American sovereignty in the treaty text. The Con­ ference argued against the preamble and Article 22, the former because it "forced" on all the treaty signatories "acceptance of the legahty of the objectives of the United Nations universal declara­ tion of human rights which could supersede the Bill of Rights in our Federal Constitution," and the latter because it provided that all signatories accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice with respect to disputes of interpretation or execution of the treaty not settled by other agreed means. On this last point the Conference members were alone; other organizations of a similar persuasion ignored the International Court as a threat to American sovereignty under the circumstances of the peace treaty. But in the preamble the women patriots had an issue more popular with a small but vocal group of American conservatives; and even the soothing words on the Senate floor of such a staunch defender of the sover­ eignty faith as Senator John W. Bricker—that the preamble expressed only an intention on the part of Japan to strive to realize the objec­ tives of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and was not legally binding on Japan or any other signer43—failed to mitigate the intensity of their conviction that the Constitution was being violated. Drawing their conclusions from these observations, the Women's Patriotic Conference urged the Senate to ratify "only a wise and just treaty with Japan," one which left no loopholes for a Japanese treaty with Communist China or for Russian ownership of Japanese possessions; which did not legalize Alhed war crimes courts in and outside of Japan; which did not accept the legahty of the Potsdam decisions; and which did not endanger American sovereignty by accepting the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the jurisdiction of the International Court.44 Two of the women's groups that participated in the 26th Women's Patriotic Conference apparently were dissatisfied with the lack of a fusion in the public discussion of the peace treaty, stemming from the belief that the Soviet was an Allied Power as a result of her brief war against Japan. Actually, the peace treaty, in Article 25, defines Allied Powers as States at war with Japan, "provided that in each case the State concerned has signed and ratified the Treaty." By not signing, the Soviet denied herself the treaty status of an Allied Power, and thus forfeited the rights accorded to such States. 48 Congressional Record, Vol. 98, No. 44, March 18, 1952, pp. 2503-05. ii Hearings on the Japanese Peace Treaty, pp. 181-82.

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positive and forthright stand on the part of the Conference when it asked the Senate to ratify "only a wise and just treaty" which met certain conditions. The National Society, Daughters of the Revolution, and the National Society for Constitutional Security passed additional resolutions of their own, virtually identical with the Conference statement but with a further clause specifically calling on the Senate to refuse to ratify the treaty as signed on September 8, 1951.45 The League of Women Voters of the United States, the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, and the American Association of University Women are among the largest women's organizations maintaining an active civic interest in public affairs. These four groups have a long history of participation in public debate on foreign policy, and in most instances since the end of the war have supported policies generally identified as "internationalist," such as the European Recovery Program and the North Atlantic Treaty. Although each of these organizations, in its own way, suggested a tacit approval of the Japanese peace treaty, none of them took a formal position on the matter. Their national headquarters chose instead to put the accent on education, providing the rank-and-file membership with information on the settlement and with some interpretation of its significance. The League of Women Voters analyzed the security aspects of the settlement, offering reasons for the extension of American security commitments in the Pacific and trying, with only fair success as it turned out, to foresee the points which Senators would raise when they considered ratifica­ tion.48 The National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs briefly reported the signing of the Pacific treaties as one item in an evolving pattern of cooperative action which supplements and strengthens the collective security arrangements of die United Nations.47 The American Association of University Women prepared, as background material for study by its members, a detailed analysis of the peace settlements written with a studied objectivity, "so that the ultimate decision on the merits of the treaty is left to the reader."48 These activities, mostly informational, un«Ibid., pp. 177-78. 48 League of Women Voters of the United States, The National Voter, October 1, 1951. 47 National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, Proposals for Strengthening Peace, November 1951. 48American Association of University Women, Comment on the Provisions of the Peace Treaty with Japan, prepared by Phoebe Morrison, September 1951.

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doubtedly stimulated discussion among membership groups in local branches throughout the country; no accurate measure of the amount, extent, or consequences of such decentralized study is available, however, either for women's groups or for any other type of organization that carried on educational activities in connection with the treaty issue. We might note, in passing, the special character of women's opinion as it was held and expressed by these organized groups. With two articulate types of women's organizations arguing, for opposite reasons, that the treaty tampered with the rights and wishes of the Japanese people, and with the moderate women's groups silent but favorably disposed toward the projected treatment of the Japanese, there were no effective organized spokesmen reflecting the hostile and suspicious attitudes of American women that were revealed in public opinion polls. This is a vivid demonstration of the substantial differences that may exist between "general public opinion" and "articulate public opinion." Veterans' Organizations

The major veterans' groups, even those with a customarily con­ servative bias, lent their support to a Japanese peace treaty that was widely hailed as a liberal and generous document. Their position was taken not as an affirmative response to the liberal features of the treaty, however, but rather as a single-minded and pragmatic endorsement of a policy of militant opposition to communism—a re­ action wholly consistent with the strong security orientation that characterizes the policy outlook of American veterans' associations. Yet in their role as lay specialists in security, these groups were quick to point out and even oppose those aspects of the settlement which they regarded as affecting adversely the security interests of the United States. Two themes dominated the American Legion's approach to Pacific policy. The first, advocated in successive national conventions since 1949, called for a regional pact of mutual defense among the free nations of the Pacific and the Far East. In their 1952 convention, the Legion applauded the Pacific security treaties, but urged that a regional defense pact be more closely approximated through the inclusion of Japan, the Philippines, and other free nations of the Pacific area in the Council established by the Security Treaty be-

TYPES OF PUBLIC INTEREST

tween the United States, Australia, and New Zealand (the ANZUS Council) .49 The second of the Legion themes was a call for the "speedy con­ clusion" of a treaty of peace with Japan, and later, a commenda­ tion of the efforts that had brought the treaty into being. "In this connection," wrote the Legion's Foreign Relations Committee in a statement adopted at the 1951 convention, "it is our belief that one of the primary considerations for the United States is that of strength­ ening Japan economically, politically, and militarily, so as to enable Japan to make a real contribution to the military forces opposed to communism and available in that area."50 The Legion hedged a bit, however, when it came to translating political freedom and strength for Japan into concrete policy pro­ posals: it enjoined the United States government to "use all possible influence" to convince the Japanese government "that it is not in the best interest of Japan or of the free world for Japan to enter into any type of peace treaty with Communist China."51 Similarly, the Legion joined on two occasions with organizations representing the shipping industry to protest against the policy of allowing Japan to rebuild its merchant marine. The AMVETS (American Veterans of World War II) stressed in its policy stands the same basic themes pursued by the American Legion. It called both for a Pacific Pact similar to the Atlantic Pact, and for the effective rearmament of Japan to meet potential Com­ munist aggression.52 In addition, the International Affairs Division of the AMVETS, in its report to the Eighth Annual National Con­ vention in August 1952, cited NATO, the Marshall Plan, the Japa­ nese peace treaty, and the Pacific security treaties as examples of a "non-partisan approach to major aspects of our foreign policy" which should be followed in other foreign policy fields.53 The stand taken by the American Veterans Committee differed from the pattern set by the Legion and the AMVETS in that it em­ braced a larger area of political interest. To its advocacy of an 49 American Legion, Report of the Foreign Relations Committee, Summary of Pro­ ceedings, 34th Annual National Convention, New York, August 1952, p. 56. 60 American Legion, Summary of Proceedings, 33rd Annual National Convention, Miami, Fla., October 15-18, 1951, p. 89. 51 Ibtd., p. 89. 52 Letter from National Commander, AMVETS, to the Secretary of State, reported in New York Times, December 20, 1950, p. 8. 53 AMVETS, Report of the AMVETS International Affairs Division, Eighth Annual National Convention, Grand Rapids, Mich., August 28-31, 1952, mimeographed, p. 3.

TYPES OF PUBLIC INTEREST

extended mutual defense system for the Pacific, and of Japanese rearmament for self-defense, the A.V.C. added its concern for a settlement of the Japanese problem which would restore her to the family of nations, and would allow Japan to contribute to the development of Asian economies without at the same time hindering the industrialization efforts of those areas.54 The Veterans of Foreign Wars, on the other hand, trod a much narrower path of American self-interest. Like the Legion, the V.F.W. joined with other groups in twice protesting against the revival of the Japanese shipping industry; and it adopted, at its 1951 National Encampment, resolu­ tions protesting any participation by Communist China in the Japa­ nese peace treaty, and urging that "the United States establish and maintain military bases on any strategic islands of the Pacific neces­ sary to the defense of this country and the continued protection of Formosa and other islands of the Pacific."55 There were no further references to the peace settlement in the resolutions adopted at the 1951 Encampment, which met only a week before the San Francisco Conference. The veterans' organizations may thus be viewed as staunch opponents of the pacifist groups on the issue of Japanese rearma­ ment and Pacific defehse. Unlike the pacifists or even some of the religious bodies, however, the veterans paid little heed to Japanese attitudes toward rearmament or to the political and other conse­ quences in Japan and elsewhere of a rearmament policy. Rather they looked at a remilitarized Japan and a Pacific Pact through a one-way glass of an American security policy for the Pacific, seeing, as so often happens when the object of vision is poorly illuminated, more a reflection of their own strong convictions about immediate security needs than a clear picture of probable short-term or longterm consequences of implementing such policies. Ethnic Groups

Ethnic groups were generally restrained in their expressions of opinion on the peace settlement. Only one Japanese-American association in the United States came forth with a statement; Chinese-American groups spoke out in greater numbers, but on only a few occasions. Restraint in these circumstances may in some M American Veterans Committee, International Affairs Platform, Adopted by Fifth National Convention, New York, June 1951, mimeographed, p. 7. 55 Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, Digest of Resolutions adopted by the 52nd National Encampment, New York, August 26-31, 1951, mimeographed, p. 17.

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measure be due to a conviction on the part of such groups that their causes could be better advanced by other spokesmen. So long as native protagonists for their viewpoint were abundant, there was little reason for these ethnic groups to stand up and be counted in a political atmosphere where they might suddenly become targets for hostile feelings. This was especially true of Americans of Japa­ nese ancestry, who, despite a decade of profound changes in public attitudes, did not need to go back as far as 1941 to recall instances where abuse and injustice had fallen on members of their race. Japanese-American participation in the public debate on the peace settlement was marked by such a spirit of caution. A number of Japanese were in attendance at the Senate hearings on the peace settlement, but none of them stood in the limelight to testify either as group representatives or as private individuals. The only evident statement made by a Japanese group was one submitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after the close of the hearings, when it was no longer subject to the publicity that attended the sessions or to questioning by Senators. It came from the Japanese American Citizens League—"the only national organization repre­ senting persons of Japanese ancestry"56—and advanced in optimistic terms some reasons why the United States would benefit from the early ratification of the peace treaty. After arguing that Japan is our natural ally against communism in the Far East, that she had learned the meaning of democracy and liked it, and that early ratification would demonstrate the sincerity of our motives to the peoples of Southeast Asia, the League looked forward to the new era in the Pacific that the peace settlement might bring. "We see a great new era of civilization, if you will, being created around the so-called Pacific basin in which the United States and Japan, partners in a heroic enterprise, will work together for the greater good of all man­ kind."57 The League suggested, however, that the way to speed the happy day of a real and enduring Japanese-American friendship was to bolster the peace settlement by "the speedy enactment of legislation that will extend to the Japanese immigration and natu­ ralization privileges at least equal to those granted other Asian countries."58 The Chinese groups were less retiring than the Japanese in the matter of expressing some views on the treaty. Yet, whatever they 56 Statement of the Japanese American Citizens League, Hearings on the Japanese Peace Treaty, p. 179. 67 Ibid., p. 180. 58 Ibid., p. 180.

TYPES OF PUBLIC INTEREST

thought of the settlement as a whole, their public opposition was directed almost wholly against the exclusion of Nationalist China from the San Francisco Conference. Two weeks before the Con­ ference, the president of the Seattle Chinese Benevolent Association sent a long telegram of protest to a number of public officials, pro­ claiming the need for a united anti-Communist front in the Pacific, and arguing that by excluding Nationalist China the United States was turning on a Pacific friend and ally and upholding the claims of the Communists.59 Further remonstrances against the omission of the Chinese government on Formosa were made in newspaper advertisements as the San Francisco Conference opened, by repre­ sentatives of many Chinese associations in various cities across the country. Financial Interests

Because the peace treaty with Japan dealt at some length with the question of claims and properties, it attracted the attention of a few groups representing American holders of Japanese bonds. These groups responded not because of a general business interest in foreign policy or in international finance as such, but rather because the treaty impinged directly on their central concern, which is the protection of the financial holdings of their clients or members. The Foreign Bondholders Protective Council, the leading organization in this field, reviewed the proposed terms of the treaty relating to Japan's obligations with respect to prewar contracts, including bonds, and approved them as an adequate basis for the eventual settlement of the debts. Similarly, the representatives of at least one investment house were apprised of the manner in which Article 18 of the treaty was to handle the problem; and they also expressed satisfaction that the interests of the bondholders were being pro­ tected. Ideological Groups

Varying amounts of energy were expended on the treaty issue by organizations whose chief objectives include the furtherance of a political outlook or philosophy, and who are widely known for the positions they maintain. For some of these groups the ideological basis is a deviant one in that it lies outside of the broad area of current agreement on ends and means that characterizes American 59 Telegram from Dr. Henry S. Luke to Senator Magnuson, printed in the Congres­ sional Record, Vol. 97, No. 156, August 23, 1951, p. 10736.

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foreign policy thinking. The pacifists, of course, provide an out­ standing example of a deviant ideological group, yet their ethical orientation is so much like that of the religious bodies that we chose to discuss them with the latter rather than to include them among the political ideologues. On the left edge of the spectrum of ideological groups was the American Peace Crusade, which was ordered in April 1953 to show cause why it should not be included in the Attorney General's list of subversive organizations. The Crusade urged that ratification of the peace treaty be deferred and that a new one be negotiated that would win the approval of world opinion. Such a document, the Crusade argued, would be one that bore the signatures of the Soviet Union, Communist China, Burma, and India; one that opposed Japan's rearmament, limited the stationing of American troops in Japan and prevented their participation in suppressing revolutionary actions of workers; one that would encourage Japan's trade relations with the Chinese mainland and the Soviet Union, thus avoiding a Western dole to maintain Japan's economy; and finally, one that relied on patient negotiation rather than military might to solve the problems of the Orient.60 Within the foreign policy consensus, but on its leftward side, was the aggressively liberal Americans for Democratic Action. The A.D.A., seeking through foreign policy to "relate the United States responsibly and creatively to the common efforts of the free nations of the world to prevent the spread of tyranny, to avoid a global conflict, and to lay the foundations for an ordered world,"®1 sup­ ported the peace settlement without qualification. In September 1950 the National Board of the A.D.A. recommended a treaty with Japan without Russian and Chinese participation, if that were neces­ sary;82 and in March 1951 the National Convention advocated the rapid conclusion of a peace treaty and an end to the military occupation.®3 In the 1952 Convention, held after the peace settle­ ment had gone into effect, the organization voted its support of the Pacific security system and of Japan's admission into the United Nations.®4 On the far right, a long way beyond the area of foreign policy 60 See testimony and statement of Reverend Willard Uphaus, a national director of the American Peace Crusade, in Hearings on the Japanese Peace Treaty, pp. 168-77. 61 Americans for Democratic Action, Foreign PoUcy Statement adopted at the 1951 National Convention. ADA World, March 1951, p. 1-A. 62 New York Times, September 25, 1950, p. 5. 63 ADA World, March 1951, p. 1-A. 64 Ibid., June 1952, p. 4-A.

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agreement, stood the National Economic Council, an ultra-conserva­ tive nationalist organization dedicated, in its own words, "to the preservation of Private Enterprise and the American way of life and the maintenance of American Independence." Militantly and in an intemperate style, the National Economic Council has tried to expose the "collectivists" who have been "plotting" the downfall of the American Republic. According to the Council's interpretation, "The Japanese peace settlement is the latest chapter in the sordid story of how American political leaders, American government officials, and American writers and scholars, have cooperated with the Soviet Government in its campaign for the capture of Asia and the road to Communist conquest of the world."65 Attacking the settlement in its newsletters, the Council chose as its text two themes which are dominant in its political demonology: threats to sover­ eignty, and the growth of Communist power. The N.E.C. saw lurking in and between the lines of the peace settlement two distinct but related specters confronting American sovereignty: one that threatened to subordinate American inde­ pendence to an international government, and a second which threatened to deprive Congress of its Constitutional authority in matters of foreign policy and to transfer its powers to the President. The first of these apparitions was raised by treaty references to the United Nations and the Declaration of Human Rights, which the Council regarded as ill-concealed attempts to tie the United States and Japan irrevocably to a U.N. world government. The second sprang from the military provisions of the treaties, which the Council viewed as a subtle device enabling the President to trans­ form American troops into U.N. forces without consulting Congress. In sum, the settlement was a foreign entanglement more ingenious and devilish than George Washington could even have imagined. The second of the Council's major themes, the new growth of Communist power, was an airy structure built more from things the peace treaty did not say than from its specific provisions. The Council interpreted the treaty's failure explicitly to recognize the sovereignty of Nationalist China as signifying that Communist China would soon be seated in the United Nations and would be eligible for reparations from Japan in astronomical amounts. These were viewed as preliminary developments in a sequence that would 65 National Economic Council, Inc., "Timetable in the Pacific," Economic Council Letter No. 285, April 15, 1952.

TYPES OF PUBLIC INTEREST

strengthen the Soviet's position in the Pacific, conceivably ending in Communist control over Japan. Although some of the propositions and the logic employed by the National Economic Council may seem fanciful, they should not on that account be treated lightly. Many of these arguments, tire­ lessly repeated, found a responsive chord in conservative political circles, and as a consequence the Council exerted an important in­ fluence despite its small constituency and its large ideological devia­ tion. Political Agencies and Individuals A few persons and groups, occupying formal governmental posi­ tions, took part in the discussion of the Japanese peace settlement; these political agencies and individuals acted in an unofficial or private capacity, however, since in their official capacities they had no formal opportunity to participate in the governmental machinery for making peace treaties. This lack of opportunity is clearest in the case of State Legislatures, at least two of which passed resolutions pertaining to the treaty. In the spring of 1951, the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Oregon adopted a Joint Memorial that protested against allowing Japanese nationals in North American fisheries. The Pennsylvania State Senate, on the other hand, passed a resolution after the San Francisco Conference com­ mending Mr. Dulles for his role with respect to the peace settlement. On the national level, several members of the House of Represent­ atives took advantage of the House rules to speak on the Japanese settlement and to insert material on it into the Congressional Record, even though the treaties were never up for consideration in the House. Almost all of these Representatives took an unfavorable position on various aspects of the peace treaty. Perhaps the most active Congressman was the Hon. James P. S. Devereux, Republican Representative from Maryland. Devereux, a Marine Corps general in the Second World War, was exercised because the treaty made no provision for the repayment of private bank accounts belonging to American servicemen in the Philippines that had been confiscated by the Japanese after they took the Islands in 1942. Representative Devereux took his case to the Department of State, and when he received no satisfaction from that quarter he turned to the Senate, testifying at the hearings of the Foreign Relations Committee.68 The Senators, while sympathetic, were no more disposed than was the 66

Hearings on the Japanese Peace Treaty, pp. 67-71.

TYPES OF PUBLIC INTEREST

State Department to alter the treaty in order to make that kind of compensation possible. Participating in the process of treaty-making with somewhat greater success was Luther Evans, at that time Librarian of Con­ gress. Having read the treaty draft in the New York Times, Mr. Evans wanted to see Article 12 changed so that "rights of property" would clearly include copyrights. Although his first recommendation for amending the wording of Article 12 was not acceptable, he was responsible in the end for having the words "tangible and intangible" inserted after "rights of property" in the final draft of the treaty. Private Individuals The final category of public participants in the discussions on the Japanese peace settlement, and the largest in terms of numbers, was composed of private individuals. It is impossible, for obvious reasons, to name or even count all these people. Most of them were ordinary citizens and constituents, men and women without public stature or reputation but with a political sensitivity which was aroused by the issues of the peace settlement. Some, however, were men of par­ ticular renown: former public servants like Herbert Hoover, William Draper, and Eugene Dooman, and politically prominent citizens like Alfred Kohlberg and Frank E. Holman. Sometimes these men wrote to their Senators and Representatives, or appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; sometimes they wrote to the President, or the Secretary of State, or to Mr. Dulles; sometimes they gave speeches to private or public groups, and sometimes they wrote letters to the editors of their favorite newspapers.87 The subjects that interested these many people spanned the entire range of topics already mentioned, and more besides, as some per­ sons took occasion to advance their own unique theories, ideas, or arguments. If one subject can be singled out as having received more attention than any other from this group, it is probably the question of rearming Japan. This should not occasion much surprise, since as a positive proposition Japanese rearmament had the support of people with a security interest in the peace settlement, and as a negative proposition it enlisted the active sympathy of many more whose approach to foreign policy had a strong ethical component. 87 To take just one example, in the twelve-month period ending March 31, 1952, the Son Francisco Chronicle published about fifty letters dealing with the Japanese peace settlement.

TYPES OF PUBLIC INTEREST

This description of the public participants in the treaty debate is a two-dimensional picture of the kinds of interests that existed, and of the groups that expressed them. Sketching this pattern of public interest is only a first step; it remains to add a third dimension which will make the picture come alive. We shall move now from a static description of the articulate public to an analysis of the way in which different parts of that public became active in the process of treaty-making. Is there any observable pattern in the political communication of these groups and individuals? And what does such a pattern reveal or suggest about the exposure to political communication of different elements in the treaty-making process?

Cliapter 5 THE PATTERN OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION Political relations, like other human relations, are frequently made more difficult because of selective processes of perception and evaluation that stand like screens between individuals and filter intended meanings out of their communications to one another. A further distortion may be introduced into political relationships if political entities are regularly exposed to divergent kinds of com­ munication. In the case of the Japanese peace settlement, members of the Executive and the Congress received somewhat different images of "public opinion" on the treaty, because different groups and individuals communicated different things to them at different times. Let us consider, first, how communications on the settlement differed at their points of origin, and then how they differed at their points of reception on the governmental level. How did the interest and opinion groups who were concerned with the Japanese peace settlement actually become involved in the political process on that foreign policy issue?1 At the most general level, we can say that different kinds of organizations became in­ volved in different ways, partly because they visualized the process, and their own roles in relation to it, in special and distinctive terms. More specifically, the leaders of these groups seem to have differed, among other things, in the way they viewed their own political roles, and in what they regarded as the most effective and proper points of access to the political process. And these differences, in turn, seem to be related to differences in the character of group member­ ships or constituencies, and in the kinds of responsibility that group leaders bear toward their constituencies. This brief summary suggests that the customary approach to political interest groups which treats them all as having the single function of trying to shape public policy according to well-defined 1 The participation of individuals has of necessity been omitted from the following analysis. This exclusion does not impute any lack of significance to the participation of private citizens; rather it simply recognizes that the universe of such individuals has not been explored or sampled sufficiently in this case to warrant our making even the most tentative statements or hypotheses about them in the present context. Later in the chapter, however, we shall consider the participation of individuals from a different vantage point (see note 11).

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special purposes is quite oversimplified. Actually, when one looks at the different ways in which they behave, they seem to display a rather complex set of functions. The articulate leadership group acts as a multidirectional conveyer belt, carrying information and opinions upward to policy-makers, and downward or across to colleagues, constituents, or citizens in an effort to create a "public opinion," which it might again carry upward. Particular organiza­ tions or types of organizations specialize at different times in par­ ticular aspects of the "conveyer" relationship; but collectively the articulate public both leads and follows, formulates and persuades. It is "public opinion," it represents "public opinion," and it creates "public opinion."2 The kinds of political behavior engaged in by specific groups among the articulate public seem to be partly traceable to some rather stable factors which are internal to the groups, and which are mostly unaffected by kaleidoscopic changes in policy issue or political alignment. These internal factors provide two relatively simple but useful ways to differentiate the various types of organiza­ tions that were part of the process of reaching a Japanese peace settlement. One of these, the character of the membership, is per­ haps less strategic than the other, the kinds of interests served by the organization. Let us look at some of the variations in political behavior that seem to grow out of, or at least attend on, those differences.8 CHARACTER OF THE MEMBERSHIP Political interest groups may, in the first instance, be differentiated by the size and diversity of their memberships. On the one hand, there are large organizations, mostly on the national level, with heterogeneous memberships; and, on the other, there are relatively small groups, some on the national but more on the local level, with a considerable degree of homogeneity in their membership. 2 Cf. V. O. Key, Jr., Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, 2nd edn., New York, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1948, esp. pp. 178-84. 3 This analysis of behavioral differences inevitably breaks up a universe of political activity into segments, or pairs of relationships, that do not have an independent existence in reality. It is important to remember, in what follows, that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts that are treated here, and that the purpose of this method of analysis is simply to gain additional insight into the structure of in­ terest group activity in foreign policy. For a comprehensive discussion of the political behavior of interest groups, see David B. Truman, The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion, New York, A. A. Knopf, 1951, Part m, "The Tactics of Influence."

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The veterans' associations, labor unions, business associations, religious groups, and women's organizations that participated in the peace settlement generally represented the first of these two membership types. For the most part, these organizations draw their constituents from across the nation, and from groups of people who attach a tremendous variety of values and a wide range of im­ portance to the work of the organizations. In a real sense, they are huge tents, covering an immense amount of diversity. Inescapably, however, this imposes certain restraints on the freedom of action of leaders of such groups, causing them to forge some kind of opera­ tional consensus within their organizations before they can confront a policy with a position.4 Quite a different situation exists with respect to the second of these membership types, that is, groups with small and relatively homogeneous constituencies. The Japanese treaty met this type in the ethnic groups, the financial associations, and the regional and local business and labor organizations the prosperity of whose mem­ bers was linked to a single commodity, fish. These are not what might be called "open-ended" groups; the number of people to whom they appeal is small, and the degree of intimacy and agree­ ment on values among their constituents is rather large. Under these conditions, the leaders of the groups are to a considerable extent freed from the constraints that hem in their counterparts in large organizations. Where the latter must work to establish a consensus, the former can generally achieve it more easily, and can turn their energies more rapidly and completely to its implementation at the public policy level. Size and diversity alone are not the most crucial factors deter­ mining the political behavior of organizations; yet differences in these respects do seem to affect in some manner the kind of com­ munication that groups engage in, and the direction in which they aim it. Organizations with large and relatively diversified member­ ships cast most of their communications on the peace settlement in the form of statements and articles, and aimed most of them in the direction of their own members and a wider, mass media-read­ ing, general public. A quite opposite course was taken by those 4 Even when the consensus thus established is limited to an active elite, it still requires time, political acumen, and at least the appearance of democratic procedure. Cf. William C. Hamilton, The Development of Foreign Policy Attitudes in Certain American Pressure Groups, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1955. On the internal politics of interest groups, see Truman, op.cit., Part n, "Group Organiza­ tion and Problems of Leadership."

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groups with small and relatively homogeneous constituencies. The leaders of these groups, not having to undergo a long drawn-out process of reaching a formal agreement among their members, de­ voted most of their efforts to communicating to people in the Execu­ tive and Legislative branches of the government; and in the process they employed more direct and private methods of communication, such as letters, telephone calls, or face-to-face contacts. CHARACTER OF THE INTERESTS SERVED Political interest groups may be differentiated not only by the size and diversity of their memberships, but, more significantly, by the character of the interests they serve, and by the attendant rela­ tionships between a group's leadership and the mass of its members. On the one hand, there are organizations that serve specific and relatively tangible interests, and whose leaders stand in a represent­ ative relationship to their constituents; and, on the other hand, there are organizations that cater to more general and intangible interests, and whose leaders stand in an educational and exemplary relationship to their members and, hopefully, to a wider public. Obviously, these are rather gross distinctions, and the line that divides the two types of interests may on occasion be drawn arbi­ trarily. Veterans', labor, business, ethnic, and financial groups, and the fishing industry's combination of business and labor organizations were the groups involved in the treaty settlement whose interests in policy are more or less specific and tangible. These groups have a continuing interest in certain rather clearly defined policy pre­ serves, and are traditionally sensitive and alert to any moves which affect their position with respect to those areas. Many of these interests are economic, but financial gain or loss is not the sole criterion of "tangible interests." Veterans' groups, for example, in­ clude military policy among their greatest concerns, though it has no direct connection with the well-being of veterans as such. Ideological and pacifist groups, religious bodies, and women's organizations, on the other hand, were the treaty-involved groups that served general and intangible, frequently moral, interests. There are few organizationally inspired limits to the policy concerns of these organizations; they scan the entire range of public policy, in a radar-like effort to spot areas or problems that seem to impinge on their general or traditional conceptions of right or wrong and to

THE PATTERN OF COMMUNICATION

offer opportunities for a public restatement of those conceptions. Organizations of the latter type, with intangible interests, seem to cast their leadership in an educational role vis-a-vis the general membership. Women's organizations, for example, are often quite explicit about their educational purposes, and about the informa­ tional dividends that will accrue to the attentive member. And religious groups implicitly suggest the same thing when they seek to develop among their congregations a public opinion on the vital issues of the times. Groups with more specific interests impose a different sort of task upon their leaders. These men have the responsibility of repre­ senting the policy views of their constituents to government officials. They are cast in the role of spokesmen, but for some of them, par­ ticularly in business and labor organizations, that role is a com­ plicated one, because along with specific interests their groups also have massive memberships, with attendant internal differences of opinion. In other words, these men are caught in a small conflict of roles; as leaders of groups with tangible interests they face away from their constituents and toward the policy-maker, and as leaders of groups with massive memberships they have to face their constituents until they can agree on a policy position. Some­ times the differences cannot be resolved; the National Association of Manufacturers, for example, counting as members people who stand on all sides of the foreign trade question, is sometimes unable to reach a group decision on what to do about American foreign economic policy. Immobilization of this sort is not the rule; but to avoid it there is need for some process of formalizing the views of the constituents, a process in which the democratic element is clearly visible to the rank-and-file membership, to the public at large, and to the government official who may want to test the representative character of a group's leadership before evaluating its testimony on policy issues. Most of the actual differences in the political communication of organizations on the issue of the peace settlement seem to be related in some way to these differences in the character of their interests. There are areas, to be sure, where these differences work in the same direction as differences in the character of their mem­ berships, each reinforcing the other. This is the case, for example, with religious and women's groups, both of which have large and diversified memberships, and serve intangible interests; and

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it is the case with financial groups and the fishing organizations, which have small and homogeneous memberships and serve highly specific interests. Yet the character of the interest seems to be the more basic of these two sets of criteria, accounting for most of the differences in behavior that comprise the pattern of political com­ munication on foreign policy issues.6 Differences in the Methods Employed

The methods of communication employed by political interest groups have been recorded for present purposes under six headings: articles, statements, letters, telegrams, telephone calls, and face-toface contacts. Letters and face-to-face contacts were the media most often employed by individual participants, official and private; organized groups, however, relied most extensively upon articles and statements.® The groups with the most specific interests, those which were concerned with some of the concrete details of the settlement, used the greater number of available methods to communicate their views. The fishing industry, including both labor and management groups, seems to have been the only kind of organization to employ all six methods; it was closely followed by business groups, which were the only apparent type of organization to use five methods. Four different types of organizations employed four methods of communication, and three of these types—religious, ideological, and pacifist—serve generalized and intangible rather than specific interests. The choice of methods also reflected the kinds of relationships that the leaders of "tangible" and "intangible" groups have with their members. Ideological, pacifist, religious, and women's organi­ zations, intangible groups whose leaders feel an educational re­ sponsibility toward their members, relied more heavily on interpre­ tive, descriptive, and explanatory articles than on any other type of communication. These four types of organizations together ac­ counted for a large majority of the articles that were written by political interest groups on the subject of the peace settlement. On 0 Cf., here and below, the classification of interests and degrees of activity among economic interest groups, and the accompanying differences in behavior, in Ε. E. Schattschneider, Politics, Pressures and the Tariff, New York, Prentice-Hall, 1935, Chapters m and rv. • The extensive literature on the methods of pressure group activity is well sum­ marized in Key, op.cit., pp. 184-96, and in Dayton D. McKean, Party and Pressure Politics, Boston, Houghton MifiBin Co., 1949, pp. 606-30.

THE PATTERN OF COMMUNICATION

the other hand, veterans' associations, business groups, and labor unions, which have relatively specific areas of interest and diverse memberships and whose leadership has a representational respon­ sibility, placed greater emphasis on formally approved statements of organizational position than on any other type of communication. These three kinds of organizations were responsible for a majority of all the group statements on the peace settlement. Differences in the Timing of Communications

There are some striking differences among organizations in the timing of their communications on the treaty. Organizations serving specific and relatively tangible interests started communicating at an early date, and kept it up more or less steadily as the treatymaking process unfolded. Organizations serving more general and intangible interests, however, were somewhat slower to react. These groups sent out most of their messages late in the process, when policy substance had already hardened.7 Tangible interest groups, like business, financial, veterans', and commodity (fishing) organizations, had done most of their com­ municating by the end of July 1951, when the treaty draft had been completed and invitations to the Conference at San Francisco were being delivered. Religious, ideological, pacifist, and women's organi­ zations, however, satisfied their more general (but not necessarily less intense) interests in the months after July 1951, when the opportunities and possibilities for altering the treaty documents were fewer and more restricted. A specific comparison may reveal these differences more clearly. Business groups and labor unions, together with the fishing industry's combination of the two, con­ tributed more than half of the communications on the settlement coming from organized groups during the period January-March 1951, when the peace settlement was still in the negotiating and drafting stages. During the same three months of the following year, however, after the terms had been generally agreed to, and when the documents, with only a few points of difference remain­ ing, were going through the process of securing Congressional consent, fully half of the communications from organized groups came from the pacifist and other ideological groups.8 7 Individual experience and skill on the part of interest group officials may affect the timing of their communications—as indeed they may play a role in all aspects of group political behavior. Cf., in this connection, Schattschneider's discussion of veteran tariff lobbyists, op.cit., pp. 184ff. 8 For another view of the timing of interest group communications to Congress, see

THE PATTERN OF COMMUNICATION

Differences in the Audiences for Communication Four audiences, or objects of communication, have been distin­ guished in order to establish meaningful differences in the political communication of organized groups. Two audiences, the Execu­ tive and the Legislative, are on the governmental level; each includes the full range of offices and individuals that make up its branch of government. The non-governmental audience has also been divided into two parts, which are termed "constituent public" and "general public." "Constituent public" consists almost wholly of the members of organized interest groups, while "general public" refers to an undifferentiated, generally mass, audience. If we look, first of all, at the two audience levels, the governmental and the non-governmental, we will find some supporting evidence for the earlier hypotheses that groups with tangible interests and with homogeneous constituents both tend to direct communications toward policy-makers, and that groups with intangible interests and with diverse memberships both tend to direct their communica­ tions toward those members rather than toward policy-makers. Business, ethnic, financial, and commodity organizations directed most of their communications on the Japanese peace settlement to the governmental level. All four of these types of organizations have tangible interests, and all but the business groups have homo­ geneous constituencies. And labor, religious, pacifist, ideological, and veterans' groups aimed most of their communications at the non-governmental level. All five of these have heterogeneous con­ stituencies, and three of them have intangible interests. The differences that exist between Executive and Legislative audiences, and between constituent and general publics, however, are the more significant elements in this pattern of communication. For here the lines of governmental and non-governmental are crossed in a curious and unexpected way. On the governmental level, groups with tangible interests, such as business, labor, fi­ nancial, commodity, and veterans' organizations, favored the Executive with their communications. Intangible interest groups, specifically the religious, pacifist, ideological, and women's organi­ zations, on the other hand, communicated mostly to the Congress. On the non-governmental level, the intangible interest groups communicated for the most part to their own constituents, while Lewis A. Dexter, "What Do Congressmen Hear: The Mail," Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. xx, No. 1, Spring 1956, esp. pp. 26-27.

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the organizations with specific interests were found communicating to an undifferentiated, mass audience. These findings offer an insight into two quite different kinds of orientation toward the subject of political access, and specifically toward the question of what were seen in this case as the most effec­ tive and the most proper channels for communicating political preference. On the one hand, groups with highly specific interests seemed to regard the Executive as the place where their communi­ cation would have the most effect; these direct operations were backstopped, so to speak, by communication to a general audience, perhaps partially designed to make the specific interest resemble a general one. Organizations with intangible interests, on the other hand, apparently viewed the Congress as the logical governmental audience for their communication, which most frequently consisted of expressions of value preferences. This direction of communica­ tion was paired, however, not with publicity-oriented communica­ tion to a general audience, as one might expect from organizations with exemplary purposes, but rather with a concentration on their own constituents; this emphasis on communication to constituent publics may have stemmed in part from their educative responsi­ bilities, and in part from the feeling that they had to combine value messages to Congress with some evidence that the values in the messages were shared by their constituents. A factor of great importance affecting this subject of access to the Executive and the Congress seems to be the character of the governmental process on the issue involved. In the case of the Japa­ nese peace settlement, the Executive had a comparatively free hand both constitutionally and politically, and thus it was the focal point for pressures from groups with specific and special interests to further. In cases in which the powers of Congress may be formally greater than those of the Executive, their respective positions may be reversed. In the case of the periodic renewals of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, for example, where the crucial power of decision lies with the Congress, the weight of specific interests seems to have come down on that branch.9 8 Cf., e.g., J. Robert Barlow and Robert T. Holt, The Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1949: A Case Study, unpublished paper prepared for the Graduate Research Seminar of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, May 1954; see also the preliminary findings of the study by the Center for International Studies at M.I.T. concerning the impact of business communications on foreign economic policy-making in the United States, as reported by Ithiel de Sola Pool in his paper, "Some Aspects of Political Behavior in International Relations," prepared for the 51st Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association,

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A further point on the subject of different orientations to the Executive and the Legislative branches of government bears men­ tion. Among organized groups, but not necessarily among private individuals, there was no substantial difference in the number of communications on the Japanese peace settlement that were sent to the Executive and the number sent to the Congress. There was a difference in the methods employed in the sending of these mes­ sages, however; many more face-to-face contacts were made with the Legislature than with the Executive. This suggests that among political interest groups as a whole, without differentiation as to type, Congress is seen as of substantial importance along with the Executive in matters of foreign policy. Perhaps more important, it suggests also that Congress is seen as more directly approachable than the Executive, particularly by those groups which for one reason or another are unsympathetic to the policy proposals em­ anating from the Executive branch.10 These data on differences in the choice of audiences give added weight to some recent hypotheses about the political effectiveness of groups that might be described as having general and intangible interests. The findings just presented support the view that groups with a heavily value-laden interest in public policy have a small impact on the opinions of others, partly because most of their efforts are spent in communicating to their own constituents, to people, that is, who are already predisposed to share the values of their group's leaders. Summary

The case of the Japanese peace settlement suggests that quite different paths may be taken by different types of organizations when they are ready to embark on a venture in political influence. Groups that are organized around a particular problem area, and that have a specific and recognized interest in that area which they September 1955. One particularly relevant aspect of this study, the relationship between businessmen and Congressmen on the 1954 extension of the Reciprocal Trade Act, is discussed by Frank Bonilla, "When Is Petition 'Pressure'?" Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. xx, No. 1, Spring 1956, pp. 39-48. 10 A similar difference in approachability is discernible even where groups with specific interests put the major emphasis on the Congress. Pool, op.cit., reports, for example, that active, protectionist businessmen were more likely than low tariff activists to approach Congressmen directly. For further evidence on this same point, see Bonilla, op.cit. Kenneth P. Adler and Davis Bobrow, in their study of "Interest and Influence in Foreign Affairs," Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. xx, No. 1, Spring 1956, pp. 89-101, have some data on the channels of influence used by foreign policy "influentials" that underline the approachability of Congress.

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feel can be protected by public policy, are likely to approach the task of political communication with finesse and discrimination. In the case of the peace settlement, where great power and discretion resided with the Executive, they communicated their views to the Executive rather than the Legislative branch of government, and generally to particular individuals within the Executive branch. They employed almost all of the available methods of communi­ cating their views to both public and policy-maker; and they origi­ nated their communications at an early date in the development of a policy, when its substance was most flexible and susceptible of change. On the other hand, groups that have a philosophical, non-selforiented interest in foreign policy seem to approach political com­ munication with less mastery of technique. In their communication on the settlement they did not use all of the available methods; they particularly tended to shy away from personal contacts at the governmental level except insofar as such contacts were formally institutionalized, as in Senate Committee hearings. Their govern­ mental communication went mostly to the Legislative branch, and it went in the later stages of policy development; in other words, these organizations got their policy communication under way at a time when many individuals had already committed themselves to a particular policy formulation, and they directed their messages to a governmental body before which there was a relatively narrow range of alternative choices. But if they had little influence on this account, that may not have been unexpected. For their objective seems to have been as much the public reaffirmation of standards of policy-making as the implementation of those standards through the achievement of actual policy influence. THE PATTERN AS SEEN BY CONGRESS AND THE EXECUTIVE Thus far we have looked at the pattern of political communication from the points where the communication originates, asking our­ selves how the articulate political interest groups became a part of the political process on the Japanese peace settlement. Now we shall look at the pattern from the other end of the telescope, so to speak, from the points where the communication is received. We shall focus our attention on the governmental level in the political process, and ask how the Executive and the Legislative branches were

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reached by the various types of articulate public participation.11 As a general hypothesis, it seems that different elements in the political process come into contact with different parts of the articulate public, and hence they feel the impact of that "public" in different ways. More specifically, members of the Congress and members of the Executive branch did not always experience the same sort of group and private communication on the Japanese peace settlement. Hence they did not always have before them the same image of the articulate public's reaction to the course of policy on this issue. These differences in exposure were by no means the chief causes of difference in interpretation or argumentation as between the two branches of government. Yet, as we shall see in later chapters, they may have worked in this direction by helping to stoke some fires of disagreement that already existed. Volume and Composition One thing that was common to the communication milieus of both the Executive and the Congress was the impression they gave of general public indifference or apathy to the problem of the Japa­ nese peace settlement. In this connection the low volume of mail to the White House and the Department of State on this issue has already been mentioned, as has the small number of private wit­ nesses at the Senate hearings. The volume of letters coming to the offices of Senators cannot have been very large, either, to judge by the complaints of some of the Congressmen. Senator Dirksen, for example, represented himself as astonished and upset by the brief attention given to the treaty by the American people; the day be­ fore the Senate voted its consent to ratification, he remarked in the course of debate: "I doubt whether there is a Senator who has re­ ceived from his constituency as much as 100 pieces of mail on this treaty. My own mail on the subject is Hmited to about a dozen letters. . . . probably those would not have been forthcoming . . . 11 In the first part of this chapter, communications from private individuals were excluded because not enough information was available to make accurate generaliza­ tions about the pattern of that particular source of communication at the point of its origin. In the part that follows, however, dealing with the Executive and the Congress, communications from private individuals will be reintroduced. All of these messages are not available, to be sure, but enough of them are known to indicate that the >attem of political communication, at the point of its reception at the governmental evel, would be distorted more by excluding the available private communications than by including them.

i

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[had I not] blanketed the air lanes of my State with an informal discussion of this subject."12 Low as it was, the composition of this body of communication differed as between the two branches of government. Communica­ tions from citizens and from organized groups to the Executive came mostly in the form of letters; members of Congress, however, confronted a more diversified system of communication. They received more letters than any other form of communication, but these were augmented by greater numbers of formal statements of organizational position, and of face-to-face contacts, than the Executive encountered. Such diversification in the methods of com­ munication that reach Congress is facilitated by the organization and practices of the Legislative branch, and is probably present on most policy issues that attract any public attention whatever. This undoubtedly contributes to a sentiment that lurks in the shadows of many Congressional debates, that members of the Legislature have a more "accurate" or "realistic" system of assessing the opinion of the articulate public than is possessed by the Executive. Source and Subject Matter

In the case of the Japanese treaty, the box score of organizations and individuals favoring or disapproving the documents of settle­ ment differs according to whether one reads it from Capitol Hill or from the Executive offices. In the first place, the totals were quite different. The Legislature received perhaps twice as many avowed judgments of approval or disapproval as the Executive received. These separate bodies of appraisal, each of different size, were also quite different in their balance of favorable and unfavorable valuations. Judgments reaching the Executive from individuals and organized groups were evenly divided, with about as many sources upholding the plans for the settlement as attacking them. The "balancing-off" process was not as easy for members of the Congress, for a greater number of negative than positive assessments reached their ears. Put somewhat differently, members of Congress heard more favorable judgments than the Executive heard, but at the same time the legislators were at the receiving end of an even larger number of unfavorable estimations of the settlement. While members of Congress were hearing explicit summary judg­ ments about the settlement as a whole, members of the Executive 12 Congressional Record, Vol. 98, No. 45, March 19, 1952, p. 2540. For a more general view on mail to Congressmen, see Dexter, op.cit., pp. 16-27.

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branch were receiving comments, criticisms, and pieces of advice on discrete and often technical aspects of the peace settlementcommunications which avoided any explicit appreciation of the whole policy. In some cases the Executive could reason that little advice and limited criticism implied approval of the larger issue, but there were just as many cases where the final opinion remained in doubt. These different appraisals of the settlement that reached the Con­ gress and the Executive parallel more specific differences in the sources and subjects of the communications that converged on those two branches of government. The result was to create for each branch a world of public communication that stressed a set of in­ terests and values not wholly shared by the other. Considering those messages the sources of which are identifiable, it seems as if the Executive were exposed mostly to the communica­ tion of groups and persons with tangible, generally economic, in­ terests; the Congress, on the other hand, was directly exposed mostly to the ideas of groups and people with intangible, generally ideo­ logical, interests. Most of such communications to the Executive branch came from business, labor, commodity, and financial in­ terests, veterans' organizations, and political agencies and indi­ viduals. Most of the known communications to the Congress, how­ ever, came from groups with an ethical or ideological bias: religious bodies, pacifist and other ideological groups, and the conservative, "patriotic" women's groups. Members of the Executive branch of the government, then, who were wrestling with difficult choices as between alternative actions to take on the peace settlement, were exposed to articulate public communication from sources par­ ticularly concerned with "means choices." Members of the Legisla­ ture, whose ability to alter the settlement was limited but who had to measure the settlement against the value preferences of their constituents, were exposed mostly to public communications from sources especially concerned with value preferences. Thus, even the composition of the articulate public on this issue seemed differ­ ent to the two branches of the government. More evidence that the Executive and the Congress did not share the same world of communication is found by looking at the specific subject matter that was brought to the attention of each. The Execu­ tive heard more about rearmament, fisheries, claims, and the Japa­ nese economy than about any other subjects. Only two of these topics were among the most important ones reaching Congressmen;

THE PATTERN OF COMMUNICATION

the latter heard more about rearmament, preservation of sover­ eignty, territorial questions, and the Japanese economy than about any other subjects. These differences in exposure to subject matter can be approached from another angle. Congress, then, heard considerably more than did the Executive branch about NationaUst China, reparations, preservation of sovereignty, territorial questions, and about how the treaty aided communism. In fact, nearly the whole of the sover­ eignty topic was aimed at the Congress. The Executive, on the other hand, heard more than the Congress about fisheries, claims, and about how necessary it was to have a treaty and how good this particular treaty was. Thus, while the Executive was getting more of a mixture of general praise and specific comments about par­ ticular clauses of the settlement, Congress was hearing the roster of ultra-conservative objections to it. Nationalist China, for example, was seen as betrayed because it was not invited to sign the treaty at San Francisco; and Japan was viewed as owing billions in repara­ tions to Communist China because of the wording of the treaty. The conservatism of the communication reaching the Congress clearly distinguishes it from the messages going to the Executive. One might even describe the differences that existed between the two worlds of communication in these terms: the Executive con­ fronted a discussion of how the settlement would affect the future of Japanese-American relations, while the Congress was exposed to a discussion of how the settlement would affect the power of Communists and others to alter both the international and national political and social status quo. The Executive branch of the government is not wholly dependent, for its knowledge of articulate opinion, on the messages that come to it. It has techniques of its own, which are not matched by the Congress, for gathering information on the policy ideas that cir­ culate between leaders and constituents of political interest groups. Insofar as the Executive was exposed to these ideas, however, its view of articulate public opinion was at even greater variance with that held by members of the Congress. For there was hardly any trace of the ultra-conservative ideological attacks on the treaty among the communications directed toward interest group constit­ uencies. Even further, these groups were being extensively told what the Executive itself was hearing, and indeed glad to hearthat the peace treaty with Japan was a good one.

THE PATTERN OF COMMUNICATION

CONCLUSION The case of the Japanese peace settlement suggests, then, that different types of interest groups approach the political arena in varying ways, and that the pattern of their political communication on any issue reflects these different orientations toward key elements in the political process. As a result of these differences in communi­ cations behavior, members of the Executive branch and members of Congress were differently exposed to ideas on the Japanese peace settlement. The consequences of differential exposure will vary, no doubt, from case to case, according to the calculations of the politi­ cal strength reflected in public sentiment that each branch makes. In this instance, however, the consequences were not especially serious, since it was clear to almost everyone concerned in both branches that the treaty was, at the least, a bone of very little con­ tention, and at best highly popular, and further that the govern­ mental policy-makers had wide discretion vis-a-vis public opinion. (See Chapter 10.) But, while not of overriding importance, the effect of these different exposures was still great enough to put Mr. Dulles to some work to moderate their impact. (See Chapter 11.) The world of communication on the settlement did not begin or end with political interest groups, however, or even with the private individuals who were somehow stimulated to participate in discus­ sion of this issue. A much more important source of the ideas and opinions on the settlement that circulated in the body politic were the media of mass communication, and particularly the newspapers, for theirs is the most extensive foreign affairs coverage of any of the media. The press is a source of opinion information for the members of the Executive and Congressional branches; it is also the greatest single source of factual and policy information for the general public. To what, then, were the American people as a whole ex­ posed as a result of the treatment the peace settlement received in the press? What was press coverage of the settlement like?

Ckapter 6 TREATY COVERAGE IN THE PRESS The media of mass communication serve some obviously im­ portant purposes in the political processes of policy determination. Among other things, they function as channels of information running from policy-makers to the public, and as channels for the expression of opinions and the measurement of interest running back from the public to the policy-makers. There may even be a rough proportionality between input and output in this context: the more that policy-makers succeed in getting into the media of com­ munication in the way of information, the more they may get out of the media by way of knowledge about the state of public interest and opinion. The data at hand do not directly address themselves to this proposition, however, since they are concerned not with the ideas on a given issue which policy-makers want to put into the media, but rather with the sum total of what newsmen actually succeed in putting there. And here the operating hypothesis—im­ precise, to be sure—is that there is a close relationship between the kind of coverage a policy matter receives in the media of mass communication, and the amount and character of interest the matter arouses among the general population. In the case of the Japanese peace settlement, since the evidence is clear that public interest was quite low, the hypothesis would lead us to expect that policy coverage in the media was similarly sparse. Practical limits to research have naturally made it impossible to gather comprehensive information about coverage of settlement policy in the media of mass communication on a national scale. This chapter is based rather on an intensive analysis of two news­ papers, the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, for the twelve months preceding the Senate's ratification of the settle­ ment.1 There were two major reasons for the choice of these par­ ticular papers. One was to secure data from Eastern and Western newspapers, in order to see what differences, if any, there might be in the press coverage of the peace settlement in these two regions; the other was to secure data from papers within these regions known 1 More precisely, the time covered extends from April 1, 1951, the day following Mr. Dulles' first public discussion of draft treaty terms at Whittier College, through March 21, 1952, the day after the Senate vote.

TREATY COVERAGE IN THE PRESS

for their interest in international affairs, in order to approximate the upper limits of coverage rather than pursue the elusive dimen­ sions of representative or average coverage. This is a somewhat narrow information base, but it seems secure enough to bear the weight of the generalizations we shall put on it. CHARACTERISTICS OF TREATY COVERAGE It was remarked above that there seems to be an intimate rela­ tionship between policy coverage in the media and policy interest in the population, and that each of these factors may influence the other. The nature of the coverage that the peace settlement received was undoubtedly determined in part by newsmen's estimates of public interest in the subject; nevertheless, had they been persuaded for other reasons, such as a belief in its intrinsic importance, to give greater coverage to the settlement, they might easily have stimulated public attention to treaty policy far beyond the level that actually prevailed. As it was, however, the coverage accorded the settlement was hardly of a kind to arouse and sustain more than a casual in­ terest in the subject even among attentive newspaper-reading Ameri­ cans. In the sections that follow we shall see that the volume of coverage was quite low, that its substance and timing lent it very little political significance as far as the processes of domestic policy­ making were concerned, and that its composition and layout were not such as to attract attention to the settlement on a continuing basis or to make it a salient part of the policy interests of the Ameri­ can people at that point in time. In this communications environment general public interest languished and organized political interest groups were stirred into only slight activity. The few public ex­ pressions of opinion which possessed a high specific gravity traveled quietly in private channels to the governmental, and particularly the Executive, level. The entire political process itself assumed a more private character under the circumstances. These generalizations about coverage are supported by the anal­ ysis of both the New York Times and the Son Francisco Chronicle; yet these two papers were by no means alike in the way they covered the treaty story. We are interested, of course, in under­ standing both the similarities and the differences in the coverage of these two papers, but it should be made clear at the start that we are not interested in making comparisons for their own sake. It is generally recognized that the New York Times is an unusual news­ paper—"a newspaper of record"—and that it is manifestly unfair to

TREATY COVERAGE IN THE PRESS

judge other papers by the standards it maintains. This distinction will be respected in the discussion that follows; comparisons will be made in order to gain some understanding of the differences in regional coverage, and not to discover which paper is bigger or better. We shall find in these comparisons very little evidence of any special West Coast press interest in Far Eastern affairs. What­ ever proportionately extra attention the Chronicle may have given to the Japanese peace settlement seems to have been a consequence of the fact that the Conference for the signing of the treaty was held right in San Francisco, and not a reflection of any special interest in Japan or in Far Eastern policy. For the rest of the time the Chronicle, Uke most American newspapers, was too dependent on wire services to indulge any preferences it might have had for additional or special kinds of coverage. Sixty per cent of the straight news about the peace settlement published in the Chronicle during the year, not counting September, came from the wire services; the corresponding figure for the New York Times was 13 per cent.2 Seventy-one per cent of this news in the Chronicle was of domestic origin, and 29 per cent of foreign origin; the breakdown for the Times news was 46 per cent domestic and 54 per cent foreign. In other words, if there was any particular interest in the Far East or Japan among the general public in the San Francisco area, it was not strong enough to translate itself into an effective demand for more news about the treaty than the wire services provided. Amount of Coverage The amount of news, comment, analysis, and other forms of dis­ cussion, which together comprised the over-all coverage of the peace settlement, was low in both the Times and the Chronicle. In the year that was studied, there were 7,862 column inches, and 645 separate items, devoted to the settlement in the New York Times, and 4,822 column inches, with 434 separate items, in the San Francisco Chronicle. Just what is meant by "low" in this context may be seen by a rough comparison of the peace settlement cover2 The categories employed in this analysis of press coverage were "news," "edi­ torials," "columns," and "other." News analysts writing in the New York Times' Sunday "News of the Week in Review" were regarded as columnists; when they wrote as reporters of events in the regular news sections their products were treated as news. The category "other" includes texts and digests of texts, speeches, proceed­ ings, etc.; the weekly review of news from "This World" in the Chronicle and from pp. 1-2 of the Times' "News of the Week in Review"; letters to the editor; and special sections of features which were added to the Chronicle during the San Francisco Conference.

TREATY COVERAGE IN THE PRESS

age with that given to other foreign policy issues in the Times. In Table VII, the analysis of the Times' coverage of the settlement is tailored for an approximate comparison with the coverage of other postwar foreign policy issues in that newspaper for a nine-month period prior to legislation or executive action in each case. It is apparent there that the Japanese peace settlement ranked extraor­ dinarily low in the coverage which the New York Times gave to foreign policy issues of that time. TABLE VII*

New York Times Coverage of Selected Foreign Policy Issues for a Nine-Month Period Prior to Legislation or Executive Action Issue

Recognition of Israel, 1948 Greek-Turkish aid, 1947 European Recovery Program, 1948 North Atlantic Treaty, 1949 Aid to China, 1948 Mutual Defense Assistance Program, 1949 First renewal of ERP, 1949 Japanese peace settlement, 1952 Renewal of Reciprocal Trade Agreements, 1949

Column Inches

18,728 14,519 11,740 7,955 6,458 4,820 4,198 3,894 1,124

* This comparison includes only news, editorials, and columns; it omits texts, digests, letters, news analysis in the Sunday "News of the Week in Review," and other special features. These latter items are included, however, in all the other references in this chapter to the Times' over-all coverage of the peace settlement. The data on the Times' coverage of issues other than the peace settlement were com­ piled by the members of the Graduate Research Seminar of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, during 1951-52.

Unfortunately, there are no figures available on the San Francisco Chronicle's coverage of these same issues against which to compare its treatment of the peace settlement. However, there is a suggestive bit of evidence which indicates that the Chronicle gave nearly the same relative attention to the peace settlement as the Times did. The Times' total coverage for the year, 7,862 column inches, is equivalent to almost 47 solid pages; this was close to the size of the daily edition of the paper, which during this period ran between 48 and 68 pages. The total coverage of the Chronicle, 4,822 column inches, is equal to 28 solid pages, which was the approximate size of the daily edition of that paper during the year under review. But in the absence of more pertinent evidence than this, it remains a speculative conclusion—although a likely one, nevertheless—that the

TREATY COVERAGE IN THE PRESS

Chronicles coverage of the peace settlement was proportionately as low as that of the Times in comparison with its treatment of other foreign policy issues. Timing of Coverage If the amount of coverage was itself low, the way it was dis­ tributed through time had the effect of making it even lower throughout most of the year prior to ratification. The reason for this is the tremendous importance of the San Francisco Conference in the over-all news story of the peace settlement. As Figure 1 so dramatically illustrates, coverage during the months of August and September 1951, when the Conference was in preparation and then in session, towered far above the levels reached either before or after.3 The pattern over time was the same for both newspapers: coverage slight in the months when the peace treaty was being formulated, increasing rapidly as the final draft moved toward signature, then falling even more abruptly and remaining almost on the edge of oblivion even through the months of Senate con­ sideration. The Times, however, paid proportionately a little more attention to the settlement during its early, formative months than did the Chronicle, and a little less during the conference period. From April through July 1951, the Times' coverage was 28 per cent of its total for the year, while the Chronicle's coverage was only 15 per cent of its total; in August and September the Times pre­ sented 60 per cent of its total coverage of the settlement, and the Chronicle 75 per cent. For the remaining six months the figures for both papers were low: 12 per cent for the Times and 10 per cent for the Chronicle. These figures reflect the tremendous attention that the Conference and Conference-related subjects received from the media of com­ munication. In fact the Conference-time coverage was so far out of proportion to the coverage of other aspects of the peace settlement as to suggest that the press, and perhaps the public too, thought of it less as a part of the settlement with Japan than as another round in the cold war with the Soviet Union. The Chronicle itself seemed to sense the incongruity in the situation when it reported on September 5 that while the Conference was supposed to be a non-controversial ratification spectacle, it was nevertheless monopos Hviman interest aspects of the Conference, such as the housing problems of the Soviet delegation, received very extensive press coverage also, but these articles were omitted from the analysis as substantively unrelated to the peace settlement.

TOTAL COLUMN

INCHES PER MONTH

TREATY COVERAGE:

Figure 1

TREATY COVERAGE IN THE PRESS

lizing the news wires; more than 1,000 newspapermen were said to be covering it. Indeed, the 109,000 words which were filed with Western Union for the opening session were only a little less than the 120,000 filed at the opening session of the conference establish­ ing the United Nations Organization, held in San Francisco in 1945.4 Some evidence that the element of United States—Russian conflict was the main attraction at the Conference is provided by what seems to have been a rapid falling-off of public interest after the Com­ munist delegation had been brought under control by the adoption on September 5 of the Rules of Procedure drafted by the American and British delegations. The New York Times reported on Septem­ ber 7 that the crowds around the Opera House had dissolved, and that the number of empty seats on the Conference floor had risen from zero to more than a hundred. And according to Bernard Taper, writing in the Chronicle the same day, there were 40 unwanted tickets left over at the box office on September 6; he further noted that a considerable number of those who had bothered to get tickets and attend the session had left their seats to watch a football game from the south window of the dress circle in the Opera House. But the press itself does not seem to have experienced a similar decline of interest, judging by the fairly consistent coverage of the five days from the welcoming ceremony on September 4 to the signature ceremony on September 8. In fact, the Times' coverage on the last day of the Conference was greater than for any other day, while the Chronicle's coverage of the next to the last day rose to new heights. (See Table VIII.) TABLE VIII

Daily Breakdown of San Francisco Conference Coverage in New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle Times (2,002 Col. In.)

September 5

6

Chronicle (1,751 Col. In.)

15%

17%

21

21

7

20

17

8

21

26

9

23

19

100%

100%

The impact of the Conference on the over-all coverage of the peace settlement can be seen, finally, by noting how swiftly press * New York Times, September 6, 1951.

TREATY COVERAGE IN THE PRESS

interest lagged after the Conference delegations left San Francisco and news no longer originated there. Ninety-four per cent of the Chronicles entire September coverage, and 91 per cent of the Times', took place between the first and the twelfth of September. The Chronicle's news coverage dropped a little more quickly than the Times', however—a circumstance which does not suggest any special Western interest in the peace settlement. Ninety-seven per cent of the Chronicle's straight news about the settlement during September was printed during these twelve days, as against 86 per cent of the Times'. There is some political importance in the fact that press coverage dwindled to a mere trickle after the San Francisco Conference ended. The six months from October on saw only 10 per cent of the Chronicle's total coverage for the year, and 12 per cent of the Times'. These months included the period of Senate hearings and debate, when the governmental treaty-making process offers the easiest—although not necessarily the most influential—access to private individuals and groups. Yet during this time the American newspaper reader saw exceedingly little about the settlement in the daily press; thus he received no new sense of the imminence or the possible importance of the issue, and read virtually no discussion of the wider consequences of the settlement or of any policy alter­ natives that might have achieved some of its objectives in a different manner.5 In the absence of new communication, the public image of the peace settlement that persisted during these months was the nearly sacrosanct one created in the flood of coverage just before and during the San Francisco Conference, when the virtues of the settlement became inextricably tangled up with the cause of free­ dom in the cold war against communism. In a way, the ceremony of signature took on the properties of an act of ratification, and everything that came after was anticlimactic. Composition of Coverage Coverage of the settlement was not only low in volume and skewed in distribution through time; it was also tucked away most of the time in the interstices of other news and treated as a minor, 5 During the hearings in January 1952, the headline stories in the New York Times dealt with the President's request for an $85 billion budget; his disinclination to run again; and a plane crash in Elizabeth, N.J. The major stories in the Times during the ratification debate in March 1952 concerned General Eisenhower's large write-in vote in the Minnesota primary; his hint at an early return from his assignment at SHAPE; and Senator Taft's statement of withdrawal from the New Jersey primary.

TREATY COVERAGE IN THE PRESS

unimportant story. Considering the composition and the layout of the press coverage in relation to these other variables of amount and timing, there is no wonder that the event itself had little salience as a foreign policy issue. Only a fraction more than half of the coverage in both of the newspapers came under the heading of "news": 52 per cent in the Times and 55 per cent in the Chronicle. (And a very large proportion of the news about the settlement came in the busy Conference month of September: 57 per cent in the Chronicle and a less im­ posing but still high 34 per cent in the Times.) The rest of the space during the year was occupied by material as important, per­ haps, but not as immediately compelling as fresh news. In the over-all coverage of both papers, a prominent place was given to background and feature pieces, including texts, weekly reviews, letters to the editor, and special sections on the settlement during the San Francisco Conference. In the Times this amounted to 28 per cent of the entire coverage, and in the Chronicle to 26 per cent. The remaining fifth of the coverage in each paper was taken up by editorials and columns, with the Times giving relatively more atten­ tion to the latter, while the Chronicle, with a smaller staff, published long and favorable editorials instead. It was not simply that the news component of total coverage was low, which deprived the settlement of salience as a policy issue; equally important in the failure to attract the attention of the reader, and to hold it long enough to arouse interest and stimulate participa­ tion, was the layout of the news—more particularly its frequent absence or near-absence from the front page. Indeed, the evidence suggests that there may be a close relationship between the treat­ ment an issue receives on the front page in competition with other news of the day, and the position of prominence which it occupies in the mind of the attentive or even the general public. The amount of front page coverage was, interestingly enough, virtually the same in both papers: 757 column inches in the Chronicle and 759 column inches in the Times. This means that the settlement got a bigger "play" in the Chronicle, however, since its total coverage was smaller. In the Times, 10 per cent of total coverage and 19 per cent of total news coverage appeared as front page news; but in the Chronicle 16 per cent of total coverage and 29 per cent of total news coverage was on page one. As they stand, these figures seem to be rather high, considering that the front page is a small part of a newspaper and that it serves as a show window

TREATY COVERAGE IN THE PRESS

as well as a measure of the importance of news; but when its dis­ tribution over time is considered, the front page coverage of the treaty issue had considerably less impact. This is but to say that it was the San Francisco Conference which received the lion's share of the front page news. The news on the front page of the Chronicle between September 1 and September 12 was 68 per cent of the year's front page news about the settlement in that paper; the corre­ sponding figure for the Times is still high at 35 per cent. Front page news during the full months of August and September, the larger period of Conference preparation and activity, amounted to 88 per cent of the year's front page news about the settlement for the Chronicle, and 60 per cent for the Times. During the rest of the twelve-month period, obviously, there was little news of the settle­ ment on the front pages. From October 1, 1951, to March 21, 1952, there were 86 column inches on the front page of the Times, and 11 column inches on the front page of the Chronicle. In fact, the issue did not make the front page of the Times for two consecutive months, November and December 1951, and was not on the front page of the Chronicle either in October 1951 or in February 1952. Indeed, foreign policy is not such a central concern of Americans that the embers of any given policy fire can survive for long without more fanning from a newspaper than this. A further word about the character of the press coverage may be in order. Analysis of the coverage of the settlement reveals, somewhat obviously perhaps but not insignificantly, that the press had a basic orientation toward the Executive branch throughout this policy issue. Undoubtedly the most important reason for this was that policy initiative resided in the Executive branch; conse­ quently most of the "news" originated there. This situation is by no means uncommon; its effects, like those of the other aspects of press coverage discussed above, can also be traced in the patterns of interest and behavior that were found among general public opinion and organized political interest groups on the treaty issue. Mr. Dulles was involved in much more press coverage than the Senators or the Senate. Articles amounting in length to nearly 2,000 column inches in the Times, or about one-fourth of the total coverage of the settlement in that paper, discussed or dealt in some substan­ tive fashion with Mr. Dulles, as against about 800 column inches, or 10 per cent of the total, in articles which discussed Senators or the Senate.® In the Chronicle, articles totaling 650 column inches, β Whole rather than parts of articles were counted; articles referring to both Mr. Dulles and the Senate were counted in both places.

TREATY COVERAGE IN THE PRESS

or 13 per cent of that paper's over-all coverage, concerned Mr. Dulles in some manner, while about 450 column inches, or 9 per cent of the total, involved the Senate. The press orientation is also visible in the composition of this coverage of Mr. Dulles and the Senate. In both newspapers, Mr. Dulles was the object of more news, analysis, and textual quotation than the Senators, but the Senate was the object of more editorial coverage than was Mr. Dulles. (See Table IX.) In other words, to TABLE IX

Composition of References to Dulles and Senate, New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle (in Column Inches) Ne-ws

Columns

Editorials

Other

Total

1,035 525

193 74

68 81

615 117

1,911 797

408 331

40 35

51 86

141 2

650 454

Times

Dulles Senate Chronicle

Dulles Senate

the press the Executive was a source of news, ideas, and possibly inspiration, while the Senate was seen as a piece of slow-moving machinery which might perform its ratification task better under the spur of editorial exhortation. The type of coverage described in this chapter—heavier and more prominent during the Executive than during the Legislative phase of policy-making—reflects this orientation on the part of the press. The perfunctory character of press coverage after the settlement was formulated and while it was waiting for legislative sanction may have contributed to, as well as been a measure of, the absence of public interest during the later stages of the governmental process of policy-making. In sum, then, the relationship between the kind of press coverage accorded the peace settlement, on the one hand, and the character of public opinion and the behavior of interest groups, on the other, seems to have been a remarkably intimate one. Public information and communication in the press about the settlement were not sufficient to create or activate a substantial body of interest in the issue; and at the same time the prevailing public indifference gave the press sufficient justification for scant coverage. This increased the necessity and the importance of utilizing private contacts for

TREATY COVERAGE IN THE PRESS

the few persons and groups with special interests in the settlement; but it also meant that the messages relayed in these contacts lacked the political resonance provided by a broad and deep attentive public.7 7 Cf. Gabriel A. Almond, The American People and Foreign Policy, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1950, Chapter x.

PART

III

The Executive

Ckapter 7 JOHN FOSTER DULLES: EXECUTIVE AGENT On the Executive side, Mr. Dulles was the person most responsible for the large conception and the small details that blended into and ultimately formed the Japanese peace settlement. Our interest at this point is in discovering some of the special characteristics of background, experience, personality, and performance that Mr. Dulles possessed which seem to have had significant consequences for the general support enjoyed by the Executive branch on this foreign policy issue. Perhaps in the process we may gain some in­ sight into certain qualities of Executive leadership which seem to facilitate agreement on foreign policy among articulate public and political groups. The Executive cannot escape responsibility for the conduct of foreign policy, nor can the American people and their elected representatives shrug off the distasteful task of choosing whether or not to make the sacrifices that are increasingly attendant upon the conduct of foreign relations. All sides, however, can wel­ come any ideas which may help to soften the antagonism which is often built into the situation, and to make the resolution of differ­ ences easier or even possible. This chapter will attempt to show that Mr. Dulles possessed a number of qualities which, in the political constellation of the time and in the context of the issue in which he was involved, enabled him to maximize agreement among the important and interested parties. In his many-sided experience and character there was in­ variably a facet which could be matched to the ever-changing de­ mands of his job or the particular personalities of those with whom he had to deal. Mr. Dulles was able also to differentiate the in­ terests of different groups of people, to divine their dominant moods, and then to present the settlement or any part of it in terms that each was most likely to understand and accept. And covering it all was his novel conception of the whole settlement, which was sufficiently in tune with the prevailing standards of international justice and international politics to serve, if not as a beacon, at least as a basis for discussion for men of different political persuasions. The attributes possessed by Mr. Dulles were not in themselves rare in the Executive branch; not often, however, are they found in one person who at the same time combines operational responsi-

JOHN FOSTER DULLES

bilities with more than enough power to conduct them. His experi­ ence suggests that such a person may provide one means within the Executive whereby conflicting demands and diverse skills can be smoothly coordinated. THE POLITICAL CONTEXT Mr. Dulles' treaty accomplishment may have been due not only to his personal attributes and talents, but also to the way these were combined with the context in which he had to operate. It seems relevant, therefore, to preface our examination of his personal contribution with a brief comment on the environment and circum­ stances in which his abilities were given employment. Mr. Dulles, a Republican, was called into the State Department by a Democratic Administration confronted with a substantial col­ lapse of the bipartisan spirit in foreign policy-making. Although the Administration, and particularly Mr. Acheson, the Secretary of State, were feeling the full sting of political criticism over the fall of China to the Communists, they were nevertheless still in power and in charge of American foreign policy. When Mr. Dulles was given the Japanese treaty assignment, most of the State Depart­ ment's treaty strings were put in his hands, and he was delegated a commensurable amount of authority. Yet his responsibilities and his authority were confined to a single large issue, and he was not faced with the need to balance off commitments among a larger number of issues. Further, Mr. Dulles was given the firm support of the Democratic Administration whose temporary servant he was. The Secretary of State backed him up in his international conversa­ tions, and the President generally ruled in his favor in his disputes with other agencies in the Executive branch. Thus his power often exceeded his responsibility, and since it was brought to bear on a policy issue that was not a major aspect of the cold war, it was in many instances more than sufficient to cope with the large problems that came his way. If Mr. Dulles' advance was speeded by this massive concentration of support, it was also aided by a widely shared sense of urgency created by the war in Korea. Events in that unhappy peninsula spoke even louder than his words, and in a more commonly under­ stood tongue, convincing many hitherto reluctant people of the need for a rapid settlement with Japan if she were to be brought into an anti-Communist orbit in the Pacific. Mr. Dulles, consequently, found himself in a domestic and inter-

JOHN FOSTER DULLES

national political context that favored his cause and his talents. His stars were right, and so, apparently, was his reading of them. MR. DULLES' APPROACH TO THE JAPANESE PEACE SETTLEMENT The way Mr. Dulles conceived of the Japanese peace settlement was to some extent foreshadowed in the circumstances surrounding his assignment to handle its development. Disturbed by the difficulty of accomplishing anything of importance in the large and complex organization of the Department of State, Mr. Dulles, newly ap­ pointed in a bipartisan move to the post of Special Adviser to the Department, is reported to have told Secretary Acheson: "You'll never get anything done unless you select someone in whom you have confidence, give him a job to do, and then hold him to results. Look at the Japanese Peace Treaty—the department has been dis­ cussing it for four years without result. Why don't you give some­ one one year in which to get action, with the understanding that if he can't do it, he fails? Give him a target and enough authority to get there."1 Not long afterward Mr. Dulles was given this interesting assign­ ment. His conduct thereafter fulfilled the specifications he had set: he substantially ignored the mountains of treaty clauses previously drafted in the State Department, and the pits of involvement in inter-office committees, carving out instead a wholly new path toward his target of a peace treaty. Having deliberately forsaken the customary procedures, he had few guides beyond Iiis own con­ victions as to what the treaty should include, and his own sense of what was possible and desirable in his dealings with other people in the State Department, elsewhere in the Executive branch, in the Legislative branch, and in various public groups, and with the counterparts of all these people in each of the different countries involved in the negotiations. Mr. Dulles' major convictions about a Japanese peace settlement led him almost immediately to reject the State Department's early plans for a lengthy document which would specify in detail a set of rights and restrictions applying to Japan. The treaty, in his view, should be brief, just, and concerned mostly with the principles which were to readmit Japan to the family of nations. There were a number of reasons which he advanced at different times and 1 Quoted by John R. Beal, "Bull's Eye for Dulles," Harper's Magazine, Vol. 203, No. 1218, November 1951, pp. 89-90.

JOHN FOSTER DULLES

places to explain why this course commended itself to him. A man with a sharp ear for the instructive lessons of history, he was par­ ticularly anxious to avoid a repetition of the Versailles experience, in which the Allied Powers imposed detailed restrictions on Ger­ many and quickly found themselves unwilling to enforce them. Since he was earnestly seeking to make a firm and useful ally out of Japan, it would have been self-defeating to impose restrictions successfully, and disastrous to impose them unsuccessfully. The only reasonable alternative was a treaty which eschewed revenge and retribution, and emphasized the dignity and responsibility of membership in the free world community. Mr. Dulles had additional reasons for favoring a brief and simple treaty, reasons which were substantially borne out by the event. He felt that support for the treaty would be more widespread in every country that signed it, if it were easy to read and to under­ stand. By the standards of the Versailles Treaty, the Japanese peace treaty is the very model of brevity; even so it is longer and more elaborate than Mr. Dulles originally intended. Timing was also an important consideration in his mind. He believed there would be some rough proportion between the length of the treaty and the time it would take to negotiate it and get it approved—that the more detail the treaty contained, the more occasions there would be for opponents to obstruct and critics to cavil. Conversely, if the treaty was short and restricted to important principles of inter­ national conduct, it would be a bright light to which general support might be attracted. The application of these beliefs put Mr. Dulles' mark on the treaty, as did his approach to its negotiation. To avoid the useless bickering and the massive delays characteristic of post­ war international conferences attended by Soviet delegates, Mr. Dulles resorted to a roving peace mission of eleven months' duration, capped by a more traditional conference to sign the treaties. The result was a considerable measure of bilateral and personal diplo­ macy, which gave further scope to Mr. Dulles' responsibilities, and greater opportunity to his viewpoints and talents. Mr. Dulles' spirited convictions about the basic features of the settlement gave it much of its attractive character. Yet his ideas were not so compelling that alone they could summon the necessary support from diverse quarters. There were, to be sure, some im­ portant international political factors affecting the acceptance of his program at home, and even more abroad; but apart from these factors, the Executive accomplishment was brought about as much

JOHN FOSTER DULLES

by what Mr. Dulles felt was possible and desirable in his public and political relations as it was by his personal approach to the substance and structure of the settlement. It was by means of the former that he was able to "sell" the latter to those who were not immediately disposed to accept the settlement, or to reach a com­ promise with those who proposed different treaty terms. The re­ mainder of this chapter will be devoted to a number of his special attributes, made manifest in his political relations, which helped to turn an ordinary set of negotiations into a tour de force. MR. DULLES' ROLES, AND THE CORRESPONDING BASES OF HIS AUTHORITY Customarily a major foreign policy is fashioned within the State Department from the separate and sometimes competing interests of many different offices, with the higher policy officials resolving problems of jurisdiction, interpretation, and ultimate choice. Quite a different path was ordained for the Japanese peace treaty when Mr. Dulles, an outsider with policy-making power and responsi­ bilities, was intruded, so to speak, at the operating level. In giving him the task of developing a Japanese treaty, the President and the Secretary of State placed in his hands the strings to many related functions. He thus had to play a number of different roles which, when they are not limited to a single policy issue, ordinarily tax the skill of an equal number of highly competent persons. As initiator and chief negotiator, and as the person who substantially deter­ mined the negotiating counters and bargains, Mr. Dulles was in effect occupying part of the office of Secretary of State. As custodian of one of the most important postwar policy issues in the Far East, he was performing the duties of the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. As the advance guard of the Republican Party in the State Department, he was obliged to take over some of the responsibilities of the Assistant Secretary for Congressional Relations. And as a man interested in the public relations aspects of the problem of making the treaty a reality, he assumed the func­ tions of the Assistant Secretary for Public Aifairs. The operational load on Mr. Dulles' shoulders was tremendous, demanding many different kinds of knowledge to ensure effective performance. Yet in taking charge of the treaty's development he not only upset the established lines of authority in the Department; he also threw away the book of customs as a guide to his official behavior. Nevertheless, he was able to operate the many strings,

JOHN FOSTER DULLES

to play the different parts he had to perform. Partly, as we shall see later, this was because he had his own set of impressionistic rules which served him well. Another reason for his success lay in the circumstance that Mr. Dulles was, both by his past experiences and his current assignment, many different men. Put another way, the bases of his power and authority were as diverse as—and wellmatched with—the many roles he was called upon to play.

Presidential Agent In his contacts and conversations with foreign representatives, Mr. Dulles spoke with the authority of a Presidential agent. When he began his serious negotiations in January 1951, he was made a special representative of the President, with the rank of Ambassador. Since he was a Republican in the employ of a Democratic Ad­ ministration, this gave him a political power he would not other­ wise have commanded in the international arena. The powers of a Presidential agent were granted to him specifically for use among foreign audiences; yet his situation in the governmental machinery was so unusual that he could never really shake off the consequences of possessing these powers, even when he was among his own countrymen.

State Department Representative Mr. Dulles was also a high-ranking consultant to the Secretary of State, and when he spoke to domestic audiences, private or gov­ ernmental, on the subject of the Japanese peace settlement, he had the authority of the State Department behind him. In fact, it might even be said that on this single issue he wielded the full strength of the Department just as if he had been the Secretary. The differences between this kind of power and the former may seem to be of less significance than they in fact were. At home, for example, Mr. Dulles could speak for the Department of State but not for the Depart­ ment of Defense, and sometimes he had to subordinate his wishes to its; abroad, however, he represented the President, and thus he was the foremost spokesman for the entire Executive branch of the government on this issue.

Foreign Policy Expert No matter where he was or in whose presence, Mr. Dulles carried at all times the authority that accompanies a reputation as a foreign affairs specialist. Much of his adult life, in fact, may be interpreted

JOHN FOSTER DULLES

as quiet preparation for the day when he could assume the office of Secretary of State, once held by his grandfather, mentor, and namesake, John W. Foster. Mr. Dulles' experiences in the field of diplomacy go back to his college days, when he served as Secretary of the Chinese delegation to the Second Hague Conference in 1907. From that time on, his life was a mixture of international legal work for the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, of which he became a senior partner, and increasing participation in the conduct of America's foreign relations. His activities on the latter score after the end of World War II included membership on successive United States delegations to the United Nations General Assembly, and positions as adviser to the Secretary of State for four meetings of the Council of Foreign Ministers. It was widely assumed, in fact, in the expectation of a Republican victory, that he would be the next Secretary of State after the general election of 1948. He had by 1950 written two books on international subjects,2 and had worked actively and prominently in leading organizations that facilitate the study of international problems, notably the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the CoimcU on Foreign Relations. Apart, then, from his official capacities, he had as a permanent possession the incalculable power of prestige that goes with wide knowledge, serious writing, and lifelong experience in the field of international relations. Ex-Senator

Another source of Mr. Dulles' authority was his experience as a United States Senator; this was a phase of his life that was quite short and is often overlooked, but its consequences were unending. In July 1949 Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York appointed Mr. Dulles to the United States Senate as an interim appointee to fill the seat left vacant by the resignation of Democratic Senator Robert F. Wagner because of ill health. In November of that year, a special election was held in New York to fill the remainder of Wagner's unexpired term. As the Republican nominee, Mr. Dulles sought to retain the seat against the competition of Herbert Lehman, who for ten years had been a Democratic Governor of New York. It was a hard-fought contest, won by Mr. Lehman. Mr. Dxilles' tenure thus was brief; nevertheless he had been a member of the close Senate fraternity and had participated in the 2 War, Peace and Change, New York and London, Harper and Brothers, 1939; War or Peace, New York, Tlie Macmillan Co., 1950.

JOHN FOSTER DULLES

rites of that august body. That made him enough of an initiate so that other Senators addressed him as "Senator" during the hearings on the Japanese peace treaty. Prominent Republican Mr. Dulles' service in the Senate, however important, was in one sense only an aspect of, an incident in, his larger career as a promi­ nent member of the Republican Party. For the ten years preceding his assignment to the treaty, he was generally considered the leading statesman and the foreign policy spokesman of the Republican Party, or at least of its internationalist wing, which was dominant through­ out this period. Much of his political identity came from his close association with Thomas E. Dewey, twice the Repubhcan nominee for President. Long a friend and supporter of Dewey, Dulles was his chief adviser in matters of foreign affairs, and would undoubtedly have become Secretary of State if Dewey had won the Presidency. Mr. Dulles was close enough to inner party circles to know some­ thing about the problems and potentialities of leadership within the party; this position, together with his substantive knowledge of foreign affairs, made him a bridge between the Democratic Ad­ ministration and the Repubhcan opposition on foreign policy matters. Protestant Layman Finally, Mr. Dulles had a substantial reputation as a Protestant layman, one that was well developed long before his most active participation in international affairs. The son of a Presbyterian minister, Dulles was chairman of the Federal Council of Churches in 1940; he later fostered the creation of its Commission on a Just and Durable Peace, which he then headed. His links with the churches were strengthened in his subsequent years of public serv­ ice, as he sought by word and by act to relate moral precepts to international behavior. Oftener than most persons in his position, Mr. Dulles has selected church groups as the platform for the de­ livery of foreign policy addresses. Summary Mr. Dulles was thus well equipped to operate in the numerous roles he assumed when he took charge of the peace settlement. Some of the requisite kinds of authority were his own permanent posses­ sions, while the Administration lent him the additional powers that

JOHN FOSTER DULLES

were necessary. His church background as well as his contacts with the world of politics enabled him to present the most complicated twists of foreign policy in an easily comprehensible and morally acceptable manner, thus helping him to perform with distinction his public affairs functions. His experiences as a Republican and a former Senator fitted him as nothing else could to carry out the delicate assignments of Congressional liaison. The problems of the Far East were only particular applications of the larger problems he was accustomed to handling as a foreign policy specialist with wide experience. And because his ability to function in all these areas or roles was capped with Presidential authority, he was as able as the Secretary of State to engage in international negotiations with the prospect of success. The policy-making parts that Mr. Dulles played, however, and those aspects of his character and experience that identified the man with and prepared him for the roles, were only a portion of the qualities he possessed that enabled him to mobilize agreement on Japanese treaty problems. An equally important attribute was his skill in the conduct of public and political relations—his sense of the most appropriate way to approach different groups of people and to communicate with them. The first matter to engage our attention will be Mr. Dulles' over-all conception of a public information policy on the peace settlement. After that we shall look at the way he differentiated his audiences and talked to each in individualized ways. MR. DULLES' CONCEPTION OF AN INFORMATION POLICY One can distinguish two main threads in Mr. Dulles' conception of a public information policy on the peace settlement. The first was the importance of stressing—by selection, emphasis, and repetition— what he felt were the most significant phases of treaty policy, in order to provide the basis for an informed and mature public under­ standing of this aspect of American foreign policy. The second thread, running parallel to the first, was the importance of emphasiz­ ing features of the settlement on which people could easily agree, and of obviating or minimizing controversy over what were thought to be secondary or subordinate problems. The data that suggest this are derived from a thematic analysis of sixteen addresses delivered by Mr. Dulles between February 2, 1951, and February 18, 1952. The sample of sixteen includes all of his speeches that deal directly with the settlement in the Pacific

JOHN FOSTER DULLES

for which verbatim texts are available. This excludes a number of extemporaneous talks he gave shortly after the treaty was signed, as well as the addresses he made after the treaty was ratified, when he put his treaty experiences into perspective by weaving them into the larger fabric of his foreign policy thought.3 The findings of the analysis that seem to reflect Mr. Dulles' conception of public informa­ tion policy will be presented under two headings which pursue these separate threads. Emphasis on Important Aspects of the Settlement

Mr. Dulles' emphasis on significant items of information in his speeches, and his exposure of the crucial aspects of the peace settle­ ment to public scrutiny, are revealed in the major themes he chose to stress and in those he virtually ignored. Table X indicates how he TABLE X

Major Themes in Dulles' Speeches Theme

Policy and security considerations Economic and financial considerations Attributes of the settlement Foreign policy comment and criticism The "New Japan" The two Chinas Bipartisanship Architects of the treaty Problems of sovereignty Public involvement Authority in the Senate Miscellaneous

% of Total (4,728 lines)

47% 11 11 9 7 2 2 2 1 —a —b 8 100%

a Less than half of 1 per cent. ·> None recorded. 8 The code applied to these speeches consisted of 11 major categories or themes, which in turn were composed of 85 sub-categories or specific topics. Since the analysis attempted to describe all the substantive ideas employed by Mr. Dulles in his discussion of the settlement, and the relative amount of attention he gave to each, every line of every text was counted. The same code was also used in the analysis of other bodies of communication on the settlement, which will be treated in subse­ quent chapters. In the case of Senate debate, the unit of measure was the column inch of type; in the case of Committee hearings and in these speeches of Mr. Dulles, the unit of measure was a standardized line of type. The use of a single code in the analysis of these separate bodies of communication permits their comparison in a systematic manner. In subsequent chapters we shall have occasion to make such comparisons, pointing out relevant similarities or differences in the treatment of various themes in Mr. Dulles' speeches, in the Foreign Relations Committee hearings, and in the Senate debate.

JOHN FOSTER DULLES

focused his attention on issues which were important in the large, and how he tended to dismiss those topics which, while meaningful in special circumstances, were of secondary or minor relevance to the public consideration of the settlement. Nearly a half of everything Mr. Dulles had to say related to the security context of the peace settlement, and its implications for prevailing policy. Considering the magnitude of the war which the treaty was ending, and the Korean conflict then in progress, this emphasis seems to be in some reasonable proportion to the theme's importance. "Economic and financial considerations," tied at 11 per cent for second place in Mr. Dulles' scheme of things, also mirrors the significance of the costs both of war and of the reconstruction of stable peacetime relations. While a case can easily be made for a different ratio of importance between the security and the economic theme than that granted by Mr. Dulles, it would be difficult to argue that the two themes together were not of transcendent im­ portance among the treaty problems facing American policy-makers. The remaining themes under which Mr. Dulles' ideas are aggre­ gated are with one exception neither as large nor as pertinent. "At­ tributes of the settlement," while on a par with economic considera­ tions at 11 per cent of the total, is by no means as significant; it refers to explicit characterizations of the treaty and the treaty-mak­ ing process by Mr. Dulles, which helped to form the legend of the settlement but which did not necessarily shed much light on its troublesome and stubborn issues. Nevertheless, by devoting almost 60 per cent of his speeches to the international political and eco­ nomic themes, Mr. Dulles obviously tried to channel public atten­ tion to what he rightly considered the problem areas most important from the point of view of American foreign policy. The weight he attached to them was, to anticipate a later chapter, substantially greater—almost three times greater—than that given to them by the Senate in its consideration of the treaties. Emphasis on Consensus and the Avoidance of Controversy

Even as he talked in the context of major problem areas, of large and important issues, Mr. Dulles chose to stress their fundamental and relatively non-controversial aspects rather than some of the specific and difficult but subsidiary and sometimes even marginal problems which the peace settlement raised. This emphasis on topics upon which people were agreed or could quickly agree undoubtedly helped to foster, or at least bring into focus, a wide area of consensus

JOHN FOSTER DULLES

on the settlement. This may also account in part for the circum­ stance that so much of the searching policy debate, in the real sense of that term, took place not within the area of public agreement on American foreign policy, where it could be enlightening, but rather between the shareholders in the consensus and those outside it, where discussion was dominated by the unstable arguments of extremist groups. Mr. Dulles' selection of fundamental and non-controversial topics, and his avoidance of contentious ones, were accomplished in two ways. In the first place, he chose items of general international signifi­ cance rather than of specific national import; he spoke as a leader of the free world rather than just as a representative of the United States Department of State. (See Table XI.) Over three-quarters TABLE XI Dulles' International Orientation SELECTED TOPICS AS PER CENT OF MAJOR THEMES Topic

% of Total

Policy and security considerations Security in non-U.S. areas Threat from Soviet and Communist world Collective security and alliances Japanese sovereignty: EflFects on free world security

47%

Economic and financial considerations Japan's economy and trade Burden of reparations on Japan

11

% of Theme

30% 25 10 13 78% 47 38 85%

Foreign policy comment and criticism Desirable United States foreign policy Comment on Allies and other countries

9 39 37 76%

of his security discussion was in terms of an international security problem, for example, while only 7 per cent was given over to specific mention of United States security problems. Eighty-five per cent of his economic analysis was devoted to Japan's economic problems, while the small remainder touched upon the effects of the peace settlement on the American economy. And in his general discussion of foreign policy he avoided divisive, critical subjects—

JOHN FOSTER DULLES

unlike the Senate, which spent much time on them during its debate —and spoke instead in praise of Allied contributions to the peace settlement and about future policy of the United States as leader of the free world in the struggle against Communist despotism. The second way Mr. Dulles avoided controversy and underlined agreement was by stressing the merits of the settlement, and par­ ticularly its procedural rather than its substantive virtues. Eleven per cent of his speeches were devoted to a favorable characteriza­ tion of the settlement—a frequency which, especially in the absence of a substantial opposition, could hardly fail to have a positive effect on the prevailing public estimation of the treaty. Indeed, one can scarcely find a summary of the settlement that does not quote at least one of the many apt phrases he used to describe it. He placed the greatest stress on the qualities not of the treaties themselves but rather of the process through which they came into being. Fifty-seven per cent of the attributes he ascribed to the settlement were political in nature, and 32 per cent were moral; a quite similar proportion referred to the treaty-making process as against the treaties themselves. He seems thus to have tried hardest to convey the idea that the peace settlement was good and would endure because of certain political qualities that characterized its creation, such as the "representativeness" of the nations involved and the non-coercive character of their consultations. In addition to his international orientation, in other words, Mr. Dulles displayed a descriptive, procedural orientation that was not likely to stir up argumentation; in this fashion he may have helped to mobilize widespread agreement around the basic and relatively non-controversial aspects of the settlement. MR. DULLES' ABILITY TO DIFFERENTIATE AUDIENCES Mr. Dulles displayed in his public handling of the Japanese peace settlement an exceptional ability to differentiate his audiences —that is, to see the unique and important features of any group that condition its acceptance of ideas, and then to communicate with it in terms of those special features. This requires two different talents: first, being able to recognize and distinguish those identify­ ing marks which in the context of a given issue set any group apart from other groups; and second, knowing how to speak to the groups thus distinguished in ways calculated to satisfy both their unique interests and the concerns they may share with others. Full and effective differentiation of politically significant audi-

JOHN FOSTER DULLES

ences is exceedingly difficult in the United States today, for the media of mass communication can instantly transform a particular audience into a national or an international one, revealing in the process whatever inconsistencies and contradictions may be read into the messages to different groups. Yet there are times when it is possible to differentiate audiences more or less successfully—for example, when the issue or the person involved does not command heavy coverage by the media, or when the differences in the com­ munications directed at the several groups are of rather limited importance. When these or similar conditions obtain, the break-up of a mass, undifferentiated audience into a number of separate, individualized parts can be a vehicle for the mobilization of agree­ ment. In the case of the Japanese peace settlement, both Mr. Dulles and the treaty were overshadowed in importance by the Korean War, and variations in his communications from group to group attracted little attention because they involved not contradictions but simply differences in emphasis. These differences were ap­ parently designed to help gain the consent or support of separate, politically important groupings; and the magnitude of the support that was actually won from disparate sources indicates that they were of considerable assistance. Because Mr. Dulles was able to speak with confidence to people in the language of their own in­ terests, his ability to obtain agreement on the treaty policy was greatly enhanced. Let us consider now two of the most important distinctions which Mr. Dulles seems to have drawn among his audiences. The content of his addresses reveals a clear differentiation between foreign and domestic audiences, and, further, within the domestic audience he made a sharp distinction between Senators and non-governmental groups. Foreign vs. Domestic Audiences Differences in the emphasis Mr. Dulles gave to his leading ideas at home and abroad suggest that he thought foreign opinion might be best stimulated by themes of international political significance, while American audiences would be more likely to respond to direct communication that underplayed the political in favor of the pro­ cedural and the moral or philosophical. (See Table XII.) In his foreign addresses, Mr. Dulles placed the greatest emphasis on topics of political importance; most of what he had to say abroad concerned the new face of international relations at mid-century,

a None recorded. b Less than half of 1 per cent.

Policy and security considerations U.S. security Threat from Soviet and Communist world Security in non-U.S. areas Collective security and alliances Japanese sovereignty: EfiFects on free world security Economic and financial considerations Japan's economy and trade Burden of reparations on Japan Foreign policy comment and criticism Comment on Allies and other countries Desirable U.S. foreign policy Attributes of the settlement Moral Political Treaty Treaty-making The "New Japan" Japan's good faith A constructive role for Japan

Theme

39% 1% 11 12 2 5 10 4 5 14 6 5 14 6 7 5 8 6 2 2

% of Total Domestic (2,307 Lines)

SELECTED TOPICS AS PER CENT OF TOTALS

64% 6% 16 17 10 9 8 6 —b 5 2 3 6 1 4 3.5 1.5 9 —b 6

% of Total Foreign (1,738 Lines)

Comparison of Dulles' Speeches to Foreign and Domestic Audiences

TABLE XII

34% —a 4 16 2 3 18 7 10 5 —a —a 11 —a 9 2 7 5 —a 1

% of San Francisco (683 Lines)

JOHN FOSTER DULLES

particularly as it looked in the Pacific. Almost two-thirds of these speeches dealt with policy and security considerations posed by and for the treaty, and much of the remainder played upon related questions concerning the future roles of Japan and the United States in Asia and elsewhere. At home, however, Mr. Dulles tended to stay away from many politically relevant topics which were be­ coming controversial on the American political scene. While he paid some attention (39 per cent) to the basic problem of security in the Pacific against a growing Communist threat, his words at home were more evenly distributed than they were abroad among his various themes, so that the politically important topics were bal­ anced by attractive moral expressions of faith and trust. "Collective security and alliances," which occupied one-tenth of his talks abroad, received only 2 per cent of his attention at home, where the idea of such international arrangements was subject to attack by a few members of Mr. Dulles' own political party. And "United States security" was barely mentioned in explicit terms in this country, although it received 6 per cent of his attention abroad. In contrast, Mr. Dulles asked his countrymen to put their trust in Japan's good faith, and he told them how impossible it was to ask the Japanese to shoulder a major reparations burden—both of which topics he carefully avoided abroad, talking there at greater length about Japan's future as an economic, political, and cultural leader in Asia. The differences in Mr. Dulles' approach to domestic and foreign audiences are well summarized in the emphasis given to "Attributes of the settlement," and to the particular topics which comprise that theme. The theme as a whole was much more heavily stressed at home than it was abroad. For their part, the American people heard mention of moral and political attributes in about equal amounts, while the foreign audiences heard four times as much about the political qualities of the settlement as about its moral virtues. Furthermore, most of what was said abroad by way of characterizing the settlement referred to the substance of the treaty itself, while Americans heard much more that was descriptive of the processes by which the treaty was made. Mr. Dulles spoke twice on the treaty at the Japanese Peace Con­ ference in San Francisco. The emphasis he gave to various themes there more closely resembles the distribution in his domestic speeches than in his foreign ones. This suggests that Mr. Dulles, con­ fronted not only by an opera house full of foreign delegates but also by a national television network and some 1,000 reporters and

JOHN FOSTER DULLES

correspondents, chose to address himself to the domestic part of his audience—a wise decision since the processes of ratification in this country had only just begun. Senators vs. Other Domestic Audiences Mr. Dulles spoke privately to members of the United States Senate with great frequency while he had charge of the Japanese peace treaty, but he addressed them formally and publicly on only one occasion. This was in the form of a statement to the Foreign Relations Committee during the hearings on the settlement, and it came after many months of private talks with the same Senators. Inadequate though this sample of Mr. Dulles' Senate-directed com­ munication may be, it nevertheless offers a clue to the way he sought to approach the Senate as a group possessing quite different interests in and methods of reacting to common problems from those of other domestic groups of a public character. (See Table XIII.) TABLE XIII

Comparison of Dulles' Speeches to Senators and to Other Domestic Audiences SELECTED THEMES AS PER CENT OF TOTALS

Theme

Policy and security considerations The "New Japan" The two Chinas Attributes of the settlement Foreign policy comment and criticism Economic and financial considerations Architects of the treaty

% of Hearings Statement (372 lines)

% of All Other Domestic (1,935 lines)

32% 22 16 4 11 8 6

40% 2 1 16 15 11 3

99%

88%

In his statement to the Committee, Mr. Dulles emphasized heavily a set of topics which he apparently felt would help to make a case for the treaty among Senators, while his arguments to a wider public have a different stamp. For example, virtually all of his domestic discussion of the competing positions of the Nationalist and Communist governments of China with respect to the peace treaty took place before the Senate Committee; one is led to believe, as a consequence, that Mr. Dulles regarded the China dispute as an issue of Executive-Legislative political relations rather than as a

JOHN FOSTER DULLES

problem involving general public opinion. Another point of differ­ ence is also suggestive. By his public emphasis on treaty attributes, Mr. Dulles seemed to be saying to the general public, "Here is the result of our negotiations—a settlement you can trust." To the Senate, however, which was by instinct inclined to be wary of Executive claims, Mr. Dulles seemed instead to be saying—in his heavy stress on the "New Japan"—"You can put your trust in the Japanese to live up to our new expectations." More than half (54 per cent) of his comments on the "New Japan" before the Senate group were on the particular subject of "Japan's good faith." CONCLUSION John Foster Dulles has enjoyed an excellent and wholly deserved reputation for having in a short period of time woven countless strands of political difference at home and abroad into a relatively tidy and apparently strong fabric of policy agreement in the Pacific. There can be no question that his was a special kind of accomplish­ ment; it certainly was not a performance typical or representative of American foreign policy-making at that juncture in our history. We have sought in this chapter to examine some of the more obvious personal qualities which Mr. Dulles brought to the treaty enter­ prise, qualities which distinguished him from other policy-makers and which seem to account for at least part of his success. There may well be other important personal factors involved here which have not received adequate attention or recognition; but their identification and evaluation would be part of the insights that might come from a comprehensive, comparative analysis of personal diplomacy in a variety of settings. By the very nature of the case, however, it is clear that Mr. Dulles alone did not create all the conditions that made the treaty accom­ plishment possible. Indeed, to secure the kind of consensus that marked the peace settlement it is obviously not enough just to have appropriate talents and intentions in the Executive branch alone. The experience of the peace settlement points to the indispensable role of the Congress in helping to create the conditions of substantial public agreement on policy matters. Now let us see how the Con­ gress treated the settlement, making such agreement possible.

PART

IV

Tke Congress

Ckapter 8 THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS The importance of the Foreign Relations Committee in the mak­ ing of American foreign policy has been recognized since its estab­ lishment in 1816 as paramount among the standing committees of the Senate. The Committee's role in the process of foreign policy­ making has both formal and informal aspects, each of them of sufficient importance to affect in a major way the character of the policy being determined. The formal powers of the Committee, and the informal influence that it may wield from time to time, depend­ ing on the problems it confronts or on the men who are its members, have been the objects of an institutional and historical analysis.1 The case of the Japanese peace settlement shows in a new way how much the Committee, merely by the way it participates in the policy­ making process, can do to shape that process and thus contribute to the final policy product. Before discussing this essentially political role of the Foreign Relations Committee, however, some mention should first be made of two relatively new institutional features which make the Committee today a little different from what it used to be. NEW FEATURES OF THE COMMITTEE The first of these features is the system of consultative subcom­ mittees established in 1950 to facilitate the exchange of views be­ tween the State Department and the Committee.2 To overcome the difficulties involved in trying to arrange sustained consultations between the Department and the full Committee on the entire range of policy problems, a number of subcommittees were created gen­ erally paralleling the operating divisions of the State Department. Thus there are subcommittees on United Nations Affairs, Economic and Social Policy Affairs, State Department Organization, Public Affairs, American Republics Affairs, Near Eastern and African Affairs, European Affairs, and Far Eastern Affairs. It was the last-named, 1 Eleanor E. Dennison, The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 1942. For a brief "inside" treatment, see Alexander Wiley, "The Committee on Foreign Relations," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 289, September 1953, "Congress and Foreign Relations," pp. 58-65. 2 See Wiley, op.cit., pp. 62-63.

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made up of Senators Smith of New Jersey, Hickenlooper, and George, with Senator Sparkman as chairman, which represented the Foreign Relations Committee in numerous consultations with Mr. Dulles from start to finish of the treaty project. An indication of the importance which the State Department and the Foreign Relations Committee itself quickly attached to the Far Eastern Affairs Subcommittee may be found both in the oppor­ tunities its members were given to participate in the development of the treaty, and also in the efforts which were made to turn some of those members into Far Eastern specialists at a time when there already were a number of Senators with claims or pretensions to such a title. Senator Sparkman, the chairman of the Subcommittee, and Senator Smith, the ranking minority member, traveled exten­ sively in the Far East, sometimes in the company of Mr. Dulles but other times alone in areas where Mr. Dulles had no immediate treaty business. They were instrumental, as we shall see, in per­ suading Premier Yoshida to state his intention not to sign a peace treaty with Communist China. These two Senators together were responsible for more than 40 per cent of everything that was said during the hearings on the peace settlement by members of the Committee; they were also the Committee's spokesmen in the Senate during the ratification debate, carrying the burden of debate after a formal introduction by Senators Connally and Wiley, the chairman and the ranking minority member of the full Committee, respectively. Furthermore, the four members of the Subcommittee went to the Peace Conference in San Francisco as alternate dele­ gates; and in the absence of Committee Chairman Connally, Sub­ committee Chairman Sparkman put his signature on both the Peace Treaty and the Security Treaty with Australia and New Zealand. The second feature which has changed the face of the Foreign Relations Committee is the excellent staff it has acquired since the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946. Headed by Dr. Francis O. Wilcox, the staff has given continuous and able service to a Com­ mittee which since that date has several times changed its party leadership and practically renewed its whole membership.3 The Japanese peace treaty, no more or less than any other major foreign policy issue in these years, bears witness to the professional, non­ partisan spirit which has motivated Dr. Wilcox and his colleagues, and which seems to have passed in considerable measure from them 8 In 1955, Dr. Wilcox left the Committee staff to become Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs.

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to the Committee members themselves. Dr. Wilcox was frequently the bridge between the Department of State and the Committee members, reinforcing by his own ability to interpret the language and interests of both the professional and the politician the similar talent of Mr. Dulles. THE COMMITTEE'S INFLUENCE ON THE TREATY-MAKING PROCESS The intimate cooperation between Democrat John Sparkman and Republican H. Alexander Smith on the Far Eastern Subcommittee, together with the non-partisan character of the full Committee's staff, symbolizes the political role of the Foreign Relations Com­ mittee in the process of policy-making on the Japanese peace settle­ ment. The Committee shared with that part of the American people who displayed any interest in the subject a sense of urgency over the Communist threat in the Far East, and a feeling that something should be done to protect Japan while ending the anomaly of an occupation. Yet bipartisanship had been grievously injured in that same region of the world only a short time before, and it was still problematical whether it would recover, remain severely maimed, or die a slow death. The several members of the Committee, par­ ticularly the Republicans, might have been refractory on the ques­ tion of a Japanese peace treaty, perceiving its necessity but reluctant to forego the possibility of gaining partisan political advantage from it. Yet to their great credit, the members of the Committee— indeed, the political leadership of the Senate in both parties—went hand in hand with John Foster Dulles on the Japanese treaty issue, following the pattern of bipartisan agreement that had marked American policy toward Japan under General MacArthur's occupa­ tion. This cooperative attitude and its practical consequences were of great import for the political climate in which the settlement subsequently matured. The Foreign Relations Committee did not create the body of public agreement on the peace settlement, but it did much to pre­ serve and extend it, including the maintenance of a steadfast re­ sistance against concerted efforts to destroy that sense of confidence in persons and in motives which underlies consensus on policy issues. There is, as Stephen K. Bailey has written, a curtain that ordinarily keeps the general public, and even some of the attentive few, from knowing the details in the drama of Congressional policy-

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making.4 In this particular case, the curtain obscured not only the details but also the political nature of policy-making. In almost every phase of the Committee's work up to the ratification debates, the settlement was publicly handled as if it were a non-political and non-controversial issue, although it was not always so regarded privately. This behavior of the Foreign Relations Committee, by catering to the belief that there was little that one might question about the treaty, undoubtedly helped to sustain and confirm the sense of agreement among the interested public, and particularly among those in the press, in organized interest groups, and in other politically oriented positions who take policy cues from the words and actions of party leaders in the Congress; and by so doing it removed for almost everyone except the most unrelenting opponents of prevailing American foreign policy the need or occasion to engage in any real argumentation.5 In this way, the Foreign Relations Com­ mittee must have exerted a very large influence—although ad­ mittedly it is not now measurable—on the kind of political process which grew up around the treaty issue. The Committee's efforts to avoid controversy over the peace settle­ ment may be seen in that body's performance during three different stages of policy-making activity: the period of Executive formula­ tion, the period of Committee consideration, and the period of preparation for ratification. PHASE I: PARTICIPATION IN TREATY FORMULATION The Foreign Relations Committee was actively, though quietly, involved in the formulation and negotiation phase of the peace settlement soon after it began. That involvement was directly sought in January 1951, by Mr. Dulles,® in order to increase the prospects for an easy Senate acceptance of the settlement. That their participa­ tion was inconspicuous, however, was due to the members of the Committee themselves, who nearly always chose the private rather than the public method of expressing to Mr. Dulles and his aides 4 Stephen K. Bailey, Congress Makes a Law: The Story Behind the Employment Act of 1946, New York, Columbia University Press, 1950, p. vii. 5 In her column in the New York Times on August 20, 1951, just four days before Senator Jenner attacked the settlement in the Senate, Mrs. Anne O'Hare McCormick noted: "The near-unanimity of American support for the Japanese peace treaty is in striking contrast to the sputtering disputes on other issues of foreign policy. . . . On our Atlantic and Pacific policy there are many divergent views between the major parties and within the parties. But if there is opposition to the Japanese treaty, it has not made itself heard." β John J. Sparkman, "Notes on the Japanese Peace Treaty," Journal of Public Law, Emory University Law School, Vol. i, No. 1, Spring 1952, pp. 111-12.

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whatever critical ideas they may have had. This does not mean that there was no open controversy among members of the Senate, but rather that no expressions of hostility and few of disagreement came from the Foreign Relations Committee, the body to which many people, including Senators, are accustomed to turn for au­ thoritative knowledge of foreign policy in the Senate. The Foreign Relations Committee met with Mr. Dulles ten times during the preparation of the Japanese peace settlement. Nine of these meetings were with the Far Eastern Subcommittee, and one was with the full Committee. These meetings were often held at breakfast in order to fit into the Senators' heavy schedules. Mr. Dulles' habit was to consult the Subcommittee, as well as other important Senators, both before and after a major step in the negotiations. Significant aspects of the negotiations would be dis­ cussed beforehand, in order to apprise the Senators of a contem­ plated course of action, and to hear their opinions and record their suggestions. These were not formalized "briefing sessions"; Mr. Dulles often came to the meetings with alternative proposals that he presented for discussion. The Subcommittee, furthermore, was diligent in its attendance because its chairman, Senator Sparkman, and Mr. Dulles were agreed on the necessity for cooperative action, and because the members of the Subcommittee could see their sug­ gestions being translated into concrete proposals that were often accepted.7 After each phase of the negotiations was completed, Mr. Dulles would report almost immediately to the subcommittee, informing the members of what had transpired. When the talks had been conducted abroad, he would meet with the Subcommittee within one or, at the most, two days of his return to this country. There was never any question of these Senators' being formally committed to a course of action as a result of their exchanges with Mr. Dulles; nevertheless the informal commitment was not insignifi­ cant. The Subcommittee members were kept well informed and had almost continuous opportunities to pass their ideas on to Mr. Dulles. Senator Sparkman later made the claim in the Senate in the course of the ratification debate, "I may say that every step taken in the formulation of this treaty was by unanimous agreement by the four members of the Subcommittee, two Democrats and two T "The compromise statement omitting China from the Peace Conference and allowing Japan to make her choice was the outgrowth of a suggestion made by a member of our Subcommittee in the course of one of these meetings." Ibid., p. 112.

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Republicans."8 Inevitably these acts of involvement encouraged Mr. Dulles in the belief that the course he was taking met with the approval of the Foreign Relations Committee and would later earn its support. After the treaties were drafted, members of the Subcommittee were more willing to be openly identified with them, thus giving a preview of their attitude on the subject of ratification. Service by the Subcommittee members on the American delegation to the San Francisco Conference has already been mentioned. Having shared in that experience, and having stood for a brief moment in the spotlight of acclaim that greeted the work of the Conference, the Senators were more than ever disposed to regard the treaty as a very attractive foreign policy measure. To make it even more de­ sirable, though, particularly for some of their colleagues in the Senate, Senators Sparkman and Smith joined Mr. Dulles in Tokyo to try to persuade the Japanese Premier to make an explicit state­ ment disavowing any intention to treat diplomatically with the Communist regime in China. Their success in this endeavor nar­ rowed even further the area of controversy among Senators not on the Committee. The "Yoshida Letter" The attempt by Mr. Dulles and the two Subcommittee members to elicit such a statement from Mr. Yoshida was the culmination of months of disquiet among many Senators over the prospect of a Japanese liaison with Communist China. The opposition of the Senate to the Communist government of China was of course no secret to anyone, including the Japanese Prime Minister. To over­ come a road block impeding the progress of the peace settlement, Mr. Dulles had reached an agreement in June 1951 with Herbert Morrison, British Foreign Secretary, according to which there would be no Chinese signature on the multilateral treaty of peace—a neces­ sary compromise since neither the United States, which recognized the Nationalist government of China, nor Britain, which recognized the Communist government, was prepared fully to yield its position. The two statesmen further left it to a sovereign and independent Japan to determine her own future attitude toward China, and particularly to reach her own decision as to the Chinese government with which she wanted eventually to sign a bilateral peace treaty along the Hnes of the multilateral instrument. 8 Congressional Record, Vol. 98, No. 43, March 17, 1952, p. 2409. This claim was somewhat exaggerated: for an exception, see pp. 249-50 below.

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This accord with the British disturbed a number of Senators who were not persuaded that Japan's free choice on the China issue would coincide with American self-interest, and who wished to have more positive signs that Japan's foreign relations would not run counter to our own policies in the Far East. Sometime in August, therefore, before the Peace Conference convened, Mr. Dulles was reported to have conferred with several Senators, among them Bridges, Knowland, McCarran, and Hickenlooper of the Far Eastern Subcommittee, and to have assured them that after the Conference the Japanese would immediately conclude a separate, bilateral, peace treaty with the Nationalist regime.9 The Yoshida government had indeed been disposed to make peace with the Nationalist government; nevertheless, as a result of these expressions of Senatorial concern Mr. Dulles was moved to suggest that the Japanese government take steps, such as the immediate establish­ ment of overseas agency relations—the highest form of diplomatic relations Japan was then permitted to have with a foreign power— with the Chinese Nationalist government, in order to give a public impression corresponding to its private intention. But the Japanese did not establish those relations with Formosa until November; thus the Japanese Peace Conference was held without Chinese attendance, and with no authoritative indication, other than that contained in Mr. Dulles' private assurances, of which Chinese gov­ ernment Japan would eventually deal with. Immediately after the Conference there came, not the promised treaty between Japan and Nationalist China, but instead a formal eruption of Senatorial anxiety about the delay. On September 12, 1951, 56 members of the Senate—more than enough to defeat any treaty—signed the following letter addressed to the President: "As Members of the United States Senate, we are opposed to the recognition of Communist China by the Government of the United States or its admission to the United Nations. "Prior to the submission of the Japanese Treaty to the Senate, we desire to make it clear that we would consider the recognition of Communist China by Japan or the negotiating of a bilateral treaty with the Communist Chinese regime to be adverse to the best interests of the people of both Japan and the United States."10 9

See New York Times, August 31, 1951, p. 3. Congressional Record, Vol. 98, No. 42, March 14, 1952, p. 2363. According to a contemporary account, Senator Knowland collected this many signatures rapidly and made the letter public immediately in order to bring it to the attention of the British and French Foreign Ministers, who were then in Washington. See New York Times, September 14, 1951, p. 3. 10

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Neither the President nor Mr. Dulles could remain indifferent to the implications of this letter; Mr. Dulles in particular did not wel­ come the prospect of a major battle over ratification. Yet neither could they ignore the agreement that had been reached with the British, according to which Japan would herself determine her policy toward China. This was the dilemma which Senator Smith and Senator Sparkman helped Mr. Dulles to resolve in Tokyo at the end of the year. In late November and in early December, the two Senators and Mr. Dulles made their way separately to the Far East. This was Senator Sparkman's first trip to the Far East, and so he went ahead of the others in order to visit more of the countries in that part of the world. He was joined in Formosa by Senator Smith, and together they went to Korea and then to Japan, where they met Mr. Dulles. The two Senators, in conference with Mr. Yoshida, informed the Japanese Prime Minister that ratification of the peace treaty, and its implementation in a way favorable to Japan, would face serious difficulties unless the Japanese government made it clear that its foreign policies in Asia and particularly its China policy would be compatible with United States policies. Mr. Dulles then explored the subject further with Premier Yoshida, who confirmed his gov­ ernment's intention not to conclude a bilateral treaty of peace with the Commxmist regime, and indicated that he desired to re-establish peace with the Nationalist government of China. The two Senators did not need to put direct or heavy pressure on Mr. Yoshida; they had simply to report to him the facts of political life in the United States Senate. After hearing what Mr. Yoshida had to say, the two Senators suggested that the substance of his remarks would be very useful in the Senate hearings on the peace treaty. Later, on Christmas eve, after the three Americans had left his country, the Japanese Prime Minister wrote of his government's intentions in a letter to Mr. Dulles. In the hope that he might per­ suade the British to concur in his action, Mr. Dulles did not make the letter public for several weeks. But when it became apparent that the British were fixed in their view that the agreement between Dulles and Morrison had been violated by the talk with Yoshida, Mr. Dulles released the Japanese Premier's letter to the press and public; he did this on January 16, 1952, five days before the start of the hearings in the Foreign Relations Committee. The effort by the members of the Subcommittee was successful, in that the "Yoshida letter" accomplished its purpose. The excite-

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ment in the Senate was allayed to such an extent that the subject of Japan's future political relations with China was hardly discussed in the hearings. It occupied only 1 per cent of the proceedings of the first two days, during which the Administration witnesses presented their case and were interrogated by the Committee members.11 The Senators contributed only a third of this small amount of discussion, all in the form of questions from Senator Watkins, Republican of Utah, who was not even a member of the Committee. The questions were read by the late Senator Tobey, who specifically disclaimed authorship and even prefaced his reading of them with the view that "It is inconceivable to me that any Member of the Senate could cast a vote against the ratification of these treaties."12 The rest of the discussion came from Mr. Dulles, who mentioned the subject briefly in his opening statement to the Committee, and later answered Senator Watkins' questions. In the ratification debate itself, the "Yoshida letter" received even less attention, the topic occupying under 1 per cent of the whole debate. Closely related topics, which had not been mentioned at all in the hearings, brought the larger discussion of Japan's political relations with China up to 2 per cent of the total. And about 90 per cent of this brief discussion was contributed by members of the Foreign Relations Committee. An interesting sidelight of this aspect of the Senate debate relates to the tone in which it was carried on. Senator Smith and Senator Sparkman, the major dis­ cussants, seemed to be on the defensive; they kept insisting that their activities in Tokyo at the time the "Yoshida letter" was con­ ceived did not constitute "pressure" on the Japanese government. They were even disturbed at the notion that "persuasion" was in­ volved, although some confusion was displayed on that score. In his treatment of the subject, Senator Sparkman remarked, "Much has been said in the press to the effect that the three of us went there to persuade the Prime Minister of Japan and his Government to recognize Nationalist China. I submit that we did nothing of the kind."18 Moments later Senator Smith intervened to confirm what Sparkman had said, although in the process he contradicted him: "There was no attempt in any way to hold them at the point of a 11 The hearings occupied four days altogether; the first two were concerned with establishing the Administration's position, and the last two were given over to testi­ mony from private citizens. Only the first two days of the hearings were analyzed quantitatively; thus any mention of the "total hearings" refers to the full discussion of both Administration witnesses and Senators on the first two days. 14 Hearings on the Japanese Peace Treaty, p. 16. 13 Congressional Record, Vol. 98, No. 43, March 17, 1952, p. 2409.

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gun and say, Ή you do not do this, we will not do anything at all to help you.' The whole procedure was one of persuasion."14 This awkward defense of their position must have been aimed at the British, who were publicly displeased with what had been done,15 rather than at their fellow Senators, many of whom would surely not have objected to the exertion of a little pressure to get such a statement from the Japanese Premier. PHASE II: THE PERIOD OF COMMITTEE CONSIDERATION As soon as the 82nd Congress convened for its second session in early January 1952, the President submitted the Japanese peace treaty and the Pacific security treaties to the Senate. The Senate, as is its custom, referred them to the Foreign Relations Committee, and the Committee, moving rapidly, scheduled public hearings for the 21st of January. Despite this speed, no sense of urgency was displayed; on the contrary, the Committee proceeded very quietly and calmly, in the apparent hope that it would not awaken some of the opposition groups which had seemingly dozed off in the lull since the Peace Conference. From the Committee's point of view it made sense to rush the hearings a bit in this way, since the proceedings would be only a formality anyway. The Committee members were already fully apprised of the Executive's position, they knew that there was almost unanimous press support and extensive approval by articulate public groups, and they believed that most of the Senators were in favor of the treaties. As long as almost everyone who seemed to matter most, including themselves, was agreed on the desirability of ratification at the earliest prac­ ticable date, the Senators on the Committee could have seen little point in prolonging the hearings, particularly if the delay would give the extremist groups, who were virtually the only ones hostile to the peace settlement, a chance to organize their opposition. Hearings in a Minor Key

This "minor key" approach characterized the Committee hearings 14

Ibid., p. 2410. for example, the New York Times account on January 31, 1952, of Churchill's and Eden's reports to the House of Commons following their January visit to the United States: "Earlier, answering a barrage of questions concerning the offer of Japanese Premier Shigeru Yoshida of recognition to the Chiang regime, Mr. Eden asserted it was still the view of the British Government that the question of which Chinese Government to recognize should be left entirely to Japan after ratification of the peace treaty. The Foreign Secretary said he had sought unsuccessfully to induce the United States Government to accept the British view." 15 See,

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as a whole. In the first place, the Administration offered, and the Committee accepted, a minimum defense of its position, resting essentially on the testimony of one person. There were only three Administration witnesses who appeared in person before the Com­ mittee to testify. These were Mr. Dulles, Secretary of State Acheson, and General Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who at the last minute substituted for Defense Secretary Robert Lovett. Mr. Acheson spoke first, presenting a brief and general state­ ment to introduce the treaties; he was not interrogated, and his entire contribution amounted to 5 per cent of the total hearings.16 General Bradley brought with him a letter from Secretary Lovett recommending the adoption of the treaties, which was entered into the record, but the General himself did not have a prepared state­ ment. His extemporaneous remarks and his answers to questions together comprised barely 3 per cent of the total. The bulk of the two days' testimony came from Mr. Dulles, who in his statement and his responses to questions took up more than three-fifths of the hearings—about twice as much, in fact, as all the Senators together. Considering the importance of the policies involved, in the security treaties no less than in the peace treaty, this was by no means a marshaling of Administration strength. By comparison, six members of the Administration testified and submitted statements to the Committee when it was considering the North Atlantic Treaty, and even this was a relatively small number compared to the twelve who supported Reciprocal Trade renewal in 1949, or the fourteen who testified on behalf of the E.C.A. when it came up for its first renewal.17 Secondly, the Senators generally did their best to make the experi­ ence an easy one for the Administration witnesses, avoiding public disagreement with them and trying at the same time to give the impression that there were few or no grounds on which one could argue for extended delay in ratification or even for rejection of the treaties. There appeared to be an implicit set of ground rules agreed to by almost everybody according to which no questions likely to prove embarrassing would be asked. Most of the questions, in fact, seemed to be set up in such a way as to give Mr. Dulles excellent opportunities to make his major points, and he always cheerfully obliged. For example, Senator Smith at one point said to Mr. Dulles: 16 See

footnote 11, this chapter. The data on these three cases were gathered by members of the Graduate Research Seminar of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, during 1951-52. 17

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"I am asked constantly by people who have read this peace treaty with Japan why we failed to limit armaments of Japan. "I think you have already discussed the issue of the sovereignty of Japan. Do you have any further comment to make on the omission in the treaty of any limitations whatever on armaments of the Japa­ nese people in light of the fact that there has been criticism of Japan's being militaristic and so on? "I think that we should have the record perfectly clear on that point, and the reason for omitting that."18 Mr. Dulles gave an extensive reply, explaining his reasons for be­ lieving that a "practical limitation of Japan's offensive capacity was better achieved through working arrangements with Japan than by attempting to prescribe rigidly in a peace treaty what the situation should be."19 When he finished, Senator Smith told him, "I think that is a very good statement and will answer many people who will say, 'Well, if they don't plan to arm, how are they going to defend themselves in case they are attacked? We can't defend them in­ definitely.' You have indicated it will be through the collective security to be developed there."20 Sometimes the questions which the Senators asked of Administra­ tion witnesses inadvertently led into areas of controversy, exposing for a moment the still-raw nerve ends of a policy dispute. Generally, when this happened, the line of questioning was brought to a quick close, before the real substance of the disagreement was drawn into public view. The first such moment arose almost immediately after Mr. Dulles had finished reading his prepared statement to the Committee, on the opening day of the hearings, January 21. Senator George, possi­ bly reflecting the views of the columnist Walter Lippmann, whose article that morning in the Washington Post had raised the same question, asked General Bradley, "Will the conclusion of the peace treaty with Japan interfere with practical military operations in Korea assuming that a cease-fire and end to hostilities is not reached?"21 In his reply General Bradley revealed the outlines of a dispute of major proportions between the Defense Department and the State Department; first, he stated the opinion of the military that "the treaty itself might interfere with these operations unless the administrative agreement goes into effect at the same time."22 is Hearings on the Japanese Peace Treaty, p. 52. is Ibid., p. 52. 20 Ibid., p. 53. 21 ibid., p. 15. 22 Ibid., p. 15. The Administrative Agreement was to establish the conditions under

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Then, in response to a direct question from Senator Green, General Bradley indicated that his advice would be for the Committee or the Senate not to take action on the treaties until the Administrative Agreement was completed.23 At that point the Senators dropped the subject, and called on Mr. Dulles to answer a series of questions which had been submitted by Senator Watkins, a Republican who was not a member of the Committee. Mr. Dulles was visibly upset by this turn of events, however; obviously regarding the General as out of bounds in publicly raising the issue of a delay in ratifica­ tion, he interrupted the new line of questioning to make the point that, since there would in any case be enough of a delay before the treaty came into force to allow the Administrative Agreement to be concluded, the Senate was justified in taking immediate action on the treaties.24 After that the subject of the Administrative Agree­ ment was brought up only once more; Senator Sparkman, after getting General Bradley to admit that he did not "anticipate any undue delay" in completing it, then informed the Committee that a subcommittee would meet at four o'clock that afternoon to discuss the Administrative Agreement.25 The subject was thus effectively transferred from the public hearings into the privacy of a subcom­ mittee session. On the second day of the hearings there was another fleeting moment of tension, as Senator Green tried to get from Mr. Dulles his opinion on whether this country had a moral obligation to aid Japanese security by supplying financial assistance. The question seemed to be embarrassing to Mr. Dulles, who tried to answer it by talking about concrete understandings and the open nature of United States policy toward Japan. The Senator would have none of this, though, and he succeeded in eliciting from Mr. Dulles the opinion that there would be a moral obligation to aid Japan if her economy should require it as a result of following policies consonant with American views. The implication was softened, however, and the subject closed by the Rhode Island Senator when he finally phrased his question this way: "Do I understand you to say the moral obligation would be only such and to the same extent as would be the case with any other nation?" To which Mr. Dulles replied, somewhat gratefully it seemed, "Yes, sir."26 which American troops would function in Japan after the occupation had ended, and the peace treaty and security pact between the United States and Japan were in force. 28 Ibid., p. 16. 24 Ibid., p. 16. 25 Ibid., pp. 25-26. 28 Ibid., pp. 54-55.

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A final example of the way in which controversial issues were swept under the rug of private committee sessions concerns the treaty provision, Article 2(c), requiring Japan to renounce all right, title, and claim to the Kurile Islands and to that part of Sakhalin and adjacent islands over which Japan acquired sovereignty in 1905. In August 1951, two weeks before the Peace Conference in San Francisco, Senator Watkins in a speech on the Senate floor an­ nounced his intention to propose a reservation to the Japanese peace treaty to the effect that ratification of the treaty implied no ratifica­ tion of the Yalta Agreement of 1945, and no endorsement by the United States Senate of Japan's cession to Russia of the Kurile Islands and Southern Sakhalin and its adjacent islands. The Senator followed up his interest in this subject with letters in September to General Bradley and Mr. Dulles, and with a few questions to be asked Administration witnesses during the Committee hearings. The Senator's intentions were thus no secret to the Executive and Legislative figures involved. But despite these early warnings, Httle was said on the subject in the public hearings. Only 3 per cent of the total discussion in the hearings referred generally to the Potsdam and Yalta Agreements, and particularly to the problem of the disposition of the Kuriles and South Sakhalin. No mention was made during the hearings of the possibility that Senator Watkins would attempt to attach a reservation to the peace treaty. Two weeks later, however, Chairman ConnalIy broke the silence by an­ nouncing that the Committee members had unanimously agreed on a reservation which, as we shall see, was so in line with the Utah Senator's own ideas that he declared himself "completely satisfied" with it.27 The easy pace of questioning, even to the point of shunting potential controversies aside, reflected, as in fact did the relaxed and intimate tone of the proceedings, the true state of affairs on the Committee: the Senators had covered all of this ground before, and were patiently but carefully going over it again only because a "record" was needed. It was, in this sense, a public performance rather than a public hearing, with the actors quite well rehearsed, and only a few lines muffed. A third sign of the studied air of casualness in the Committee's approach to the settlement appeared in the lack of prior publicity on the hearings. To a certain extent, the absence of advance notifica­ tion may have been an aspect of the poverty of coverage in the 27

See the Congressional Record, Vol. 98, No. 46, March 20, 1952, pp. 2619-26.

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media of mass communication, which in turn may have reflected an editorial belief that since there was no political controversy as­ sociated with the development of the peace settlement, the Com­ mittee hearings would be of little interest to the American people. The prevailing indifference is attested to not only by the public opinion polls, but also by the reception actually accorded the hear­ ings themselves. The number of people who attended them, not very high to begin with, dropped each successive day of the hearings despite the accumulation of newspaper accounts of the proceedings. On the opening day of the hearings, when a spectator might have expected to see some Administration notables, there were more than 100 people, mostly women, in the audience. On the second day, attendance dropped to about 40, but the number of men was greater than on the first day. About half of these appeared to be students and there was a sprinkling of military uniforms among the rest. On the third and fourth days, spectator attendance dwindled to a handful. Granting a genuine lack of public interest, however, it still seems that no attempt was made to publicize the hearings in advance, an obvious move if the Administration or Congressional leaders had been interested in attracting public notice. On the tenth of January 1952, President Truman sent the Japanese peace treaty and the Pacific security treaties to the Senate; it was reported in the press the next day that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was expected to meet during the following week and plan hearings on the treaties.28 When the Committee met, it scheduled the hearings to begin on January 21, only a few days off. The hearings were listed in customary fashion among the Senate's business along with other official proceedings in Washington for that day, but before they began no prominent figure either in the Senate or in the Department of State spoke publicly about them in such a way as to turn a sparse announcement into a news story. The Foreign Relations Committee and the interested personnel of the State Department did more than hope for a brief hearing; they expected it and planned on it. Initially, only three consecutive days were set aside for the hearings, and it was announced at the end of the first day, a Monday, that time would be arranged on Wednesday for those private witnesses who had asked to testify and who gave their names to the Committee clerk by Tuesday noon. The questioning of Administration witnesses ended Tuesday, on sched28 James

Reston, New York Times, January 11, 1952.

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ule, and the hearings started again the next morning with the pal­ pable expectation that they would end before lunch. But it rapidly became evident, as the testimony of several witnesses stretched on, that more time would be needed. And so a fourth day of hearings was quickly arranged for Friday, January 25, and Presiding Senator George announced that "all witnesses will then be heard that have not been reached."29 This revised schedule was adhered to, but only after continual efforts had been made, not always successfully, to restrict each witness to fifteen minutes of oral testimony. In the end it proved necessary for the Committee to reconvene for an hour on Friday afternoon to hear the last of the private witnesses. One can only guess at the consequences which a set of hearings so quickly scheduled, meagerly announced, and rapidly conducted had for the number and kind of private witnesses who appeared before the Committee. Almost certainly there were some who did not appear because they had insufficient time to prepare. As it was, two of the witnesses who did testify had no written statement, for, as they explained to the Committee, it was not possible for them to put their arguments into writing in the short time available to them after they received notice of the hearings.80 Undoubtedly there would have been a greater amount of public representation at the hearings if there had been more adequate notice of their scheduling. But it is also likely that the press would have given more attention to the prospective hearings if it had seen any signs that the reading public was seriously interested in them.81 The Committee's Coverage

Substantively the hearings were much more thorough than their subdued, casual handling would indicate. Despite some appearance of superficiality, the Committee fulfilled its unique intellectualpolitical function of reinterpreting, justifying, and explaining a difficult foreign policy matter to the Senate itself and to a large American constituency in somewhat parochial terms. The basic agreement on fundamentals that prevailed among Mr. Dulles and the Committee members of both political parties had a restrictive effect on the Committee's discussion, for it lessened the need for these men to talk about certain aspects of the settlement 29

Hearings on the Japanese Peace Treaty, p. 116. Ibid., pp. 76, 110. 31 Cf. E. E. Schattschneider, Politics, Pressures and the Tariff, New York, PrenticeHall, 1935, pp. 164-72, for a discussion of the effects of casual and insuflScient notification of hearings on the Hawley-Smoot tariff. 80

THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

on which their agreement was the greatest. Yet, as is most natural, certain personal and institutional differences persisted in the chief interests of these different policy-makers and in the way they ap­ proached the issue. These differences had quite the opposite effect from the consensus on fundamentals just described; they made for a somewhat greater discussion of those topics on which the differ­ ences were the greatest. These divergent forces met head on in the Committee hearings, and the vector that emerged from the Com­ mittee's consideration was a more or less balanced coverage of subjects relevant to the issue, all the while that fundamental con­ troversy was avoided. The nature of the coverage may be seen in Table XIV. The hear­ ings, to be sure, were not as thorough in their canvass of topics as the ratification debate proved to be; a considerable number of topics which received extensive consideration in the Senate debate were not even mentioned during the hearings. Nevertheless, considering the brevity of the January proceedings, subjects of great significance were discussed, and often with an approximately equal proportion of attention paid to the various topics within each major theme. The balance in the Committee's coverage is greater than in Mr. Dulles' speeches. For example, a comparison of Table XIV with Table XI in Chapter 7 shows that in each of three leading cate­ gories, Mr. Dulles gave three-fourths or more of his attention to internationally oriented topics claiming little more than half of the time of the Committee. Within these major themes, then, the Com­ mittee divided its time more evenly among a greater number of relevant topics, whereas Mr. Dulles had chosen in his speeches to emphasize some largely at the expense of others. As a practical consequence, this lighter coverage of international topics meant that some other subjects, like "Extent of American commitment,"32 or "American aid to Japan,"38 received an extensive public airing by responsible policy-makers for the first time at the hearings. Table XIV shows the thematic distribution of the Foreign Rela­ tions Committee hearings. Now let us look at some of the com­ ponents of this table; in other words, let us examine some of the differences that in the aggregate made for this balance in coverage. A closer look will show that the Senators, even though they con­ tributed barely one-third of the discussion on a quantitative basis, were responsible for the ultimate proportions of the Committee's 82

Fourteen per cent of "Policy and security considerations." per cent of "Economic and financial considerations."

88 Twenty-four

THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

TABLE XIV

Major Themes in Committee Hearings, with Selected International Topics as Per Cent of Major Themes Topic

% of Total (2,279 Lines) % of Theme

Policy and security considerations Security in ηοη-U.S. areas Threat from Soviet and Communist world Collective security and alliances Japanese sovereignty: Effects on free world security

37%

Economic and financial considerations Japan's economy and trade Burden of reparations on Japan

14

The two Chinas Foreign policy comment and criticism Desirable U.S. foreign policy Comment on Allies and other countries

13 11

14% 15 11 17 57% 37 16 53%

The "New Japan" Attributes of the settlement Architects of the treaty Bipartisanship Problems of sovereignty Authority in the Senate Public involvement Miscellaneous

9 4 4 3 1 1 —a 2

46 10 56%

99% a Less than half of 1 per cent.

coverage. Several different analyses of the coverage shown in Table XIV will reveal the crucial role of the Senators in determining what was to be talked about in the hearings. Mr. Dulles and the Senators together were responsible for 92 per cent of the discussion that took place. But a comparison of their separate contributions to the hearings shows that the Senators as a group tended to say much in areas where Mr. Dulles said little, and that they tended to underplay those subjects on which he put the greatest weight. The most striking contribution of the Senators was in subjects having national significance in particular. Where Mr. Dulles concentrated on topics of international scope, both in his statement and remarks to the Committee and in his speeches else­ where, the Senators tended to put their stress on items of more immediate foreign policy concern to Americans. For example, 28

THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

per cent of the Senators' discussion of "Policy and security con­ siderations" was directly concerned with American security as it was affected by the peace settlement, and 23 per cent with the extension of American political and military commitments explicit and implicit in the settlement; the corresponding proportions of Mr. Dulles' policy and security theme dealing with these two topics were 11 per cent and 12 per cent. Similarly, Mr. Dulles gave heaviest emphasis in his discussion of "Economic and financial considerations" to the problems facing Japan's economy (61 per cent), while the Senators accentuated the American side of the economic relationship (71 per cent). A large share of the Senators' contribution to the hearings con­ sisted of the questions which they directed to the Administration witnesses. Interestingly, more than two-thirds of the inquiries which the Senators put to Mr. Dulles and General Bradley concerned economic and security matters. But these questions are important not only for what they reveal about the preoccupations of Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee; they also have significance because the answers they required helped to shape the coverage accorded to various issues. In all, 78 questions were asked of Mr. Dulles on 22 substantive topics. In 16 cases, the relative attention given to the topics within the major themes increased from Mr. Dulles' opening statement to his subsequent remarks to the Com­ mittee.84 In the other six topics, a decline in the proportion of emphasis occurred. The effect on coverage of asking questions may also be appreciated by looking at its opposite: the dampening effect of not asking questions. Mr. Dulles spoke on 15 other topics on which he was not questioned by Senators. In 6 of these topics, all of them minor, the proportion of coverage increased, while in the other 9, which were of greater importance in Mr. Dulles' over-all contribution, the proportion of coverage declined from his opening statement to his later remarks.35 The fact of Senatorial dominance over the discussion itself should not be surprising, since the hearings are rim by the Committee members for their own purposes. But this does not explain why the 84For example, "U.S. security" rose from zero in the opening statement to 15 per cent of major theme in the remarks; "American aid to Japan" rose from zero to 25 per cent; "Japanese sovereignty: Effects on free world security" rose from 7 per cent to 29 per cent. 85 For example, "Consequences of treaty rejection or postponement" dropped from 27 per cent to 2 per cent of major theme; "Moral attributes of the settlement" dropped from 82 per cent to 22 per cent.

THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

discussion so dominated should turn out to be weighted in the direction of the more significant themes, and within those themes to be quite evenly distributed among a number of relevant topics. We shall see in the next chapter that the ratification debate on the Senate floor was not marked by the same attention to important themes that distinguished the hearings. The differences are great enough to suggest that members of the Foreign Relations Com­ mittee, whether through experience or a sense of the importance of their position or something else again, have acquired the rudi­ ments of an intellectual discipline not always shared by their colleagues in the Senate, one that enables them in approaching complex international problems to distinguish those elements that are pertinent to American political, economic, military, and other interests. It would be easy to overstate the dimensions of this discipline, and to accord the Committee members an intellectual finesse that they do not possess. Yet the uniform quality of their contribution since the end of the war, when compared with the fluctuating and sometimes irresponsible participation of the Senate as a whole, indicates that the Foreign Relations Committee mem­ bers have developed an understanding of their role that is more than just the sum of their excellent staff work and their close rela­ tions with influential members of the Department of State. Something other than an intellectual discipline, however, seems to be involved in the balanced coverage among specific topics for which Senators on the Committee were responsible. While there were no signs of partisanship in the Committee's proceedings, there were party differences on a number of issues; these differences in party interests, by inducing representatives of each political group on the Committee to advance different ideas, caused the discussion to broaden out and extend into more areas than would have been canvassed if only one party were involved, or if there were no differ­ ences in the foreign policy interests of the two parties. Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee participated in the hearings to a greater extent than the Democrats. The Repub­ licans provided 58 per cent of the total contribution by the Senators, and 18 per cent of the total hearings. The Democrats were left with 42 per cent of the Senators' time, and 13 per cent of the total hear­ ings. This Republican preponderance existed despite the fact that participating Democrats outnumbered participating Republicans on the Committee. The gross difference between the two parties can be seen in Table XV, which shows the distribution of important

THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

themes in the discussion of each party. It will be noted there that the Democrats put a relatively greater stress than the Republicans on economic and security considerations, while the Republicans ex­ ceeded the Democrats in their foreign policy comment, and in their discussion of the China problem and the state of bipartisanship on the treaty. These differences correspond to the political interests of the Democrats, who as the majority party had the greatest responsiTABLE XV

Party Differences in the Hearings MAJOR THEMES AS PER CENT OF TOTAL FOR EACH PARTY % of Democratic Total

% of Republican Total

Theme

(297 lines)

(409 lines)

Policy and security considerations Economic and financial considerations Foreign policy comment and criticism The two Chinas Bipartisanship Architects of the treaty The "New Japan" Authority in the Senate

49 19 —® 5 3 7 5 7

33 8 16 12 11 7 5 2

a

None recorded.

bility for an adequate consideration of the most important aspects of the settlement, and to the political interests of the Republicans, who while sharing an interest in economics and security were not likely to ignore several other themes which underlined some of the reasons why voters might be persuaded to support them at the next election. PHASE III: PREPARATION FOR RATIFICATION

The hearings on the settlement ended on January 25, and on February 5 the Foreign Relations Committee voted unanimously to report favorably to the Senate the peace treaty and the three security treaties. During this brief period of formal preparation for ratification, the appearance of complete harmony and agreement between Mr. Dulles and the Committee, and between the Demo­ crats and Republicans on the Committee, was kept up. Members of the Committee maintained this public impression by reserving for private discussion at this time some inquiries and even some poten-

TBE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

tially explosive points which it was thought best not to raise during the hearings. In the course of the hearings a number of witnesses presented arguments on behalf of companies and individuals, pressing their private financial claims against Japan. The Committee heard most of these appeals in silence, seemingly unwilling to champion the claimants or even to question the wisdom of Article 14 of the treaty, in which the Allied powers waived the bulk of the reparations claims of themselves and their nationals against Japan. As soon as the hearings were over, however, members of the Committee ex­ pressed some of their doubts by asking the Department of State for further information on how the treaty affected such claims. Mr. Dulles, alert to the problem, reinforced the attitude the Senators had taken during the hearings by sending them a memorandum ex­ plaining how the matter was dealt with in the treaty, and by reiterat­ ing the Department's view that the total of all claims on Japan was far beyond that nation's ability to pay, making virtuous self-denial on the part of some of her creditors a clear necessity. Another category of inquiry from the Committee at this time con­ cerned the mention of human rights in the preamble to the Peace Treaty, and the possibility that such a reference implied a binding commitment by the United States or by Japan to an international covenant on human rights. Either Mr. Dulles' position that no legal commitments or obligations were involved was not known or fully understood by the Committee members, or Committee members wanted Mr. Dulles fully to commit himself to that position for subse­ quent debating purposes. The former is certainly possible, since the topic, which was to receive so much attention during the ratifica­ tion debate, had formed only 1 per cent of the total of Mr. Dulles' speeches on the treaty, and was never even mentioned during the hearings. The sudden display of Committee interest in the subject at the beginning of February may have been the first fruit of the campaign that the National Economic Council launched against the treaty on February 1. More important than these inquiries during this period was the matter of a reservation to the resolution of ratification withholding the Senate's recognition of the Yalta Agreement, particularly the provisions under which Japan was to cede the Kuriles and South Sakhalin to the Soviets. rHie manner in which this affair was handled provides an excellent demonstration of how the Committee, by taking the back road to agreement, got there all the faster because

THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

the political traffic was lighter. Mention has already been made of Senator Watkins' interest in such a reservation and of his intention to propose one; and we have noted that no reference was made in the hearings to the possibility that some such reservation was con­ templated. The Committee's silence, however, must be taken for something other than ignorance of the subject, for immediately after the hearings ended, and possibly even before, the members of the Committee and Mr. Dulles took up that precise problem. Together they worked on a resolution which would not alter the substance of the treaty but rather would convey their understanding that the treaty as written did not recognize the Yalta Agreement, or in any way prejudice in favor of the Soviets the interest of the Allied powers and Japan in the Kuriles, South Sakhalin, and related territories. On the first of February, only a week after the termination of the hearings, Mr. Dulles met with the Far Eastern Subcommittee to canvass all possibilities and to determine their course. On that occa­ sion they agreed on a ratification resolution which contained a statement embodying their understanding.38 This was the Commit­ tee reservation which was accepted by the Senate along with the peace treaty on March 20. The language selected by Mr. Dulles and the Subcommittee must have been specifically approved in advance by the President and the Secretary of State. If the Senate alone had fashioned the resolution, Administration approval might or might not have been forthcoming. But Mr. Dulles had been actively involved in working out the reservation, and thus he was committing the Executive branch to a line of policy on a subject which was outside his direct authority, and which was also of some political and emotional significance to the Democratic Administration. As a Republican on a special assign86 The chronology and substance of the Committee's action are contained in the materials Senator Watkins inserted in the Congressional Record just prior to the Senate vote on the Committee's reservation, Vol. 98, No. 46, March 20, 1952, especially pp. 2624-26. The resolution of ratification incorporating the reservation reads as follows: "Resolved, (two-thirds of the Senators present concurring therein), That the Senate advise and consent to the ratification of the treaty of peace with Japan, signed at San Francisco on September 8, 1951. As part of such advice and consent the Senate states that nothing the treaty contains is deemed to diminish or prejudice, in favor of the Soviet Union, the right, title, and interest of Japan, or the Allied Powers as defined in said treaty, in and to South Sakhalin and its adjacent islands, the Kurile Islands, the Habomai Islands, the Island of Shikotan, or any other territory, rights or interests possessed by Japan on December 7, 1941, or to confer any right, title, or benefit therein or thereto on the Soviet Union; and also that nothing in the said treaty, or the advice and consent of the Senate to the ratification thereof, implies recognition on the part of the United States of the provisions in favor of the Soviet Union contained in the so-called Talta agreement' regarding Japan of February 11, 1945."

THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

ment, Mr. Dulles could only have done this with the approval of his superior, the Secretary of State, as well as of the President. The Republican interest in such a reservation is clear. To many Republicans Yalta was a symbol not only of Democratic policy error but also of the Executive's subversion of the Constitutional powers of the Senate in foreign policy-making, and they welcomed any opportunity for the Senate to express its criticism. The Democratic interest was somewhat different. Although they, like the Repub­ licans, were ill disposed to give their sanction to the Soviet Union's occupation of the territories in question, the Democrats probably went along with the motion because they must have been persuaded that an interpretive reservation which was agreed to in advance was preferable to a floor fight in the Senate—and a losing battle at that—on a different kind of reservation which might have been less carefully phrased. Senator Watkins, whose vigorous intentions had made some reservation to the treaty almost inevitable, did not immediately know what Mr. Dulles and the Subcommittee had done. On the following day, February 2, Mr. Watkins sent to Senator Connally, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, a letter containing some specific language for a reservation which he felt would accom­ plish his purpose. Senator Watkins, however, was not the only one who was unaware of the Subcommittee's action. Senator Connally was apparently unapprised also, for he replied immediately, and not without a trace of partisan bitterness, that the reservation was not needed and that its adoption would be unfortunate. On the fifth of February the full Foreign Relations Committee voted unanimously to report the four treaties favorably to the Senate. At that meeting Senator Connally introduced Senator Watkins' letter, but by this time the Committee members had al­ ready agreed on suitable language. In informing Senator Watkins of the Committee's action, Senator Connally gave some indication that his had been a reluctant vote. "While the terms of the treaty, in my view," he wrote, "are sufficiently clear to protect the interests of the United States in this regard, the members of the Foreign Relations Committee agree that it might be well for us to clarify the position of the United States."37 Senator Watkins thereupon expressed himself publicly as completely satisfied with the Com­ mittee's text, and the united front, its cracks having been quietly repaired, was maintained a Httle longer. " Ibid., p. 2625.

THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

CONCLUSION The fact of close cooperation between Mr. Dulles and the Foreign Relations Committee members, and its manifestation in periodic public displays of unanimity, lent an unusual cast to the treaty issue and to the political process through which it materialized. From the Committee's first association with the treaty project through its report to the Senate, the impression was allowed to stand that the settlement incorporated as much virtue as could be attained and that no reasonable man could oppose it or criticize any of its pro­ visions. Strenuous efforts had been made during these months by the Subcommittee and Mr. Dulles to anticipate Congressional objections wherever possible; this, and the careful muting of objections which for one reason or another could not be met, were responsible for creating this impression, and the longer it lived without open con­ tradiction the more it nourished itself. It grew so big, in fact, that in the end it misled even those who should have known better. Capable newsmen close to the Foreign Relations Committee, for example, were predicting an impressive majority for the treaty in the Senate, and one of them, as we noted earlier, saw the possibility that there might be no dissent at all. This last prognosis was hardly shared by Mr. Dulles and the Committee members, but even they, in their optimism, were not prepared for the form or the bitterness of the Congressional dissent that had been building up slowly, breaking through the dam at the last moment.

Cliapter 9 DEBATE IN THE SENATE The United States Senate inquiry into the Japanese peace settle­ ment had two distinct phases: the first was a fitful discussion stretched out over a period of seven months that began around the time of the San Francisco Conference in September 1951, and the second was the formal ratification debate which occupied part of each Senate session on the five weekdays between March 14 and March 20,1952. These two stages of Senate debate were further steps in a process which was characterized by limited interest, great speed, and restricted discussion. A developing opposition, small but vociferous, did its best to alter each of these characteristics, but it succeeded only in forcing a more extensive consideration of the issue than it had hitherto received in the governmental policy debate. The nature of this opposition and its effect on the discussion are the central features of the Senate debate. In this chapter we shall first make a brief assessment of the institu­ tion of Senate debate—some general remarks occasioned by the severity, the novelty, and the delivery of the criticism leveled at the Japanese peace settlement from the floor of the Senate. Then, at greater length, we shall examine some specific aspects of the debate which gave it its distinctive form: the persistence of inattention; the growth of coverage and that of dissent, and the relation between the two; the influence of region and party as some apparent sources of this growth; and finally, the role of the Foreign Relations Com­ mittee as a foreign policy leader in the debate. GENERAL REMARKS In its handling of the matter, the Senate did not always display the substantive characteristics that John Foster Dulles in his speeches and the Foreign Relations Committee in its deliberations lent to the governmental discussion of the peace settlement. On the contrary, where Mr. Dulles and the Committee were moderate, the Senate debate was sometimes extreme; where they seemed en­ grossed in patching up the cracks of disagreement in the fagade that they presented to colleagues and country, the Senate raised undisguised dissension at the governmental level to new heights. Its departure from the pattern of discussion prevailing elsewhere in

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

the government served also to broaden the substance of the debate to include a host of topics—not all equally relevant, to be sure—that had not been publicly discussed before by responsible persons in the government. When the final votes on the treaties were taken, the over-all result was, as everyone expected, a substantial endorse­ ment of Mr. Dulles' policies. Nevertheless, the margin of victory in the case of a few crucial reservations was small—narrow enough to justify to the treaty advocates themselves their earlier concessions to known critics, and perhaps even what seems to have been their pretense of unanimity. For a public airing of all the disputes that had been resolved or postponed earlier in the treaty-making process would undoubtedly have given the opposition within the Senate considerably more effective ammunition against the settlement than it actually possessed. The outlines of the Senate debate, and some of the ways it differed from the hearings and from Mr. Dulles' discussion, may be seen in Table XVI. The outstanding changes that will be noted there conTABLE XVI

Senate Debate Compared with Hearings and Dulles' Speeches MAJOR THEMES AS PER CENT OF TOTAL Theme

Problems of sovereignty Foreign policy comment and criticism Policy and security considerations Economic and financial considerations The two Chinas Attributes of the treaty Architects of the settlement Public involvement Authority in the Senate The "New Japan" Bipartisanship

Dulles

1% 9 47 11 3 11 2 —a —b 7 2

Hearings

1% 11 37 14 13 4 4 —a 1 9 3

Senate Debate

16% 22 19 5 13 6 4 4 3 3 2

a Less than half of 1 per cent. b None recorded.

cern what might be termed the flight from relevancy in the Senate. The relative emphasis which the Senate gave to the fundamental problems embraced in the two categories, "Policy and security considerations" and "Economic and financial considerations," was less than half that given by Mr. Dulles and the Foreign Relations Committee. Instead, the Senators placed more than three times the stress laid by the others on themes which were only marginally

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

related to the difficult issues of policy involved in the Pacific settle­ ment: 'Troblems of sovereignty," and "Foreign policy comment and criticism." In other words the Senate, lacking other provisions for a periodic general review of foreign policy, took the occasion of the ratification of the Japanese peace settlement to conduct a parallel debate on other features of American foreign relations, and to press for the recognition of some general policy principles. The changes that were registered in the Senate debate involved a substantial transfer not only from the relevant to the irrelevant side of the ledger, but also from the moderate column to the ex­ treme. Table XVII lists six topics in the two marginally relevant themes mentioned above which included—but which were not wholly composed of—ultra-nationalistic, bitterly critical, or otherwise extreme statements, and compares the relative emphasis given to these topics in Mr. Dulles' speeches, in the Committee hearings, and in the entire Senate discussion. It will readily be seen that the Senate dwelt heavily on those subjects while Mr. Dulles and the Foreign Relations Committee scarcely saw reason to mention them. These six topics accounted for less than 2 per cent of Mr. Dulles' total speeches, and for 4 per cent of the discussion in the hearings; but they consumed 30 per cent of the entire Senate debate. Neither statistics alone nor stark category titles can convey the full measure of bitterness and hostility that was injected into these and similar topics by the few Senators who opposed the treaty. A few quotations from the debate itself may serve this purpose: "[Mr. Dulles] flitted about Hke a dusty moth and came up with 'settlements' of all the problems that vexed him or the State Depart­ ment. . . . I believe he is the man who recommended Alger Hiss for a job on the International Peace Foundation. . . . I think all Senators know Mr. Dulles, the Wall Street lawyer."1 "I may say that the bipartisan movement for ratification of the Japanese Treaty will sweep over the Senate like a tidal wave, and that, even if the junior Senator from Washington [Cain] were to join the junior Senator from Nevada [Malone] in opposing it, we would both have hobnail prints on our bodies so deep from the stampede that it would take until next January for them to heal."2 "The present Japanese peace treaty is part of the Hiss-Acheson1 Senator Jenner, Congressional Record, Vol. 97, No. 157, August 24, 1951, p. 10805. 2 Senator Malone, ibid., Vol. 97, No. 168, September 11, 1951, p. 11353.

a None recorded.

Foreign policy comment and criticism Comment and criticism re: Administration State Department Potsdam-Yalta-Kuriles

Problems of sovereignty Preservation of U.S. sovereignty U.N. human rights and the treaty preamble Constitutional powers of Congress

Topic

1%

%of Total

7%

84%

%of Theme

DULLES

11

%of Total

33%

33

73%

64

9%

%of Theme

HEARINGS

SELECTED TOPICS AS PER CENT OF MAJOR THEME

"Extremism" in Senate Debate

TABLE XVII

22

16%

70%

34 14 22

89%

18

21

50%

%of Theme

SENATE

%0f Total

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

Lattimore design for the sell-out of Asia, and the wrapping up of our military might in the coils of the U.N."3 "I say that the test of leadership is keeping people out of trouble, not getting them into trouble. The leadership which now asks us to put our stamp of approval on the treaty is the same leadership that has given us the $260,000,000,000 debt and two wars in 6 years' time. It has given us the United Nations and all these other schemes."4 "As the treaty is now written it is just one more link in the State Department's plan to follow England in the recognition of Red China and to complete the blackout of Nationalist China."5 "I have talked with Senators on this floor . . . no later than yester­ day, who had not even read the Japanese Peace Treaty. Yet they are willing to turn our sovereignty over to the United Nations, which we now know has become nothing but a death trap for American GI's. There have been 109,000 casualties in Korea, and billions of dollars have been spent. Yet we sit here and sign a blank check to do the same thing over again."® As the dates of some of these quotations show, it is not accurate to say that opposition to the peace settlement suddenly reared its head in the Senate on the very eve of the ratification debate. Ac­ tually the treaty's opponents had more to say than its defenders during the first phase of Senate discussion, and they began to say it even before the San Francisco Conference had convened. This early opposition had scarcely any impact on subsequent discussion outside the Senate, however, in part because it was small in volume, and in part because it had little apparent support; the thin voices of criticism were immediately drowned out by the fulsome praise which the peace settlement received even from persons who had long been critical of American foreign policy. But this is not to say that the early critics made no impression whatever; they at least gave Mr. Dulles and his aides some advance notice of the kind and source of opposition they might expect at a later, more crucial date. It was impossible for them to turn this opposition aside by making minor changes in the settlement, since the animus of these critics was directed against its very fundamentals. As long as their objec­ tions could not be met within the framework of the settlement as 8 Senator

Jenner, ibid., Vol. 98, No. 25, February 20, 1952, p. 1205. Capehart, ibid., Vol. 98, No. 46, March 20, 1952, p. 2609. 5 Senator Malone, ibid., Vol. 98, No. 46, March 20, 1952, p. 2633. 8 Senator Jenner, ibid., Vol. 98, No. 46, March 20, 1952, p. 2639. 4 Senator

DEBATE I N T H E SENATE

negotiated and signed, the treaty's supporters chose to ignore them publicly as much and as long as possible. In the formal debate, however, it was no longer possible for even the pilots of the treaty in the Senate to pretend that the criticism of their colleagues was insignificant, or to hope that it would dissipate. There the opposition, led by Republican Senator William Jenner of Indiana, broke through with the persistent force of an organized assault. The experience was not a pleasant one for most of the per­ sons involved, but to the observer its caustic and desperate moments are instructive. For the very novelty of the attack on the settlement in the Senate throws into stark relief some of the values and defects of the institution of Senate debate. Positive Features of Debate in the Senate

The functions or purposes of Senate debate have never been fully elaborated by students of the Congress, yet there appears to be some agreement among them that discussion in the Senate usually has little effect on the members or on the legislation that is being debated.7 The chief function of Senate debate seems to be what Woodrow Wilson called "clarifying public business for public comprehension," and what other observers have called the ventila­ tion of public issues.8 The political education of the American people looms large in this, but there is more to Senate debate than simply airing all sides of an issue so that people will be better in­ formed. The experience with the Japanese peace settlement suggests that discussion in the Senate can serve a very important political function with respect to the electorate that is quite different from the educational one. Senate debate is the last big opportunity in the governmental process where, if it has not happened earlier, diverse domestic 7 See, for example, Roland Young, This Is Congress, 2nd edn., New York, A. A. Knopf, 1946, p. 140; George B. Galloway, Congress at the Crossroads, New York, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1946, p. 290; Stephen K. Bailey, Congress Makes a Law: The Story Behind the Emphyment Act of 1946, New York, Columbia University Press, 1950, p. 119. But for a suggestion that arguments on the floor may be an important source of information for Senators, see the research note by Lowell H. Hattery and Susan Hofheimer, "The Legislators' Source of Expert Information," Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 3, Fall 1954, pp. 300-03. 8 Woodrow Wilson, Constitutional Government in the United States, New York, Columbia University Press, 1908, p. 135; Ernest S. Griffith, Congress: Its Contem­ porary Role, New York, New York University Press, 1951, pp. 170-74; Galloway, op.cit., p. 316. David B. Truman describes the chief function of legislative debates as "part of the process of adjustment," facilitating "acceptance of the final decision, not necessarily by the immediate participants but by those on the periphery." The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion, New York, A. A. Knopf, 1951, p. 394.

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

political considerations can be deliberately and openly introduced into foreign policy, enriching it by adding more public understand­ ing, appreciation, and acceptance, or weakening it by draining off comprehension and support. It hardly matters that the debate may reveal publicly some ideas which have been in private circulation a long time, or that the ideas have Uttle merit according to generally accepted standards. What is significant is that this is a frequently inescapable point of contact between the proponents of a particular foreign policy viewpoint and all the attentive elements within the electorate. Here, in front of colleagues, correspondents, party fol­ lowers, and history itself, controversy is recorded, new ideas formu­ lated, opposition articulated, or agreement registered. And in the process the bases of future policy choices are being laid, not by specialists but by a small number of plain-thinking men in the Upper Chamber. The Senate is not an intellectual refinery where the products of Executive policy-making are filtered twice more to rid them of technical impurities before they are sold to the public. It is rather an independent stream of judgment on policy, a stream whose sources are in comparatively small, clearly defined constit­ uencies. The judgments that come from the Senate may be either wise or foolish, extreme or moderate; sometimes they reflect the prevailing standards of public acceptance in the constituency and sometimes they help to form them. For the most responsible exercise of this judgment an educated intelligence is desirable and perhaps even necessary, but so is an ability to understand the nature of con­ stituent opinion, to discern and articulate the limits it imposes, and to give form and expression to the freedom it offers. Debate in the Senate is a very important medium through which these restraints and opportunities are given political life and are translated into policy terms. Weak Points in Senate Debate

The Japanese peace settlement provides a good example of the political virtues of discussion in the Senate precisely because that body was the only one within the government publicly to assay the documents in a critical spirit, mentioning their deficiencies as well as their merits. At the same time, however, the example illus­ trates some of the weak points in the actual functioning of Senate debate; for, paradoxically, the debating practices and procedures of the Upper House sometimes stand in the way of their own virtues,

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

minimizing their effectiveness. The sequence of governmental policy­ making is perhaps chiefly responsible for this situation. The full complement of the Senate takes up the detailed and systematic consideration of important foreign policies at a late date in their history, too late to be really constructive in its criticism. True, there are no obstacles to the making of speeches in the Senate before the time for full-dress debate; yet in most instances there is little that Senators seem willing or able to say, even with respect to matters of public support, until the thinking of Executive officials has crystallized into rather specific policy proposals.® This does not mean, to be sure, that standards of public acceptance are considered only after policy has been formulated. In the first place, the Execu­ tive branch of the government is also concerned with questions of public support; and secondly, the known attitudes of important Senators are normally taken into account by members of the Execu­ tive branch in their early thinking about specific foreign policies, and sometimes Senators are invited to participate in international negotiations when policies require them. But despite all this, as the history of American foreign policy-making demonstrates so well, members of the Senate have their own standards of judgment which are often quite different from anything the Executive is able to divine or willing to apply. In these circumstances, the views of Senators are frequently brought into full play only at such times as the Executive can say, with some justification, that change can be contemplated only at the risk of destroying a delicate balance of international acceptance or overturning the work of months of patient planning. This was true in the case of the Japanese peace settlement: some valid criticisms of the settlement were made for the first time in an organized way under respected auspices during the formal Senate debate, but by that time the momentum of the settlement had carried it beyond the point where many small changes could be made without the risk of upsetting the whole structure and requiring extensive, painful, and possibly less ad­ vantageous negotiations. There are some other practices, too, that tend to cloud the political virtues of Senate debate. For one thing, formal consideration of a policy problem frequently takes place on parallel tracks, with the active proponents of each interpretation as far apart at the end of the ride as at the start. Speakers who had the floor during the 9 Cf. Robert A. Dahl, Congress and Foreign Policy, New York, Harcourt Brace and 1 Co., 1950, pp. 61-63.

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

debate on the Pacific treaties were more inclined to yield for pur­ poses of interrogation to colleagues who favored their stand than to Senators who opposed it, so that question and answer was often more like a catechism than a legitimate search for explanation and enlightenment. There are desirable features in this practice, it must be admitted, since it does not pit Senator against Senator in displays of either forensic or logical virtuosity; but neither does it pit one idea directly against another so that the observer can test the stay­ ing power of the different choices which Senate debate may bring to light. Furthermore, a clear, concise mode of expression is not essential equipment for a Senator in the conduct of his legislative duties. Unlimited debate seems first to encourage the Senate's use of styl­ ized language and then to conspire with it so that germane points of substance are deeply and sometimes even hopelessly embedded in redundant or irrelevant passages. There are few rewards for the person who patiently Hstens to or reads debates on the Senate floor; little wonder, indeed, that even the Senators prefer to be elsewhere much of the time. These observations about the political strengths and weaknesses of Senate debate are stimulated by the differences between this de­ bate and the other parts of the governmental discussion, especially by the novelty of the criticism Senators directed at the settlement, its extreme character, and the forceful manner of its delivery. Some of the detailed relationships between the expression of dissent and the kind of substantive coverage accorded the treaties will be ex­ plored later in the chapter. First, however, it is important to note that the Senate debate was not different in every respect from the other phases of governmental discussion. Indeed, in perhaps the most significant and consequential characteristic—the small amount of attention and participation elicited—the debate in the Senate was very much like the discussion elsewhere. THE PERSISTENCE OF THE "MINOR KEY" The proponents of the treaties in the· Senate, knowing roughly the dimensions of their support and fearing that the situation in the Far East would continue to deteriorate if Japan did not regain her independence, apparently wanted to handle the documents in the same fashion as the Foreign Relations Committee, with the speed born of only superficial examination. They followed the same procedures of brief and general discussion, making initially no at-

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

tempt whatever to give an exhaustive presentation of the merits of the settlement. Most of the details of the debate were pressed on the treaty advocates by the opposition Senators. But even though the debate was not, in the end, as cursory as the floor managers of the settlement wished, it never became either a major altercation or even a first-class discussion. It is difficult, in fact, to see how it could have been either of these, given the lack of enthusiasm or excitement that greeted the whole matter. Interest and perhaps excitement may arise in a political milieu like the Senate if there is an element of genuine uncertainty about the outcome of a major issue, but this necessary condition was lack­ ing in the contest over the Pacific treaties. The arguments advanced both for and against their ratification treated the peace treaty and at least two of the security pacts as incidental to the major interna­ tional issues involving the clash of Western and Communist power in the Far East. The Senators were debating the requirements of a formal peace with Japan, including the minimum security guaran­ tees that made a multilateral treaty possible, but they were obviously more concerned about the current hostilities with North Korea and Communist China. The settlement was not paramount in the minds of the Senators, nor was there much doubt about the outcome. Ratification was generally regarded as certain,10 because the settle­ ment was endorsed and supported by powerful groups with different kinds and sources of political strength: the major interest groups; the nation's leading newspapers; leaders of both political parties in and out of Congress; the vast Executive establishment dealing with foreign policy; the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; all the Senators from the West Coast states, some of whom were thought of, at least by themselves, as bellwethers on issues involving Japan; and other Senators highly critical of much of United States foreign policy, like John W. Bricker of Ohio. With this kind of support available, it was difficult for Senators themselves to imagine the treaties being defeated. Since the settlement had neither a crucial significance for Senators nor a greatly uncertain future in the Senate, then, and since its backers were of no mind to stage a debate of major proportions, the issue received only a limited amount of attention in the Senate. This lack of interest may be seen in some of the dimensions of the debate itself. 10 See news accounts in New York Times, February β, March 15, and March 18, 1952.

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

Brevity of Debate In its early stages, before the ratification debate, discussion was brief and lethargic. From mid-August 1951, just before the San Francisco Conference, to mid-March 1952, when the full-dress de­ bate began, discussion of the settlement filled only 725 column inches of the Congressional Record.11 The great bulk of this came at the start of the seven-month span, in the week before the San Francisco Conference and the week after it. For the remainder of the session there was almost no comment, and from the beginning of the new session in January to the start of the formal debate in the middle of March the settlement was mentioned on the floor on only three different occasions. The formal ratification debate was also brief, occupying parts of 5 different days. By way of comparison, the debate on the GreekTurkish Aid Program in 1947 lasted 14 days, on the North Atlantic Treaty 12 days, on the 1949 renewal of the Reciprocal Trade Agree­ ments Act 6 days, and on the Mutual Defense Assistance Program of 1949, 4 days. The substantive debate on the ratification of the peace settlement extended over 1,824 column inches—equal to ap­ proximately 65 pages—of the Congressional Record, little more than twice the length of the early stage in the Senate discussion. Poverty of Participation Only a few Senators were sufficiently involved in the issue of the peace settlement to participate actively in its discussion, either during the ratification debate or in the long months preceding it. And even when the formal debate began in March, the lack of interest and involvement on the part of the Senators was attested to by the poor attendance on the floor and by the difficulties of gain­ ing and maintaining a quorum.12 Only 16 Senators contributed to the 725 column inches of dis­ cussion that made up the early stages in the Senate debate. This figure exaggerates the extent of participation, however, since in­ dividual contributions were highly uneven. Two Senators accounted for 60 per cent of the total during this early period; six Senators for 94 per cent; and nine Senators for 98 per cent. The ratification de­ bate was similarly the handiwork of a few Senators, although 31 of 11 At the rate of 28 column inches per page, this is equivalent to about 26 pages of the Record. 12 See Congressional Record, Vol. 98, No. 42, March 14, 1952, p. 2359, and the account in the New York Times, March 15, 1952.

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

them spoke up at one time or another. The narrow base of participa­ tion in the formal debate may be seen in Table XVIII. A comparison TABLE XVIII

Proportion of Ratification Debate Contributed by Individual Senators Senator

Jenner (R., Ind.) Knowland (R., Cal.) Sparkman (D., Ala.) Smith (R., N.J.) Dirksen (R., 111.) Wiley (R., Wis.) Connally (D., Tex.) Magnuson (D., Wash.) Brewster (R., Me.) Watkins (R., Utah) Bricker (R., Ohio)

% of Total

17 17 11 11 9 7 6 4 3 2 2 89%a

"The remaining 11 per cent -was contributed by 20 Senators, each of -whom was responsible for less than 2 per cent of the total.

with the amount of participation in the full-dress debates on other foreign policy matters in recent years shows that the 31 who spoke up on the Japanese peace settlement were themselves a relatively small contingent. On an issue of a similar type, the ratification of the satellite peace treaties, an even smaller number of Senators partici­ pated; in 3 days of debate 23 Senators joined in the discussion. But on other kinds of issues, particularly those which have involved security policy and demanded large sacrifices, the number of par­ ticipants has been much higher. In the first consideration of the European Recovery Program in 1948, for example, 67 Senators spoke during 11 days of debate. The "troops to Europe" issue in 1951 was of a similar magnitude, with 65 Senators talking over a period of 12 days. The ratification of the North Atlantic Treaty, which also took 12 days, involved 56 Senators. The Mutual Defense Assistance Program, which followed NATO and gave it some armed strength, required 4 days of discussion by 36 Senators. And the Mutual Secur­ ity Act of 1951 consumed even less time, 3 days, but 50 Senators joined in the argument. All in all, the Pacific treaties appear to have been of rather small concern to a legislative body which has had considerable experience in dealing with fundamental problems of foreign policy in recent years.

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

THE GROWTH OF COVERAGE AND DISSENT Although the amount of discussion on the peace settlement, and the number of Senators who contributed to it, were small in com­ parison with the figures relating to other policy issues, coverage of various topics was nonetheless more extensive in the Senate than it had been either in the hearings or in Mr. Dulles' speeches. At the same time, disagreement was much more articulate on the floor of the Senate than in the hearings, where it was virtually non-existent (and of course there was no dissent at all to established treaty policy in any of Mr. Dulles' addresses). The evidence pertaining to these two characteristics suggests that disagreement on policy may be related, and perhaps in a causal way, to the extensiveness (although not necessarily the volume) of the coverage a problem receives in governmental discussion. This hypothesis will be explored in the next few pages, but unhappily a case study of a single issue does not permit the kind of testing of such a proposition which is necessary in order to discover its limiting conditions. The Appearance of Disagreement We noted earlier in the chapter that dissent to Mr. Dulles' treaty policy came into full flower in the Senate, and that it had burgeoned long before the ratification debate. In absolute amount, dissent in­ creased slightly from the early phase of the debate to the formal debate on ratification. In the seven months' preliminaries, there were 455 column inches of the Record spoken against the settlement, and in the formal debate the opposition claimed 564 column inches.13 Percentagewise, however, disagreement dropped drastically from the early stage of the debate to the later, formal phase. The earlier period was not a debate in the customary sense of the word; it was mostly a series of blasts against the peace settlement which met no 13 The designation of any part of the debate as "agreement" or "disagreement," "pro" or "con," was made on the basis of the contributing Senator's attitude toward the settlement at the time of final vote on the question of ratification in March 1952. Not all Senators voted in a uniform fashion on the different aspects of the settlement: a number of them voted in favor of one or more restrictive reservations to the peace treaty, but when the reservations were defeated they nevertheless voted to ratify the treaty. This, however, does not affect the usefulness or accuracy of taking the final vote as an indication of the character of the debate; for none of the Senators who spoke on the treaty long enough to establish a position deviated in their speeches from the position they took at the time of final voting. In other words, Senators who in their votes supported both the treaty and the restrictive reservations confined their speaking almost entirely to the treaty and left their opinions on the reservations generally unrecorded. The reservations received oral support from those Senators who vigorously opposed the treaty and voted against it.

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

organized defense from the treaties' supporters. The 455 column inches spoken against the settlement during these seven months amounted to nearly two-thirds of the total. The tables were turned in the ratification debate, however, as the proponents of the settle­ ment launched their own offensive of sorts. The amount spoken by the opposition increased by more than 100 column inches, but it was no match for the now-prepared advocates of the treaty; more than two-thirds of the debate this time was given by the "pro" forces. Combining these two periods of Senate discussion, we find that Senators opposed to the settlement delivered a substantial 40 per cent of the entire debate on the floor. The Increase in Coverage As discussion proceeded in the Senate and the amount of coverage grew ever larger, there was a steady increase in the number of different subjects which Senators talked about in relation to the peace settlement. Topical coverage was more extensive in the Senate than elsewhere in the government. Measured by a standardized set of categories of analysis, 46 different topics were discussed in Mr. Dulles' speeches, and an equal number were covered in the first two days of the hearings on the treaties. In the seven months of preliminary debate in the Senate, the number of topics rose to 58. And in the ratification debate itself, Senators addressed themselves to 79 different subjects. A large part of the preliminary discussion in the Upper Chamber actually took place around the time of the San Francisco Conference, some while before the Foreign Relations Committee's hearings in January 1952; that the Committee and the Administration witnesses nonetheless conducted a somewhat nar­ rower discussion than had already taken place in the Senate is further indication of the desire and concomitant effort in the hear­ ings to play down as many elements of controversy as possible. Connection Between Disagreement and Coverage Disagreement on the merits of the peace settlement within the Senate seems to have had a substantial broadening effect on the topical coverage of the debate. The connection between the two may first be hinted at by a quantitative measure of the topics discussed by each side in the dispute, and then more closely examined by a comparison of the substance of the topics themselves. In the period prior to the ratification debate, speakers who favored the treaties talked on 40 different topics, while those against found

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

50 subjects through which to express their opposition. Twenty-six topics, or nearly one-half of the 58 which comprised this part of the Senate's discussion, were spoken to by one side or the other but not by both. The pro-treaty Senators raised eight of these topics while those opposed to the treaty were responsible for the other 18 topics. In other words, these figures indicate that coverage of the treaty issue was more extensive than it had been before, because the very existence of disagreement between two groups within the Senate led the discussion into new territory. The effects of this preliminary discussion were felt in the ratifica­ tion debate, for the development of a coherent opposition forced the treaty supporters into a large-scale, systematic defense of their position. In the formal debate, the supporting Senators spoke on 76 different subjects, compared with 56 by those in opposition. As in the earlier period, 26 topics received attention from only one side; but now 23 of these were the work of the treaty advocates, and only three were contributed by the opposition. But the role of the opposi­ tion in the ratification debate is partially obscured here. These figures show clearly that in the preliminary discussion the Senators who opposed the settlement were responsible for raising a large number of uncontested issues; yet they do not reveal how in the ratification debate the opposition brought up topics which then evoked rebuttal by treaty supporters. For this purpose a specific appraisal of the actual topics emphasized by each of the contending groups is required. In the preliminary debate, the opposition's attack was of a sharply conservative, nationalist character, very much like the position of the "patriotic" and right-wing ideological interest groups noted in an earlier chapter. The opposition in the Senate spoke to 50 differ­ ent topics during this period, but 39 per cent, or nearly two-fifths, of the entire argument of this group is found under four topics characteristic of the extreme nationalist position at that time: the supposed offense given to Nationalist China by excluding her from the San Francisco Conference; the insistence upon an untrammeled American sovereignty; and the unhappy consequence of the inter­ nationalist foreign policy record of both the State Department and the national Administrations since 1933. (See Table XIX.) The treaty supporters did not rise to the defense of the settle­ ment in proportion to the assault against it; and neither did they direct their few remarks in answer to the major charges or com­ plaints of the opposition. These men, some of them on the Foreign

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

Relations Committee, may have been following the strategy seem­ ingly employed by the Committee at this time, which was to join no unnecessary public debates on the settlement. Their arguments were apportioned a little more evenly among the various topics they TABLE XIX

Some Differences Between Proponents and Opposition in Preliminary Debate SELECTED TOPICS AS PER CENT OF MAJOR THEMES

PRO (267 In.) T opics

Foreign policy comment and criticism Comment and criticism re: Administration State Department Allies and other countries Potsdam-Yalta-Kuriles Policy and security considerations U.S. security Threat from Soviet and Communist world Security in non-U.S. areas The two Chinas Exclusion of Nat. China from Conference "Yoshida letter" Japan's recognition of Nat. China Japan's recognition of Comm. China Reparations payments to Comm. China Japan free to choose between Chinas Problems of sovereignty Preservation of U.S. sovereignty U.N. human rights and treaty preamble

%of Total

%of Theme

CON (455 In.) % of Total

% of Theme

30

33 11 5 27 48

43 36 5 5 22

19

19 51 15

3 36 25 24

11

30 5 1 13 12 2

1 43 12 6 a

25 b

12 70 12

a None recorded. b Less than half of 1 per cent.

discussed, and there were few signs of an ideological or emotional attachment to any of these subjects. One can perhaps detect a special concern over America's international obligations and her relations, past and current, with other countries in the world. But this internationalist orientation on the part of the treaty defenders in the preliminary debate is much more diffuse and less evident than the nationalist orientation of the opponents. In the ratification debate itself, the earlier differences between the two sides persist. (See Table XX.) The same four topics still occupy two-fifths (41 per cent) of the opposition's argument; the

DEBATE I N T H E SENATE

largest of these four, commanding 21 per cent of the opponents' total, is also the most insistent in- the lexicon of the arch-nationalist: the preservation of American sovereignty. Similarly a balanced internationalist outlook is discernible both in the topics stressed by TABLE XX

Some Differences between Proponents and Opposition in Ratification Debate SELECTED TOPICS AS PER CENT OF MAJOR THEMES

PRO (1,256 In.) T opics

Policy and security considerations Threat from Soviet and Comm. world Security in non-U.S. areas Extent of American commitments Problems of treaty renegotiation Consequences of treaty postponement Foreign policy comment and criticism Comment and criticism re: State Department Administration Allies and other countries Potsdam-Y alta-Kuriles Desirable American foreign policy The two Chinas "Interests" of Nat. China Exclusion of Nat. China from Conference Japan's negotiations with Nat. China Reparations payments to Comm. China Japan's trade with Comm. China Problems of sovereignty Preservation of U.S. sovereignty U.N. human rights and treaty preamble Constitutional powers of Congress Economic and financial considerations American trade and trading agreement with Japan Private American claims against Japan American aid to Japan

%of Total

% of Theme

22

CON (564 In.) %of Total

% of Theme

9 __a

15 28 6 12 3 16

4 18 26 21 24

3 18 15 28 26 13

16 61 3 14 —

7 13 3 12 17 7

13

4 22 3 54 15 35

31 37 16 7

58 12 23 7

46 13 —

38 16

a None recorded.

the proponents of the settlement, and in the tone of the actual statements made under most of these headings. Yet the effects of the opposition's attack are clearly evident in the new concerns of those who, were guiding the settlement, as they now followed

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

an apparent strategy of responding in detail to the major points made against it.14 In the preliminary discussion, for example, they paid almost no heed to the sovereignty issue, which in all its aspects represented 12 per cent of the opposition's early debate. In the formal debate, however, the proponents chose to rise to this bait, refuting the charges to the extent of 13 per cent of their entire contribution. Similarly, the opposition's effort to alter the peace treaty required a new exploration into the problems that would be raised by its renegotiation, rejection, or postponement. A large part of the "Foreign policy comment and criticism" de­ livered by the proponents also represents a response to the opposi­ tion's attack, although on an unconventional, "me-too" basis. As we shall see below, the treaty drew some of its ablest defenders from Republican ranks, and particularly from those who had been severe critics of American Far Eastern policy in the past. To maintain their political and ideological identification, as well as to undermine the position of their opponents in the debate, these Repubhcan de­ fenders frequently had to restate their criticisms in language as strong as that employed by the other side. Thus Senator Bricker, in upholding the preamble of the treaty, explicitly shared Senator Jenner's suspicion of the State Department's motives even though he did not think that they were "meaningful" in this context. The Ohio Republican told the Senate: "I would suspect the State De­ partment of almost anything it might be charged with in connection with the ulterior purposes of the United Nations and its representa­ tives to undermine the liberties of the people of America." But he then went on to say, "Yet even if that were the purpose, this declaration in the preamble . . . is not objectionable, and has no binding effect upon us or upon Japan."15 Since almost every theme and every topic include both original argument and refutation of counter-argument, it is difficult to point to other figures to show the precise dimensions of the broadening effect which disagreement exercised on the coverage of the debate. It might be noted in conclusion, however, that fully 25 per cent of the ratification debate was taken up, on the last day alone, with consideration of the formal questions of agreeing to the restrictive reservations introduced by Senators Smith of Maine, Jenner, and Dirksen. Almost all of these reservations had been presented to 14 One notable exception to this strategy relates to the topic "American aid to Japan"; there seems to have been a continued reluctance on the part of the treaty proponents to discuss a topic as vulnerable as the question of providing Japan with economic assistance, even when the opposition brought the subject up first. 15 Congressional Record, Vol. 98, No. 44, March 18, 1952, p. 2505.

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

the Senate three days earlier, and had been discussed extensively in the interim. Consequently, the figure of 25 per cent, all recorded on the last day of debate, represents only the grossest measure of what the organized campaign of dissent did to the discussion. REGION AND PARTY AS FACTORS IN THE SHAPING OF SENATE DEBATE The development of contention in the Senate seems to have had some of its roots in the factors of political party and geographic region. These are not wholly unrelated elements, to be sure; as long as a given population seeks satisfaction of its needs or values in the political arena, that region and its parties will have some substantive attitudes in common. It has frequently been observed,16 and the findings in this case support the proposition, that party is a more important factor than region in determining Congressional attitudes and voting behavior. This greater power of the political party in the case of the Japanese peace settlement is indicated in Table XXI, where the ten roll-call votes on the settlement in the Senate are subjected to a regional breakdown within each party. There it will be seen that differences in Senatorial voting behavior between the Democratic and Republican parties within each region were much greater than the differences among the various regions within each party. Put another way, the spread within each party was much smaller than the spread within each region. Sectionalism did have some impact, nevertheless, albeit an uneven one. Regional differences were greater within the Republican Party than within the Democratic; this suggests that sectionalism may be a con­ tributory element to the foreign policy factionalism that has for so long beset the Republican Party.17 That the two parties approached the issue of the peace settlement in different fashion is clear not only from the voting record but from the debate itself. The Republicans were fairly evenly split, with 54 per cent of their entire Senate discussion delivered in favor of the settlement and 46 per cent against it. The Democrats, on the 16 E.g., George L. Grassmuck, Sectional Biases in Congress on Foreign Policy, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Series 68, No. 3, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1951, p. 14; Juhus Turner, Party and Constituency: Pressures on Congress, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Pohtical Science, Series 69, No. 1, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1951, p. 163. 17 Grassmuck goes even further in saying, "When party unity does break down, the cause is usually sectionalism." Op.cit., p. 14. See also H. Bradford Westerfield, Foreign Policy and Party Politics: Pearl Harbor to Korea, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1955, Part i, for other data on the foreign policy split within the Repubhcan Party.

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

TABLE XXI Regional and Party Analysis of 10 Roll-Call Votes on the Japanese Peace Settlement in the Senate, March 20, 1952*

Party and Region

Democratic Northeast North Central South West Republican Northeast West North Central South

Number of Votes Favorable to Settlement

Per Cent of Votes Favorable to Settlement

30 10

40 33 234 71

40 33 223 61

100 100 95 86

13 12 19 2

103 110 139 17

66 54 53 6

64 49 38 35

Number of Senators

5 5

Number of Votes Cast

* The ten roll-call votes included, for the Peace Treaty, five reservations, one motion to postpone, and one resolution of ratification; and for the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, two reservations and one resolution of ratification. (The other two security treaties were passed by voice votes.) "Votes Favorable to Settlement" are those cast against the reservations and the postponement motion, and for the resolutions of ratification. The regional breakdown employed here is based on that of the Bureau of the Census. The classification is almost the same as that used by the American Institute of Public Opinion, the only difference involving some border states. The Census Bureau includes Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia as part of the Southern Region in the South Atlantic Division, whereas Dr. Gallup omits the District of Columbia and treats the three states as part of the Mid-Atlantic division of the Northeast.

other hand, were more one-sided (84 per cent) in their verbal support of the treaty policy. In the ratification debate itself, the Democratic record was 100 per cent "pro"; Democratic opposition was the work solely of Senator McCarran, and he delivered it all at one time, on August 29, 1951, preceding the San Francisco Con­ ference. To the extent that considerations of party and region were in­ fluential sources of the disagreement that was registered in the Senate, they are partly responsible for the concomitant growth of coverage that is evident in the debate. If there is any virtue in an extended, detailed examination of the consequences of policy al­ ternatives, then the apparent relationship between party and region on the one side, and coverage on the other, raises some questions about bipartisan activity in the field of foreign affairs. These will be briefly considered at the end of this discussion of the impact of region and party on the debate.

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

The Impact of Region The circumstances and attitudes that prevail in a geographically defined constituency can certainly be expected to play no small part in shaping the views of a Congressman.18 Many of these attitudes he undoubtedly shares, particularly those which are unique to and important in the constituency, because he is himself a product of whatever special circumstances in the area mold or motivate the attitudes. And some of the beliefs which he does not share by conviction he may find it expedient to adopt, if he wishes to main­ tain a sense of identity with the area he represents. But a Congress­ man nearly always has an independent mind, as well as a series of more intimate group identifications within the region he serves, and thus he never reflects merely the majority sentiment of the people in his constituency. The data of this case reveal (1) that there were substantial differences in attitude with respect to the peace settlement among the articulate Senators from different regions, and (2) that these differences do not correspond in all particulars to those that emerge from regional breakdowns of public opinion polls on this subject.19 To begin with, the geographic distribution of the debate is highly uneven, a forerunner of other disproportions or differences that follow. The Northeast and the South, together the contributors of more than half the membership of the Senate, were responsible for only 26 per cent of the entire Senate discussion. The North Central states led the debate with 40 per cent of the total, followed by the West, which provided 34 per cent. These regional differences in the amount of participation are re18 Cf.

Grassmuck, op.cit., pp. 170-71. exploring in detail here the significance of the point, it might further be noted that some of the regional differences displayed both in the debate itself and in the roll-call votes are rather similar to those pointed out in several studies of Con­ gressional voting. See, for example, Grassmuck, op.cit, Chapter vn; Turner, op.cit., Chapters vi and vn; Ralph H. Smuckler, "The Region of Isolationism," American Political Science Review, Vol. 47, No. 2, June 1953, pp. 386-401. The greater corre­ spondence here than exists vis-a-vis the polls hints at a number of complexities in the subject of regional attitudes to foreign policy. It also suggests a number of alternative and possibly conflicting hypotheses; there may be, for example, a time lag in Con­ gressional awareness of constituency opinion on these topics; or perhaps the regional differences displayed in Congress correspond more with regional differences obtaining in certain elite groups or in certain age groups or among the attentive public within the constituency, than with variations observable among the general public. At a minimum, there is food for thought here to sustain a rethinking of the concept of sectionalism within the larger framework of public opinion and the foreign policy­ making process. See also, in this connection, Gabriel A. Almond, The American People and Foreign Policy, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1950, esp. Chapter vi. 19 Without

D E B A T E IN T H E SENATE

inforced by differences in the substance of debate which show pat­ terns of regional response generally corresponding to legend and to past voting records, but not very closely to measures of current pub­ lic opinion. (See Table XXII.) The North Central states have a very TABLE XXII

Some Differences among Regions in the Over-all Senate Debate MAJOR THEMES AS PER CENT OF TOTALS

Theme

Northeast, North Central, South, West, % of Total % of Total % of Total % of Total (327 Col. In.) (1,020 Col. In.) (337 Col. In.) (864 Col. In.)

Policy and security considerations 15 The two Chinas 12 Problems of sovereignty 6 Foreign policy comment and criticism 26 Economic and financial considerations 5 Public involvement 2 Bipartisanship 6 Authority in the Senate 6 Architects of the settlement 6 Attributes of the treaty 8 b The "New Japan" Miscellaneous 7 99%

14 10 30

34 19 15

19 15 5

23

6

25

5 4

6

b 1 3 5 2 2

a 4 4 2 3 5 2

6 6 3 3 4 6 4 3

99%

100%

99%

β None recorded. b Less than half of 1 per cent.

heavy concentration on topics of conservative-nationalist-isolationist significance, notably "Problems of sovereignty" and "Foreign policy comment and criticism." Furthermore, 82 per cent of this regional contribution came from Senators who were opposed to the peace treaty and voted against it. There is scant sign in the polls of criticism of this magnitude and character in the Midwest, although past voting records of Senators from this area would lead one to expect it. Nor did Southern Senators reflect the anti-Japanese senti­ ments so prevalent among their constituents; on the contrary, the entire Southern debate was on the "pro" side of the argument, and it concerned itself far more than any other region did with the broad and generally internationalist problems of policy and security. Another point of difference: unlike the citizens of the South, who directed a great deal of ill-will toward the Japanese, the Senators from that region led the others in the relative emphasis they gave

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

to the development of a "New Japan." For the rest, there is a great similarity in the attention paid to the larger themes by Senators from the Northeast and the West. The character of their contribu­ tions to these themes was not all liberal-internationalist, to be surewitness the large amount of "Foreign policy comment and criticism" —but at least their tenor may be inferred from the fact that all of the Northeast discussion, and 78 per cent of the Western, was by Senators who favored the settlement. There was thus a closer ap­ proximation in these two areas than elsewhere between the opinions of the general public and the Senators—perhaps, in the case of the West, it was an even closer correspondence than exists between the current and historical voting records of the region's Senators. This is further evidence, indeed, of the current disposition favorable to the Japanese in the Western region of the country. It is important for our purpose here not only to demonstrate the existence, but also to suggest the strength, of regional differences within the Senate on the issue of the peace settlement. That is to say, the substantive features that differentiate the various regions seem to be in some measure characteristic of the sections themselves, and not merely surface manifestations of the fact that the Senators in every region who joined in the debate were predominantly or exclusively on one side or another of the issue. Table XXIII shows the persistence of some of these regional differences in the debate when "pro" and "con" are held constant.20 This is not to say that other considerations may not be hidden in these figures. It is pos­ sible, for example, that the similar emphases given by North Central Senators on both sides to "Foreign policy comment and criticism" may be in part a reflection of some unrecorded tactical decision to have the answer to a specific charge against the settlement come from a regional colleague of the Senator who advanced it. Even this, however, would be testimony of a sort to the importance which Senators themselves attached to sectional interests. Sectionalism, then, seems to have had a noticeable effect on this foreign policy debate, but its influence was by no means rampant. Although Table XXIII hints at the strength of regional differences, it also suggests that there were narrow limits to the area within which region had a significant impact on Congressional views. Variations in topic emphasis among Senators from the same region 20 In his study "The Region of Isolationism," Ralph Smuckler concluded also that the elimination of the effects of party did not alter the basic regional pattern that his data defined. Op.ctt., pp. 396, 401.

Theme

a None recorded. b Less than half of 1 per cent.

Policy and security considerations The two Chinas Problems of sovereignty Foreign policy comment and criticism Economic and financial considerations Public involvement Bipartisanship Authority in the Senate Architects of the settlement Attributes of the treaty The "New Japan" Miscellaneous

100%

98% 100% 98%

b

99%

7

b

1 2 3 1 1

a

4 4 2 3 5 2

15 11 31 26 5 4

20 11 6 24 7 6 2 3 5 7 4 3

34 19 15 6 6

12 6 26 10 1 2 1 1 9 16 7 7

15 12 6 26 5 2 6 6 6 8

N.C., % of Total (833 Col. In.)

West, % of Total (674 Col. In.)

South, % of Total (337 Col. In.)

N.C., % of Total (184 Col. In.)

N.E., % of Total (327 Col. In.)

PRO

MAJOR THEMES AS PER CENT OF TOTALS

Regional DiflFerences within "Pro" and "Con" in Over-all Senate Debate

TABLE XXIII

CON

100%

1

a

16 29 1 30 2 7 4 4 2 4

West, % of Total (186 Col. In.)

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

were sometimes greater than the variations among Senators from different regions. This was even truer in the two separate phases of the debate which are combined into one over-all debate in Table XXIII; the act of combining softened some of these differences. In the ratification debate, for instance, the Western Senators who supported the treaty devoted 18 per cent of their attention to "Policy and security considerations"; this was the same amount as that given by "pro" Senators from the Northeast. But Western Senators who opposed the treaty concentrated on other themes— largely foreign policy criticism—giving only 1 per cent of their time to considerations of policy and security. It seems to be the case, then, that while the community life of a region leaves a mark on the foreign policy thinking of its inhabitants and their representa­ tives, the imprint is not heavy enough to stamp out other forces which a pluralistic society introduces into men's lives and endows with motive power. Among these other forces are those that meet in the name of a political party. The Impact of Party

One can hardly escape the conclusion that party-related differ­ ences were a factor of major importance in directing the Senate discussion of the Japanese peace settlement into new avenues. Unlike their British counterparts, American political parties are neither disciplined nor responsible; but despite their scissors-andpaste character, there are sufficient differences in party attitudes so that large numbers of people have little difficulty in distinguish­ ing between them and in identifying themselves over long periods of time with one or another of them.21 In the particular instance under review, there were well-marked differences in the concerns and attitudes of members of the two parties; these differences were visible despite a well-functioning bipartisanship, thus counter­ acting in some measure the inhibiting effect which a bipartisan regime seems to have on the volume, course, and substance of Congressional debate. Party differentiation is found in all aspects of the debate—in its handling as well as in its substance. Although the Democrats con­ trolled both the Executive branch and the Congress during this 21 For the most recent major studies of party identification and voting behavior, see Angus Campbell, Gerald Gurin, and Warren E. Miller, The Voter Decides, Evanston, 111., and White Plains, N.Y., Row, Peterson and Company, 1954; Bernard R. Berelson, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and William N. McPhee, Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1954.

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

period, the Republicans had what appears to have been a predom­ inant hand in the governmental process surrounding the settlement. Just as John Foster Dulles was the moving spirit on the Executive side, the Republicans shouldered the burden of the debate in the Senate, where the supporting forces were under the tactical guidance of two Republican Senators, WiUiam Knowland of California and H. Alexander Smith of New Jersey, and one Democratic Senator, John J. Sparkman of Alabama. Participation was much more ex­ tensive on the Republican side than on the Democratic. In the preliminary period the Republicans contributed 87 per cent of the discussion, and in the ratification debate they were responsible for 77 per cent of the total. Another index may be found in the fact that the Democratic debate was concentrated in fewer hands than the Republican. In the preliminary debate only 2 Democrats, or one-third of the 6 who spoke, produced 93 per cent of the Demo­ cratic total, while 5 Republicans, or one-half of the 10 who spoke, were responsible for 95 per cent of the Republican total. A similar proportion obtained in the ratification debate; there 3 Democrats out of 10 accounted for 93 per cent, while 10 Republicans out of 21 reached the same figure. In view of this Republican preponderance in the debate, it is not at all surprising to discover that in the course of it Republicans addressed themselves to many more topics than the Democrats—31 more in the preliminary debate, and 21 more in the ratification debate. The active role of the Republican Senators not only paralleled Dulles' role; it may well have been a direct consequence of the extraordinary position he occupied in the Executive branch. Be­ cause Dulles was a Republican and sought advice from members of his party and persons associated with it, the reputation of the party in the foreign policy field was almost inevitably involved in the outcome of what was obviously a widely popular enterprise. The issue at stake was especially important because Democratic management of foreign affairs had already become a major target of Republican criticism in preparation for the 1952 general election. It was thus a matter of more than casual interest to those Republi­ cans who were supporting Dulles that the extremist elements in their party be opposed and defeated, and to ensure this result they took on a large part of the job themselves. The Democrats for their part seemed delighted to let these Republicans fight the "good fight" with them. Nearly all of them approved the treaty policy, and they were clearly pleased to have such potent backing as the

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

Republicans were willing to give. At the same time, the Democrats could not help but see the political harvest the Republicans would reap with the treaty's ratification, and thus they could hardly have been blind to the possible gains that might accrue to their own side if the defense of the settlement took on some of the color of a Republican factional dispute. In their approach to the subject of the peace settlement and in the content of debate, the two parties displayed notable differences. A comparison of these differences in the two stages of the debate (see Tables XXIV and XXV) reveals some consistent patterns of substantive concern within each party. This is not to say that "in­ consistencies" were not involved: most important, the Democratic TABLE XXIV

Party Differences in Preliminary Debate SELECTED TOPICS AS PER CENT OF MAJOR THEMES DEMOCRATIC

Topic

%of %of Total 97 Col. In. Theme

The two Chinas Exclusion of Nat. China from Conference "Yoshida letter" Japan's recognition of Comm. China Reparations payments to Comm. China

43

Police and security considerations U.S. security Threat from Soviet and Communist world Security in non-U.S. areas Treaty a Soviet policy victory

24

Foreign policy comment and criticism Comment and criticism re: State Department and Administration Allies and other countries Potsdam-Yalta-Kuriles

18

Problems of sovereignty Preservation of U.S. sovereignty U.N. human rights and treaty preamble Constitutional powers of Congress

—

Architects of the settlement Dulles MacArthur Others a None recorded.

REPUBLICAN

%of Total 628 Col. In.

% of Theme

15 45 17 3 a

14 12 15 13 20

5 61

15 43 22 1

—

18 33 60 27

54 13 23

—

9 69 12 10

5

5 32 —

68

27 51 22

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

TABLE XXV

Party Differences in Ratification Debate SELECTED TOPICS AS PER CENT OF MAJOR THEMES DEMOCRATIC

Topic

Voof Total 418 Col. In.

Policy and security considerations U.S. security Threat from Soviet and Comm. world Security in non-U.S. areas Collective security and alliances Problems of treaty renegotiation Consequences of treaty rejection or postponement The two Chinas "Interests" of Nat. China "Yoshida letter" Japan's negotiations with Nat. China Reparations payments to Comm. China Japan's trade with Comm. China

30

Problems of sovereignty Preservation of U.S. sovereignty U.N. human rights and treaty preamble Constitutional powers of Congress Economic and financial considerations Japan's economy and trade Burden of reparations on Japan American trade and trading agreements with Japan Private American claims on Japan Foreign policy comment and criticism Comment and criticism re: State Dept. and Administration Allies and other countries Potsdam-Yalta-Kuriles Desirable American foreign policy

13

Architects of the settlement Dulles MacArthur Others

%of Theme

REPUBLICAN

% of Total 1,406 Col. In.

%of Theme

14 1 17 37 11 3

11 10 17 3 21

1

15 10

14

7 4 8 31 10

22 10 17 5 4 22

49 23 18

34 24 29 5

13 12 22

21 21

61 5

6 35 23

5 —a 23 72 5

46 9 19 16 4

2 52 8 40

30 55 15

a None recorded.

record in the preliminary debate does not parallel its course in the ratification debate, nor for that matter does it match the foreign policy performance of the party in recent years. This is explained by the fact that Senator McCarran of Nevada, the only Democrat

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

to oppose the settlement who spoke in the debate, was responsible for 82 per cent of the brief Democratic contribution in the early period, and then said not a word in the ratification debate. As a consequence of Senator McCarran's "forebodings"22 about the settle­ ment, the tenor of the Democratic debate in the first period was very different from that of the later discussion. The Republican position throughout the debate was inwardly directed, so to speak, asserting the traditional interests of the nation and the rights of its citizens against foreign and domestic threats; even with Senator McCarran, but more so without him, the Demo­ cratic position was internationally oriented, emphasizing topics dealing with American relations vis-a-vis the rest of the world. For example, the Republicans were bothered by the possibility that the settlement would favor the growing power of Communist China, while the Democrats talked of China mostly to affirm their support of the Nationalist regime. The Democrats stressed the large economic and financial, and policy and security, themes much more than the Republicans did. Within these themes, the Republicans discussed American security in direct terms, while the Democrats discussed it in terms of collective security and the problem of organizing security elsewhere in the world; and in the economic sphere, the Democrats emphasized American trade with Japan whereas the Republicans were more concerned with the status of private claims against Japan. The Republicans gave a much larger share of their time than the Democrats to the problems of preserving existing sovereign powers of and within the nation, and to critical comment on the general shape of American foreign policy; and within the latter theme, the Republicans pressed the attack on the Administration and the State Department, while the Democrats, save for McCarran, preferred to talk less critically about the atti­ tudes and contributions of America's allies. Symbolic, in a way, of the differences in the approach of the two parties is one that shows up under the heading, "Architects of the settlement." In passing out credit or blame for the peace settlement, or in invoking the opinions of high authorities to back their own views, Republicans mentioned General Douglas MacArthur, around whom all Republicans could easily rally, more often than they men­ tioned John Foster Dulles, whom some Republicans refused to ac­ cept as a foreign policy spokesman for their party. The Democrats, 22 See his speech in Congressional Record, Vol. 97, No. 160, August 29, 1951, pp. 10978-81.

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

however, all but ignored General MacArthur, and cited other "ex­ perts" as often as they named Mr. Dulles. The impact of party on general foreign policy outlook seems, on the strength of this case, to be quite deep, despite all the factors which lead to the breakup of party cohesion on specific issues. The major differences between the two parties still hold, even when voting records are held constant. (See Table XXVI.) Thus the TABLE XXVI

Party Differences within "Pro" and "Con" in Over-all Senate Debate MAJOR THEMES AS PER CENT OF TOTALS PRO

CON

Theme

%of Dem. (419 Col. In.)

%of Rep. (1,043 Col. In.)

Policy and security considerations The two Chinas Problems of sovereignty Foreign policy comment and criticism Economic and financial considerations Public involvement Bipartisanship Authority in the Senate Architects of the settlement Attributes of the treaty The "New Japan"

29 15 12 6 13 1 4 4 3 5 8

19 12 11 25 3 5 3 4 6 9 3

100%

100%

%of Rep. (927 Col. In.)

%of Dem. (80 Col. In.)

14 12 27 27 5 5 1 2 2 3 1

29 41

99%

97%

a

17 —

1 —

1 —

8 —

a None recorded.

Democratic "pro" Senators differed widely from the Republican "pro" Senators in the relative emphasis they gave to several im­ portant themes; indeed, the Republicans who supported the settle­ ment were often very similar, in their stress on these themes, to those Repubhcans who opposed the whole issue. As in the case of regional influence, this apparent bedrock of party consensus may reflect the tactical choice of a Republican Senator to respond to an attack by a Senator from the same party. Yet the substance of the debate itself, wherein the reasons for the sometimes reluctant Re­ publican support of the measure were cited even as old criticisms of Democratic foreign policy were renewed, lends weight to the belief that the way Senators structured this policy issue in their own minds, and hence the way they shaped the debate on it, were

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

largely conditioned by party tradition, standards, and habits. In other words, the pull of party is noticeable in Senate discussion even when the merits of the case turn members of the same party against one another in bitter fashion. Many features of the Senate debate—including the persistence of party differences, and the large number of Senators who supported the reservations but in the end voted for the treaty anyway—suggest that the amount of articulated disagreement would have been even greater had there been no attempt to establish bipartisanship on this issue. Many Republican Senators appear to have gone along with the treaty as a result of the position taken by men like General MacArthur, Mr. Dulles, Senator H. Alexander Smith, and Senator Knowland. In other words, the bipartisan regime served to contract the length and the diversity of the debate. Insofar, then, as debate has a political-educational function which is served by the presenta­ tion of many views on a subject, bipartisanship may hamper the exercise of it, and no useful purpose is served by pretending other­ wise. But it is equally misleading to drive the proposition to its extreme. This case study demonstrates the rather obvious point that American political party differences are strong enough so that they cannot all be hidden by the blanket of a bipartisan political process. In a system of undisciplined parties, bipartisanship does not pre­ clude differences of opinion on a party basis, nor does it destroy freedom of expression and the capacity even of persons on the same side of an issue to advance widely divergent lines of argumentation. Bipartisanship in foreign policy is not the rigid, all-embracing system its opponents sometimes describe and fear; nor does it have quite the crippling effects on thought and debate which they may at­ tribute to it.23 The freedom of Republican Senators like Jenner and Malone to denounce bipartisanship in the course of the debate, their conscious attempts to overcome its inhibiting effects, and the number of votes they succeeded in gathering for the reservations to the treaties, are all evidence that the coils which party leaders in a collaborative mood try to throw around their colleagues are loose and transparent.24 We shall return to this subject in a later chapter, where we shall examine in more detail the web of relationships of which this instance of bipartisanship consisted; then perhaps we will 23 See, for example, Thomas I. Cook and Malcolm Moos, "The American Idea of International Interest," American Political Science Review, Vol. 47, No. 1, March 1953, esp. pp. 40-41. 24 See also Dahl, op.cit., pp. 226-32.

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

be in a better position to assay the consequences of this type of political process. THE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE AS LEADER IN DEBATE It is obvious at this point that the ratification debate differed sub­ stantially from the hearings both in spirit and in substance. The contrast between these two considerations of the settlement is so striking as to arouse one's curiosity about the influence of the For­ eign Relations Committee and the role it played as a leader of foreign policy debate in the Senate. Did the Committee behave in a manner other than it had during the hearings, or were its capacities for leadership in the Senate somewhat smaller than they appeared to be in the artificial light of the Committee room? The analysis of the debate indicates that the latter is true: that the Foreign Rela­ tions Committee acted much as it had earlier, but that in the differ­ ent conditions prevailing on the Senate floor it had much less power to shape the sense of the debate or to choose the atmosphere in which it would be conducted. The Foreign Relations Committee made a heavy contribution to the ratification debate: only five members of the Committee were active participants, but they were responsible for nearly two-fifths of the discussion. Table XXVII shows the sources of the Committee's TABLE XXVII Proportion of Ratification Debate Delivered by Foreign Relations Committee Members Senators

Sparkman Smith (N.J.) Wiley Connally Brewster

% of Debate

11 11 7 6 3 38%

% of F.R.C. Total

29 28 19 16 8 100%

contribution; it also reveals the extent to which the Committee's leaders gave tactical responsibility to the leaders of the new con­ sultative subcommittee on Far Eastern Affairs. Senators Connally and Wiley, the chairman and the ranking minority member of the parent Committee, each made a lengthy introductory speech at the start of the debate, but they were extraordinarily quiet for the rest

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

of the time, letting their lieutenants, the chairman and the ranking minority member of the Subcommittee, do the field work of presen­ tation and rebuttal. Yet, despite this impressive amount of activity by Committee members, even these Senators seemed to be aware of the limited ability of the Committee to make a compelling record in the face of a nationalist assault on the treaty. Thus they relied heavily on the persuasive powers of Senator Knowland, who had acquired a following among conservative Republican Senators partly as a result of his uncompromising opposition to communism in Asia. Knowland proved to be a more vigorous advocate and defender of the settlement than the Committee members, delivering 17 per cent of the ratification debate. His cooperation gave the defense of the settlement an appearance of respectability in conservativenationalist eyes that the active, internationally oriented Committee members could probably never have imparted. Another sign that the Committee members felt a weakness in their position is dis­ cernible in the type of authority which they tried hardest to assume. Eighty-five per cent of the Committee members' efforts to fix their "authority in the Senate" were devoted to attempts to establish personal credentials as experts on the subject of the peace settle­ ment, by recalling individual experiences, travels, and instances of policy wisdom, for example, while only 15 per cent represented attempts to identify themselves with the facilities, reputation, or expertise of the Foreign Relations Committee itself. Even under a bipartisan regime, however, and in the shadow of what seems to be their growing specialization in the subject matter of foreign policy, members of the Foreign Relations Committee were not immune to differences on a party basis. The kinds of party in­ terests in foreign affairs that appeared elsewhere in the debate are evident among members of the Committee also. This political differ­ entiation of the Committee is a reminder that, while demonstrably superior knowledge may gain a following for the man who possesses it, the roots of real leadership in a political body like the Senate are basically political rather than intellectual. The party division of debate on the Foreign Relations Committee was not as one-sided as in the Senate as a whole. Among Committee members, the Repubhcans occupied 55 per cent, and the Democrats 45 per cent, of the total. The two parties were not as close as this, however, in the relative emphasis they gave to various themes. Table XXVIII shows that the Democrats exceeded the Republicans by the greatest amount in the area of policy and security, while

a None recorded.

Policy and security considerations The two Chinas Problems of sovereignty Economic and financial considerations Public involvement Bipartisanship Authority in the Senate Architects of the settlement Foreign policy comment and criticism Attributes of the treaty The "New Japan" Miscellaneous

Themes

a

100%

5 4 1 6 3 6 2

36 16 15 6

100%

16 10 10 5 2 3 4 5 20 14 4 7

Rep. F.R.C. Dem. F.R.C. (318 Col. In.) (388 Col. In.)

% OF TOTALS

57 46 19 18 15 55

—

64 57 56 51

Dem. F.R.C.

36 = 100% 43 44 49 100 43 54 81 82 85 45

Rep. F.R.C.

% OF THEMES

PROPORTION OF MAJOR THEMES HELD BY EACH PARTY

MAJOR THEMES AS PER CENT OF TOTALS FOR EACH PARTY, AND

Party Differences among Foreign Relations Committee Members in Ratification Debate

TABLE XXVIII

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

the Repubhcans differed most extensively from the Democrats in their stress on "Comment and criticism" and "Attributes of the treaty"—politically safer and more useful themes because they dealt with characterizations rather than analyses of foreign policies. The differences between the parties on the Committee extend also to the realm of their relationships with party colleagues not on the Committee. In this instance it seems as if the Democratic Committee members carried more weight with other Democrats than Repubhcans on the Committee carried with other Republicans —even with other Republicans who supported the settlement. Table XXIX suggests that the Democrats who were interested in the settle­ ment were happy to let their colleagues on the Committee speak for them, or to accept their word on a controversial problem, but that Republicans generally did not stand in such a close relationship with their representatives on the Committee. This, in turn, is further TABLE XXIX

Party Leadership on Foreign Relations Committee (Ratification Debate) PROPORTION OF THEMES IN "PRO" DEBATE OF EACH PARTY HELD BY COMMITTEE MEMBERS Themes

Policy and security considerations The two Chinas Problems of sovereignty Foreign policy comment and criticism Economic and financial considerations Public involvement Bipartisanship Authority in the Senate Architects of the settlement Attributes of the treaty The "New Japan"

Dem. F.R.C. as % of Dem. Pro

93 92 98 87 34 —a 85 80 72 47 55

Rep. F.R.C. as % of Rep. Pro

42 37 35 44 71 23 57 47 45 66 56

a None recorded.

evidence that a formally instituted bipartisanship can operate in the Senate with some effectiveness without placing excessive restraints on the Senators. In the preceding chapters we have examined the various factors that had significant parts in the process of policy-making on the Japanese peace settlement. To understand the process itself, how-

DEBATE IN THE SENATE

ever, it is important to know not only the properties of its component parts but equally the manner in which they are combined. The following section, then, will consider further this part of the process: What relationships existed among the different factors we have considered? How did each affect or influence the others? What, in other words, were the procedural and substantive consequences of the various ingredients that made up the Japanese peace settlement?

PART V

Interrelationships

Ckapter 10 PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENTAL BEHAVIOR The makers of American foreign policy today are very apt to re­ gard public opinion as extremely significant in its influence on policy-making. Out of deep and perhaps grim experience they can agree with Lincoln that "In this and like communities, public senti­ ment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently, he who moulds public senti­ ment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces de­ cisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed."1 If public opinion is active, united, and intense with respect to a particular issue, for example, then the policy-maker may have to calculate the political consequences of alternate choices and adapt his behavior accordingly, possibly accepting in the process —especially if his own preferences are different—some sizable re­ straints on his freedom of action. Or at the other end of the scale, if indifference prevails and if limited expressions of opinion are approving, or else contradictory in their import, there is a corre­ spondingly greater measure of initiative in the hands of the policy­ maker, but he must still exercise caution lest he create an angry opinion overnight. And even if public opinion remains quiescent throughout the development of a given policy issue, the wise policy­ maker still has to take advantage of opportunities to mend his public fences, to lessen the chance that opinion may become aroused later on and wreak its vengeance on other issues, including electoral ones. The influence of public opinion on the making of the Japanese peace settlement was of this indirect variety; there were few specific and immediate restraints, since public interest was low and in general favorably disposed, but great care was taken nevertheless to see that few more developed either during the making of the settlement or afterward. The most apparent public opinion consideration was not short-run pressure on the immediate policy issue, but rather the long-run calculation of electoral interest that is an integral part of all public policy. 1 Lincoln-Douglas debate, Ottawa, 111., August 21, 1858. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. by Roy P. Basler, New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press (for the Abraham Lincoln Association, Springfield, 111.), 1953, Vol. m, p. 27.

PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENT

Governmental policy-makers discovered that they had a sub­ stantially free hand vis-a-vis existing public opinion on the Japanese treaty, since the elements comprising that opinion did not com­ municate to the policy-makers in a compelling manner any sub­ stantive recommendations about the settlement that were both different from the policy-makers' own desires or intentions and feasible to implement. The major exception to this situation involved the solution of the fishery question; this will be discussed in detail in Chapter 12. On virtually all other matters the lack of force, organization, or practicability in the expression of public dissent, combined with the generality of support for the indicated direction of policy, meant that the policy-makers could discover in public opinion few reasons for doing other than they were inclined to do anyway. They used the discretion thus afforded to achieve in a remarkably short time what must be every American foreign policy­ maker's dream: an international settlement that represented the triumph of what they viewed as the general interest in rational foreign policy as against the competing claims of special interests, some of which were rather persuasive in their appeals for justice. THE POLICY-MAKERS' UNDERSTANDING OF PUBLIC OPINION The policy-makers in both the Executive and Legislative branches "sampled" public opinion on the treaty issue according to their own devices, and in each case came up with the same conclusion: that indifference was widespread and palpable, but that among those with any interest at all in the subject, the predominant attitude was one of tolerance and permissiveness toward most of the problems of peace-making.2 Their methods of exploring public opinion were very rarely "scientific," and were sometimes even primitive, but the policy-makers nevertheless had had enough experience over the years with a variety of foreign policy issues to be able to tell the difference between mild and deep public interest, even when the indicators themselves were crude. Above all, they were aware that the para­ mount foreign policy considerations at that time grew out of the Korean War, and that the Japanese peace settlement was understood more as a protective measure in the face of open conflict with com2 It will be recalled from Chapter 3 that in the month that the peace treaty was ratified, only 8 per cent of a national sample spontaneously mentioned it or any other hase of our postwar treatment of Japan as one of the "good things" the government ad done in its foreign policy since the end of World War II. The proportion citing our postwar treatment of Japan as among the government's foreign policy mistakes in this period was negligible.

E

PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENT

munism in the Far East, than as a final disposition of issues deriving from a state of war whose hostilities had ended some six years earlier. The Executive Branch The Public Studies Division of the Department of State has the function of keeping the policy-makers in the Department informed on the state of public opinion. Among its other services during this period, it issued weekly reports of editorial opinion on current issues in leading newspapers from all sections of the country, and weekly surveys of the attitudes expressed by American political interest groups; and occasionally it made a special analysis of opinion on a given policy matter. And from time to time it received national sample surveys of public opinion on problems that were of current interest. These reports, analyses, and findings were circulated throughout the Department and were ultimately used—or not used —as the policy-makers saw fit. The newspapers that reached the State Department for examina­ tion revealed that editorial and commentator opinion was predomi­ nantly in favor, first, of the idea of a peace settlement with Japan, then of the proposed terms of the treaties before they were signed in San Francisco and Washington, and finally of their immediate ratification. There were a few notes of caution, however, particularly on economic and rearmament topics, and every so often some specific criticisms of the progress of the fishery settlement from West Coast papers like the Seattle Times. In the view of those who studied these papers, furthermore, the amount of coverage on the treaty issue was not very large except at the time of the San Francisco Conference;3 this suggests that the support of the settlement by professional "opinion leaders" in the press went hand in hand with a low level of serious and stable attention toward it. Only a part of the interest group opinions reaching the State Department was channeled through the Public Studies Division. These were mostly the formal stands or resolutions adopted by organizations, or the views expressed in editorials in their official publications. The majority of the opinions that were picked up in this fashion were openly favorable to the over-all settlement, and only a very few were in outright opposition. The number of public opinion polls that, standing alone, were 3 These impressions are substantially confirmed, of course, by the findings reported in Chapter 6.

PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENT

demonstrably relevant to the treaty question was quite small indeed; consequently only a few were circulated through the State Depart­ ment by the Public Studies Division. But in any case the policy­ makers themselves did not seem to be interested in the polls as a means of discovering anything about public opinion. There is no evidence to suggest that they made any use of these few opinion surveys, or that they even initiated any requests for information about the findings of other polls. Perhaps they were not sympathetic to opinion polls anyway; there is, however, no escaping the con­ clusion that in a situation as manifestly favorable as this one was, the established sources of information, unrepresentative but articu­ late, gave the policy-makers a more realistic understanding of the prevailing state of public opinion than the poll data then available could have done. The public opinion agencies, working with a poll­ ing technique that does not recognize all the subtleties of political structure, and having neither the confidence and understanding of policy-makers nor early access to their planning rooms, were simply not able to provide them with politically specific opinion information at the stages of policy-making when it might have been most useful. The State Department's own opinion-gathering office, then, con­ veyed to those on the policy levels who were interested an im­ pression of the permissive indifference that prevailed among the American people on the question of the Japanese peace settlement. There were additional sources of public opinion information in the Department, but these served only to reinforce the reports from Public Studies. One of these was the supply of mail from public citizens to the State Department and the White House. We have already noted that the amount of mail was very low; it was also uncritical of the central issues involved in the settlement, indicating either large-scale public apathy or approval, or more likely some combination of the two. Another source of information about public opinion—and a fertile one—lay in the personal contacts between Mr. Dulles' office and the individuals and groups who approached him directly with their ideas. A large proportion of these communi­ cations dealt either with highly specific and detailed aspects of the settlement, such as the problem of the repayment of dollar bonds, or with extremist attitudes, either pacifist or ultra-nationalist; and in neither case was Mr. Dulles able to interpret the views expressed as representative of general public opinion. Consequently, the pulse of the public appeared to those on the policy level in the State

PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENT

Department to be low indeed, and the policy-makers clearly ap­ preciated the initiative that this situation offered them. The Congress Unlike the Executive branch, the Congress does not have cen­ tralized facilities for gathering and analyzing data about public opinion. Nor could useful facilities be easily established, since the relevant constituency is different for each member of Congress. Each Senator and Representative, consequently, has to develop his own more or less distinctive sources of public opinion information. In some cases these include the opinion resources of the Foreign Rela­ tions Committee, and even, in the case of "friendly" Senators, those of the State Department; and in other instances they are narrowly local. No matter how they differ in these respects, however, they all testi­ fied to substantial public indifference and tolerance on the Japanese peace settlement. David Truman has described succinctly the interest Congressmen have in their mail as a source of political information, and the way they discount a lot of the mail they receive.4 But the Senatorial mail bags were scarcely flooded on the treaty issue. According to one person familiar with the situation, the mail to Senators started to come in between the hearings and the floor debate, and it came mostly from small groups interested in "stirring up trouble." The chief subject of these letters seems to have been opposition to the human rights references in the treaty preamble, and the similarities in the language of many of them unmistakably suggested an in­ spired, if small-scale, campaign. After the appropriate discounts were applied, there was little left to the mail as a useful source of information about public opinion, save in an indirect sense; and it was noted in Chapter 5 that the mail situation suggested even to Senators in opposition how widespread was the lack of public in­ terest in the peace settlement. Frank E. Holman, one-time president of the American Bar Association, who led a brief but spirited cam­ paign against the treaty as constituting "back-door" approval of United Nations covenants, innocently supplied by his own behavior a measure of public inattention. In a letter of opposition which he wrote to Senator John Bricker on March 12, 1952, just two days before the ratification debate began, Mr. Holman confessed that he had "only recently" had an opportunity to study the peace treaty; 4 The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion, New York, A. A. Knopf, 1951, pp. 389-91.

PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENT

and, apparently unaware of the treaty's legislative history, he closed his letter with this comment: "It seems to me the matter is of such importance that there should be a public hearing before the treaty is presented to the Senate for final vote."5 Newspapers, particularly those from their own constituencies, supply Congressmen with much of their knowledge about trends in what is to them significant public opinion. But this nation-wide press in the matter of the peace treaty must have read the same to Senators as it did to the analysts in the State Department. In fact, further evidence that press interest, and hence coverage, was low and preponderantly favorable to the settlement can be found in the kinds of criticism voiced by Senators who were fighting against ratification. As one of the reasons for his motion to postpone a vote on the treaty, Senator Dirksen advanced the near-absence of dis­ cussion in the public press: ". . . If a treaty rests upon the public will, we ought to be sure that the public is fortified. I do not like to say this, but, as a matter of fact, I think the press of the United States has done a miserable job in connection with the treaty. Newbold Morris has received more linage in the press—100 times more—than the Japanese treaty. A celebrated coonskin cap has been accorded far more space than the treaty. The narcotics scandal in Washington has been emblazoned on the front pages of the newspapers, but I defy anyone to find in the press a great ventilation of the treaty and its implications."6 And on the following day, Senator Jenner, who often seemed to see black plots in the ordinary vicissitudes of policy, interpreted the poor press coverage of the debate as a sign that some nameless persons were censoring the discussion, and especially the dissent. ". . . There has been almost a complete blank with re­ spect to the information given the American people as to what we are doing in connection with these peace treaties. The American people do not know what is happening here today. There has been a complete blackout of news. For example, this morning I asked for a press conference. It was not even posted on the bulletin board in the news room. I do not know why."7 The impressions of public opinion that Senators received from organized political interest groups were different from those con­ veyed in other sources of political communication. We have already noted, in Chapter 5, that much of this group opinion was in opposi5

Congressional Record, Vol. 98, No. 44, March 18, 1952, p. 2504. Ibid., No. 45, March 19, 1952, p. 2540. 7 Ibid., No. 46, March 20, 1952, p. 2639. 6

PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENT

tion to the settlement, and that it was heavily ideological in content. Perhaps the very fact that this opinion was so deviant in its policy implications, however, accounted for its lack of impact. In any case, the discount rate seems to have been applied even in advance, to judge by this comment from a close observer: "The hearings were not extensive; there was not much opposition because of the way the problem had been conducted. We did not expect any trouble, and if several groups had not spoken up there would have been even less opposition." That the members of the Senate were convinced that there was only a small and hardly significant public opinion on the treaty issue —except on the matter of the fisheries—is mirrored in the lack of interest they themselves displayed throughout the treaty-making process, and especially during the final days of debate. While Senators frequently get excited over things that do not arouse much real popular interest, it is perhaps reasonable to assume that the proposition does not often hold true in reverse: Senators are unlikely to be relaxed about a policy issue if they feel there is a measurable public interest in it. THE POLICY-MAKERS' REACTIONS TO PUBLIC OPINION In their subsequent behavior vis-a-vis the various elements com­ prising public opinion on the treaty issue, the policy-makers in both branches of government demonstrated—again, each after his own fashion—a combination of ample discretion, growing out of the tolerant indifference of general public opinion, coupled with a polite cultivation of some of the more articulate sections of that opinion lest they accumulate resentments that might come to the surface in the future. This kind of public-governmental relationship, once started, was perpetuated partly by itself and partly by those who benefited from it. For the very exercise of discretionary powers, without the frequent obligation or necessity to make public issues out of possibly controversial choices, meant that aspects of the settle­ ment which might have roused some public interest were passed over in silence by citizens and policy-makers alike who, beset with so many different problems already, were perhaps glad to see some apparently non-controversial issues go their own way to ultimate decision. The full measure of the freedom of action that policy-makers felt they possessed in the face of public opinion may be appreciated by noting that at times they seemed to have forgotten the very existence

PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENT

of opposition views. A year after the event, one of the State Depart­ ment participants, recalling the indifference of public opinion, re­ marked that the higher levels in the Department had received no letters from citizens opposing their plans for a treaty. The number of such letters objecting to various aspects of the settlement was not large, to be sure, and their influence may have been minimal, but the fact of their existence cannot really be doubted. The Executive Branch

The policy-makers in the Executive branch, and most notably of course Mr. Dulles, approached the articulate sections of public opinion with selectivity and discrimination. In the absence of any compulsion to adapt their choices to some insistent and specific public standards of policy formulation in this matter, they were able to pick and choose quite freely from among the available expressions of citizen opinion those to which they cared to give serious attention. The freedom was not absolute, of course; but it was nearly so for all practical purposes, as long as the policy-makers stayed within the broad foreign policy consensus hammered out at the highest level of choice in a democracy. This is but to say that Mr. Dulles, even if he had wanted to, could not have adopted without regard to the public consequences either the pacifist or the extreme na­ tionalist solution. But as long as his proposals were in general accord with the basic agreement on foreign policy fundamentals, he was substantially free to accept or reject ideas that came to him from private citizens or groups, with only minimum thought for the wider public reactions. There were always some external restraints on his freedom of choice, but these came from other places in the Execu­ tive establishment, like the Pentagon, and from the Congress, and not—always excepting the fisheries—from public or group opinion. The volume of individual and group opinion directed to the Executive offices was low, as we have said, but the number of com­ munications that came to Mr. Dulles' attention was even lower. This must have been a consequence of some early, perhaps routine, decisions about the kinds of communications to the Department on treaty matters which required simple acknowledgments, and those which needed some form of individualized reply. Into one file, for general analysis purposes and wanting only formal responses, ap­ parently went the simplest, most unadorned communications: post­ cards and letters addressed to the State Department, the President, and the Secretary of State which were superficial, irrelevant, or even

PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENT

incorrect in their remarks on the settlement, and which contained little or no information about the sender which would enable any­ one in the State Department to make inferences about his political characteristics or importance. But into the treaty file, for at least the rudiments of examination, consideration, and reply, went communi­ cations knowledgeably addressed to Mr. Dulles which dealt with aspects of the settlement in a substantive, more or less informed way, and which were written on letterhead stationery or else con­ tained sufficient identification so that the writer could be fitted into some known political structure or category. The following dis­ cussion of Executive treatment of articulate opinion is based on communications of the latter sort; for they not only dealt most directly with the peace settlement, but also were the ones to which Mr. Dulles gave individual and serious consideration, and which might have exercised some influence on his thinking. In this environment of articulate public opinion, Mr. Dulles seemed to be most receptive to the views of what is often called the business community. There were several possible reasons for this, other than the fact that Mr. Dulles' political party finds some of its strongest support in those circles. For one thing, the treaty affected business interests more directly, perhaps, than those of any other section of or group in the population; and in addition, since these interests were frequently specific rather than general, the business-recommended alterations in policy tended to be modest rather than universal in scope. In any case, whether the calculations were based on justice, on closely reasoned self-interest, on a less conscious orientation of political antennae, or on some combination of these considerations, the communications of the business-financialcommercial groups were most attentively received. For example, treaty personnel in the State Department always gave swift and courteous treatment to messages or recommendations from the Chamber of Commerce or the National Association of Manufactur­ ers; on one occasion his aides' advice to Mr. Dulles on whether he should speak to a committee of one of these organizations hinged on the importance of the businessmen involved, and on the degree to which such a talk might help to smooth the treaty's way with American business interests. Mr. Dulles, furthermore, gave his personal attention to the problem of the validation of Japan's ex­ ternal bonded debt, public and private, and he discussed the matter on a number of occasions with the Foreign Bondholders Protective Council. And on other economic issues, such as the lurking question

PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENT

of a new duty on tuna fish from Japan, Mr. Dulles responded warmly to the overtures of prominent businessmen although he always acknowledged the legislative nature of the problem. Despite the gracious way they were received, however, business groups were on the whole not very successful in influencing the development of the peace treaty. Mr. Dulles and the State Depart­ ment were unwilling to grant their requests for special treatment on the ground that to do so would change the fundamental character of the proposed treaty and open it up to similar demands by other Powers, imposing in the end an intolerable burden on Japan. The vain struggle of individuals and business enterprises to have private claims recognized in the peace treaty is evidence of the Depart­ ment's firm interpretation of the greater good in this matter, even when the justice of the individual claims was beyond question. The fishing industry, with owners, management, and labor acting in concert, constitutes the major exception to this generalization; in Chapter 12 we shall see how successful the industry representa­ tives were in securing an acceptable fishery settlement, partly by holding the peace treaty as a silent hostage to their own good fortune. But the political power of the fishing groups was different from that of the other economic interest groups concerned about the settlement. The industry was able to impress its views on the Executive personnel because its power had a strong Congressional base; the industry was concentrated in three West Coast states, and the State Department officials seem to have reasoned, with impres­ sive justification, that eventual approval of the peace treaty by the Senate might be contingent on the satisfaction of the West Coast Senators in regard to the fishery solution. The fishing industry did not have its whole way on the fishery issue, by any means, but its influence was considerable—greater even than some of the State Department officials were prepared to admit to themselves. In the view of some of them, the Department did not really yield to "public opinion" on this question. And perhaps from their standpoint they did not; perhaps what moved them was the subtle exercise of Con­ gressional pressure, instead. If economic interest groups were cordially received in the De­ partment of State, religious and ideological groups were heard with patient politeness. But their influence on policy was minimal. At first glance, it might be thought that religious and moral groups had a profound impact on Mr. Dulles. After all, they were extremely active in presenting their positions, and on his part Mr.

PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENT

Dulles often justified important treaty policy decisions on moral grounds. The assumption of influence is illusory, however; it may be, as the data in Chapter 7 indicate, that Mr. Dulles turned the moral face of the settlement to public view, but that behavior reflects his conception of an information policy more than it reveals the immediate sources of his political inspirations. A more accurate hypothesis would read the other way around: Mr. Dulles was not specifically persuaded by the opinions of religious groups on the treaty issue, partly because he was already fully familiar with that portion of the religious ethic that was applicable to foreign policy­ making. Another reason, of course, was that when these organiza­ tions advanced proposals other than those taking shape in the treaty, they tended to ignore all the formidable but inescapable political difiBculties that confronted American policy-makers, and to gear their suggestions to a. desirable but unreal international system guided at all times by principles of Christian love and charity. This was even truer of the religious pacifist organizations, whose basic doctrines in fact put them outside of the foreign policy consensus. From the State Department's point of view, then, most of the pro­ posals of these groups were either clearly impracticable or, less obviously, unnecessary. One person in the Department remarked afterward that while they had heard "quite a bit" from religious pacifists and other church and moral groups, they were able safely to ignore them. Mr. Dulles himself was politely firm in defending his own position against the arguments of these organizations. In one case, he took great pains to answer them point by point in lengthy correspondence, but after the Foreign Relations Committee had unanimously recommended that the peace settlement be ratified he terminated the exchange of views. Other ideologically extreme groups of the right and left, including non-religious pacifist organizations, were even less successful in gaining as much as a sympathetic hearing for their arguments. But since the bulk of such sentiments, especially that from the rightwing groups, was directed at members of Congress, the Executive offices were not so heavily pressed by this kind of "public opinion." Mr. Dulles' patience gave out more quickly in dealing with these organizations and individuals than with any others, no doubt be­ cause it was patently impossible for him either to accept the alterna­ tives they offered or to persuade them to change their minds. It was an easy matter for anyone in the State Department to detect in messages of this kind from private citizens the existence of organized

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campaigns, one which fostered the message of Japanese pacifist women, and several others which sought to defeat the treaty on extreme nationalist, anti-United Nations grounds. Once the nature of the pacifist campaign became evident, Mr. Dulles responded in kind with a form letter briefly explaining the rearmament situation in Japan and the Japanese need for protection in the light of aggres­ sion in Korea. The nationalist-inspired campaigns did not start with any force until late in the treaty-making process, around the date of the Foreign Relations Committee hearings, and then they were mostly directed at Congressmen, but they nevertheless caused the Executive personnel no little trouble. Mr. Dulles worked out the basis of a standard response to these arguments also, but by then time was running out and the core of nationalist opposition was forming in the Senate, and so this kind of opposition became more an issue in political relations at the governmental level, and less and less one in the direct relations between Executive and public opinion. The rest of the direct approaches to Mr. Dulles which seemed to require some kind of answer were highly diversified in subject matter and came mostly from individual citizens rather than from representatives of organized interest groups. Mr. Dulles reacted to them with varying degrees of sympathetic responsiveness, but he almost always included at least one reason why it had not proved possible to accommodate the writer's point of view in the settle­ ment. Once in a while, in very special circumstances, as when the Librarian of Congress sought to extend the peace treaty's definition of property rights to include copyrights, Mr. Dulles would grant the appropriateness of an outside suggestion and carry it over into policy, but these instances were infrequent. What is most noteworthy, however, is that Mr. Dulles went to extraordinary lengths to reply personally, and usually in some detail, to these communications, even though he could not satisfy the policy requests of the persons who sent them. Even taking into account his treatment of the extreme right and left, it remains true that he scarcely ever ignored a letter of substance that came to his desk, or rarely passed such a letter on to a subordinate to answer unless there was some compelling physical or substantive reason for it. Instead of taking one of the many avenues that always exist to evade duties of this kind, Mr. Dulles seemed rather to regard the act of replying as an opportunity to dispose decisively in his own mind of the issues presented. It was only after some

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experience with individual replies to letters on the rearmament and human rights issues, in fact, that he arrived at a standard response. Personal attention to details of this kind is a voracious consumer of time and energy; yet it is undoubtedly an effective technique for disarming critics, for taking some of the sting out of refusals to yield to their views, and for otherwise cultivating the opinions of citizens who are sufficiently concerned to write to policy-makers about foreign policy matters. It is certainly conceivable that this evidence of personal and often thoughtful consideration of their opinions at the highest policy level was, for at least some of the people who expressed them, a much kinder and more flattering reception than they had expected. But it should not be presumed that all critics were mollified, or that they were all gratified by the treatment they received; on the contrary, the more hostile, insistent, and experienced ones were able to detect a rebuff with no difficulty, and knew they were getting one this time. Indeed, Mr. Dulles could hardly have sup­ posed in these cases that a soft word, or any word he might agree to give them, would win him their affection. One of these critics later drew from his experience some very large generalizations about the treatment accorded other outsiders. In the Foreign Relations Committee hearings, Mr. Roy S. Allman, a Washington attorney, complained at length about the treaty's failure to protect the claims of American citizens against Japan, and about his difficulty in communicating with Mr. John Allison on this matter. At one point he told the Committee, "When Mr. Dulles and his assistants wrote this [treaty] up, I asked Mr. Allison, his assistant, if I couldn't submit some program where the Japanese could issue bonds or something to pay [private claims], but they didn't go for that. They didn't care about receiving anything from me, or apparently, any other American who knew what this was all about."8 Mr. Dulles sought also, and with what looks like more success, to cultivate public opinion on a scale larger than that permitted by personal correspondence; for by stimulating favorable comments on the settlement in public places and by keeping the atmosphere of policy-making free and relaxed, he was in a way re-ensuring his freedom of action against private pressures. The devices he chose for this large-scale cultivation of opinion were chiefly press con­ ferences and public speeches; he understood their virtues with 8

Hearings on the Japanese Peace Treaty, p. 135.

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intuition, and he employed them with finesse. By using these techniques to maintain an information initiative he was able to capitalize on his policy initiative and to create what came to be the dominant images of the character of the peace settlement among the attentive public. We have already discussed Mr. Dulles' public speeches, in Chapter 7. His press conferences were substantially of the same sort, although geared for the more active curiosity of the newspaperman. They were held voluntarily at periodic intervals, but they revealed mostly the outlines of policy development rather than the details of policy maneuver, calculation, and choice. In a sense, the frequency of the conferences themselves had to substitute for the availability of significant detailed information. Since these conferences were an important source of public knowledge about the peace settlement, they inevitably strengthened the State De­ partment's position by keeping to the forefront the most agreeable aspects of the treaty situation at any moment. And the Department's position was subsequently maintained—rather than weakened, as it often is—because with public and political interest so low and the situation apparently well in hand the reporters had little in­ spiration to seek out and publicize alternative treaty viewpoints or interpretations that were less well known. In sum, then, Mr. Dulles made the greatest use of his freedom to achieve the kind of treaty he believed in; but a part of that freedom he chose to put back into the political process as a capital investment, so to speak, to ensure a steady flow of policy discretion. unfailing

The Senate

Members of the Senate not unexpectedly reacted to public opinion in a large variety of ways; in almost all of their responses, however, we can see a measured independence from even the most articulate promptings of public opinion. If this independence was rooted in a mixture of public indifference and approval, its growth to maturity was hastened in the case of most Senators by the transparently deviant character of so many of the sentiments that came to them in a carefully arranged trickle. The independent attitude of Senators toward public opinion on the peace settlement is indicated by the slim attention explicitly paid to it in the course of the ratification debate. There are no comparable data from debates on other issues to aid in the inter­ pretation here, but the paucity of references, their sources, and their composition all suggest that public opinion considerations of

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the moment did not actively enter the calculations of even those Senators who opposed the settlement. The theme of "Public in­ volvement" occupied only 4 per cent of the ratification debate, and the same proportion of the discussion in the preliminary period. This amount was distributed rather evenly among the following eight topics which comprised the theme, so that no one topic stands out as being of special interest to Senators. As these categories imply, even the brief Senate discussion of public involvement was some­ what more concerned with the causes and characteristics of the too-evident public apathy than it was with an evaluation of the public's interests or objectives in the treaty issue: PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT IN THE PEACE SETTLEMENT A.

PUBLIC ATTENTION TO THE PROBLEM, THE AREA, AND THE TREATY

1. 2. 3. B.

Public interest Public representations Public confusion

PUBLIC DISCUSSION OF THE SETTLEMENT

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Treaty rush and its effects on discussion Treaty delay and its effects on discussion Amount of discussion and press coverage Freedom of discussion and press coverage Amount of understanding and knowledge available

Members of the Senate were dependent for their tenure on the good favor of their constituents, however, in a way that Mr. Dulles did not approximate in his Executive capacity (but could easily remember from his Senatorial campaign several years before); and so they were obliged to give in some ways even more careful atten­ tion than he did to the manifestations of public opinion that came to them from their own constituencies, no matter how lowly the source or distasteful the ideas. Even though they might in their own minds write off a piece of correspondence as part of a campaign by postcard, for example, or as the work of a "crank," Senators were generally prompt in replying; and some of them were quick to seek the help of the State Department in drafting detailed, informative, and authoritative letters. Thus the Senators in their separate ways, like the top policy-level in the State Department, drew a fairly uniform distinction between immediate and short-run public opinion relations, and longer-range political-electoral considerations. The former were non-directing, while the latter were never forgotten. Let us look at some of the

PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENT

ways in which Senators displayed their apparent sense of freedom from the injunctions of articulate public opinion on the treaty issue. It must be said at the outset, however, that since most of the Senators were silent throughout the Senate discussion of the peace settlement, and did not participate in the earlier stages of its development, there is little that is known about their behavior toward public opinion. If these Senators were indeed exposed at first hand to any non-governmental views about the settlement, the contact never made itself manifest in policy channels or public sight. Perhaps one is safe in concluding, consequently, that the majority of the Senators were able to dispose of such expressions of opinion simply by answering them, without the necessity of taking any other form of action. About the behavior of members of the Foreign Relations Com­ mittee there is less uncertainty, since to their open record in the hearings one can add their large share in the conduct of the ratifica­ tion debate. These Senators seemed to regard themselves as having substantial political freedom, especially when they were dealing as Committee members with persons who were not their constituents. Some of the Committee members acted more as though they be­ longed to the Executive than to the Legislative branch, so com­ pletely did they shed their representative responsibilities and identify themselves with the Executive's treaty proposals. Indica­ tive of their indifference to public opinion considerations in their thinking about the treaty is the scant attention they paid to the entire "Public involvement" theme in the ratification debate: while the five active members of the Committee accounted for 39 per cent of the entire debate, they were responsible for only 9 per cent of the discussion of that particular theme. The hearings, it will be recalled, were evenly divided, with two days given to the questioning of Administration witnesses, and two days to private witnesses. In the first phase, when the Executive's conception of the settlement was being probed, less than one-half of 1 per cent of the discussion centered explicitly on aspects of public involvement. And in the latter part, which was wholly given over to just such matters, most of the Committee members present could scarcely conceal their lack of sympathy with the parade of private witnesses. With one or two exceptions—Herbert Coston, for example, a young missionary from Wisconsin, was listened to by all the Committee members with attention and respect—the Sena­ tors' attitudes seemed to be compounded of aloofness, boredom,

PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENT

and impatience with the tenor of private testimony. Their eagerness to bring the hearings to an end was pronounced, but paradoxically the proceedings lasted as long as they did in large part because the Senators were always ready to defend the treaty, Mr. Dulles, and the Executive branch against the accusations and innuendoes made by the less responsible private witnesses. Indeed, the shafts which Committee members thrust at some of the private witnesses were in odd contrast to the pleasantries these Senators exchanged with Administration witnesses; and they were also much sharper than the remarks the Senators permitted them­ selves in reply to similarly unpopular ideas from their own constitu­ ents. Senator Brewster, for example, after sparring for some time with the Reverend A. J. Muste, national secretary for the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation, finally asked him in exasperation: "Then would it not be wiser for one like yourself, who believes in overcoming material menace by spiritual means, to go there to Russia and undertake to convert those heathens to your way of thinking rather than here in the United States where you agree that the great mass of the American people are entirely as pacific in their evident intent as you, yourself? Would that not be the better place for you to sacrifice your time and energies rather than here in the safe security of the very armaments which you denounce? If it were not for these armaments you would be at the mercy of the Kremlin today for all we can know, as well as millions of your fellows who prefer another solution. Would not that be a better way for you to sacrifice yourself than to stay here behind our guns and preach to us a gospel which would only result in the destruc­ tion, not only of yourself, but everybody else?"8 In another instance, Senator Sparkman clashed with William H. Evans, Jr., whose com­ mission as a naval officer had been revoked in 1951 after he attacked the President and the Secretary of State as pro-Communist. Mr. Evans had for some time in his testimony been alluding to the "be­ trayal of the United States for the sole purpose of making the world safe for Communism,"10 and to the role of the Japanese peace treaty in that development. After trying in vain to pin down some of Mr. Evans' accusations and make them explicit, Senator Sparkman ended his questioning on a note of angry indignation: "We all appreciate your coming here and making this statement. It seems to me, however, that you are seeking to play upon the imagination 9

Hearings on the Japanese Peace Treaty, p. 88.

10

Ibid., p. 103.

PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENT

of the people when you make a statement here that a treaty that has received the time and attention of good, loyal Americans that this treaty received, is one that was written not in the best interests of the United States either because somebody willfully made it that way or because they were simply not smart enough to under­ stand what they were doing. It just seems to me those are pretty serious statements for you to make."11 The small band of Senators who opposed the peace settlement was almost as unimpressed with current public opinion as the treaty's warmest supporters on the Foreign Relations Committee. In fact, these Senators used the near-absence of strong public sentiment on this issue as one of their reasons why the treaty should be rejected, or its ratification at least postponed. But since they nowhere suggested that even a better-informed public opinion would be on their side—if anything, they were resigned to defeat on a vast scale—it seems reasonable to conclude that they invoked public opinion as an instrument to further their own political objectives. This instrumental attitude may be seen in Table XXX, which compares the brief attention given by both sides in the ratification debate to various topics within the theme of "Public involvement." It will be noted there that while the proponents TABLE XXX

Comparison of "Pro" and "Con" References to Pubhc Opinion in Ratification Debate Topic

Public involvement A.

B.

11

PRO % of % of Total Theme

3

Public attention Public interest Public representations Public confusion Public discussion Treaty rush: effects on discussion Treaty delay: effects on discussion Amount of discussion, coverage Freedom of discussion, coverage Amoimt of understanding, knowledge

Ibid., p. 106.

CON % of % of T otal Theme

7 16.4 26.1 9.0

16.0 10.2 10.9

10.4 8.2 16.4 11.2

20.5 19.9 14.1

2.2

7.7

99.9%

99.9%

.6

PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENT

divided their attention almost equally between the two major parts of the theme, the opponents gave a greater share of their time to the "Public discussion" aspect of it. Specifically, the treaty supporters placed much more stress than the opponents on the subject of public representations and freedom of discussion and coverage, while the opponents put their emphasis on the effects of rush or delay of the treaties on the discussion. As a group, the Western Senators were perhaps the most con­ cerned with public opinion. There were two apparent reasons for their expressed interest in the subject of constituent opinion, which manifested itself in the fact that these Senators contributed a little over 40 per cent12 of the "Public involvement" theme in the ratifica­ tion debate. One of the reasons was the important position within each of the three coastal states occupied by the various branches of the fishing industry; and the other was the widely accepted notion that residents of these states have, as a result of propinquity, ex­ perience, or whatever, a proprietary interest in Japanese-American relations. Both of these reasons rose to the surface as the subject of West Coast opinion came up at various times in the hearings and in the debate; yet Western opinion was reflected most strongly not in public discussions of the settlement but in the private behavior of Western Senators vis-a-vis the Executive branch on the question of the Fisheries Convention. However, by giving every consideration to special group opinion on this single narrow issue, these West Coast Senators probably increased their independence in respect of the rest of the peace settlement; with the fishing industry satisfied, they were sub­ stantially free to make up their own minds on other phases of the settlement, and to treat other sections of articulate public opinion accordingly. Senator Knowland, for example, had little difficulty attacking conservative groups whose view of the peace settlement was different from his own; and on one occasion in the floor debate he charged that "there has been some irresponsible material cir­ culated throughout the country which indicates that ratification of the treaty would either bind Japan alone, or Japan and the United States, to the [U.N.] covenant [of human rights] and to the Genocide Treaty and many other things."13 It is possible, also, that the dis­ cretion of Western Senators may have grown as a result of the talk about the Western residents' special interest in Far Eastern policy; 12

Three-quarters of this was by Senators who favored the treaty. is Congressional Record, Vol. 98, No. 44, March 18, 1952, p. 2488.

PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENT

for with the fishery question out of the way and the fishery people mollified, the Senators themselves were about the only ones around who were both willing and able to articulate the "Western interest" in the peace settlement. CONCLUSION It is a matter of ready observation that issues of foreign policy, as of any public policy, can stimulate an impressive variety of activities from different combinations of private individuals and groups who command varying amounts of political influence. Indeed, it is precisely the bewildering array of possibilities—the haunting presence of the question, "What would happen if . . . ?"—that en­ courages caution and calculation in the policy-maker, and stimulates the scholar's quest for knowledge about causal relationships. Both can see, in retrospect, that the Japanese peace settlement followed a not wholly unfamiliar path which, save for a brief moment in the open sunshine of interest and acclaim, ran rather close to the deep shadow of oblivion. To move from retrospection to prediction in matters of policy development would require, at a minimum, the detailed and elaborate comparison of a great many cases or instances of foreign policy-making. As a starter, however, and at the risk of a little repetition, it may be useful to underscore some of the factors that seem to have been responsible for the kind of public process the Japanese peace treaty encountered. Perhaps the really basic factors are the treaty's technicality, its wider policy setting, and the traditional policy orientation of the American people, all of which helped to account for the treaty's floating in the backwater of public attention. An analysis of the subsequent career of the settlement has to start, it seems, by recog­ nizing these conditioning elements, since they were capable of only marginal modification or manipulation. Inquiry consequently focuses on other, more variable factors which in combination kept the settlement from building up some little power of its own, breaking at least partially through these obstacles and heading into a different stream of consequences. One possible factor was the lack of any connection between the President and the Secretary of State, on the one hand, and the every­ day handling of the settlement, on the other. President Truman and Secretary Acheson were responding to Congressional demands for bipartisanship in turning the issue over to Mr. Dulles so completely, but in removing themselves they removed the two officials in the Executive establishment whom the American people are in the habit

PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENT

of associating with foreign policy developments. Mr. Dulles was un­ questionably better liked among Republicans in the Senate than was Mr. Acheson, but the latter was at that time undoubtedly better known in the country at large. Although there are no poll figures available on the extent of public familiarity with Mr. Dulles at that point in his career, only 26 per cent of a national sample were familiar with the term "bipartisan foreign policy" shortly after his appointment to the State Department for bipartisanship reasons.14 Six months later, however, and again after the San Francisco Con­ ference, 66 per cent of the national samples polled were able cor­ rectly to identify Dean Acheson.15 There is of course no way of knowing just how important the self-effacement of the President and Secretary of State was. In the one instance where they were prominently identified with the settlement, at the San Francisco Conference, the issue was in the center of public attention, but it would clearly be absurd to argue that their participation was funda­ mentally responsible for the sudden development of interest. On the contrary, in fact, Mr. Acheson's popularity rose as a result of his association with the peace treaty at the Conference.18 Still, it seems a reasonable hypothesis that some potential interest in the settlement at an earlier stage had never been realized because the issue itself was entrusted to a person who was not widely known and who did not occupy an office of any formal distinction. Another factor which may have helped to keep the peace settle­ ment in the background was the obvious lack of interest in it on the part of the specialists in the communications media, particularly the press. To some extent this was the responsibility of the Execu­ tive officials, including Mr. Dulles, who guided information policy on the settlement and who naturally wanted to portray it in the most favorable light. Yet neither the people who make news, nor the news events themselves, determine the coverage that they will receive when the papers are made up. Despite newspapermen's frequent contention that they only report the news, they are ultimately the ones who decide, on the basis of experience, intuition, custom, per­ sonal preference, customer preference, or whatever, how to "play" it.17 And they obviously decided, to the apparent satisfaction of the policy-makers, that there was far less "news value" in the Japanese 14 AIPO 15 Both 16

release dated June 10, 1950. surveys were reported in an AIPO release dated October 10, 1951.

Ibid. See, for example, the International Press Institute's study The Flow of the News, International Press Institute, Zurich, 1953, which is both intentionally and uninten­ tionally revealing on this point. 17

PUBLIC OPINION AND GOVERNMENT

peace settlement, which as far as they could tell at a superficial glance was proceeding smoothly, than in the many other exciting happenings of those days. As a consequence, it was only during the San Francisco Conference, in the context of the free world vs. the Communist world, that the settlement got enough leading coverage in the press to acquire even momentary salience as a foreign policy issue. There is no intention here to suggest that the press acted irresponsibly, or that it failed to act as it should have. On the con­ trary, there was nothing unusual or inappropriate about the calcu­ lations of newsmen on this issue. Their estimates of the low state of general public interest in the peace settlement were undoubtedly very accurate. The only point being made here is that, responsible or otherwise, the behavior of the news media has its own logical consequences; and one of these was that reader interest, in the ab­ sence of the stimulation of news coverage, was allowed to remain low. The lack of participation by the President and the Secretary of State was undoubtedly one reason why there was little news value and even less public interest in the peace settlement; another reason was the lack of serious and large-scale partisan differences on the issue, which when present are almost always regarded as news. The nature of this bipartisanship will be explored in the following chap­ ter. Here it might be useful simply to indicate how the prevalent Congressional attitudes combined with the other factors mentioned to keep the peace treaty issue a minor one. Firstly, the attitude of newsmen toward the Senators was apparently reciprocated: just as the press saw no signs of interesting or serious partisan differences, or even of normal Congressional curiosity or concern about the out­ come of foreign policy legislation, so the Senators in turn saw no sign in the press that the country was interested in or even much aware of the pending treaty. Indifference on each side seems to have fed indifference on the other. And secondly, when this disinterest in the Senate was combined with the bipartisan arrangement, it produced among Senators a heavy dependence on Mr. Dulles, and a corresponding disposition to accept his judgment on procedural as well as substantive questions. In turn, his possession of so much power of decision served to reinforce the tendencies on the Execu­ tive side that, as we noted earlier, were keeping attention away from the peace settlement.

Ckapter 11 BIPARTISANSHIP AND EXECUTIVELEGISLATIVE RELATIONS Coloring the Executive-Legislative relationship on the peace settlement was the constitutional requirement that treaties be ap­ proved by a Senate majority of two-thirds. The need to organize a dependable majority of this size posed a continuing political chal­ lenge to Mr. Dulles. Because he understood the freedom of man­ euver that the government possessed, and the kinds of opportunities and restraints it suggested, he successfully met this challenge; and the governmental process operated with exceptional ease. There were other than personal factors, to be sure, behind the smooth functioning of the governmental treaty-making process in this case. Other elements in the situation favored the exercise of Mr. Dulles' special talents for harmonizing the interests of parties and minimizing the conflict between the branches of government. For one thing, the Executive, in addition to its broad constitutional ad­ vantages in the realm of foreign policy, has a kind of natural advantage in foreign policy issues of any complexity; when there is no strong political motivation to challenge the Administration's judgment, the Senate is disposed to accept the competence of the Executive in the face of a mass of technical details. And the basic political motivation to oppose the notion and character of the peace settlement with Japan did not exist on a wide scale even among the increasingly restless minority party; for mixed reasons, most of the Senators in both parties approved the course of General MacArthur's occupation of Japan since 1945 and, in view of the Korean War, were anxious to capitalize on the investment in Japan by tying her to the West with bonds of consent. The attitude of an important group of conservative Republicans in this regard was made clear in their independent report at the end of the Senate hearings on Gen­ eral MacArthur's dismissal: "A candid survey of the position which the United States now occupies in the Orient leads to the conclusion that the administration's management of affairs in the Far East represents the most desolate failure in the history of our foreign policy. This management has been heedless in its neglect of our interests; the upshot has been catastrophe. The single exception in

BIPARTISANSHIP

the record is provided by Japan, where the reputation of the United States for firmness, generosity, and fair dealing has been nobly up­ held. The irony provided by this exception lies in the fact that the person most responsible for our success in Japan—General Douglas MacArthur-is the man whose dismissal provoked the investigation in which we have been engaged."1 Mr. Dulles' management problems were made simpler not only by the favorable disposition among Senators of both parties, but also by the demonstrable difficulty in altering the peace treaty after it had been signed. As a multilateral instrument it would require re­ negotiation under different international political conditions if changes were to be made. Minor dissatisfactions thus were bound to melt away when confronted with the risks and disadvantages in­ herent in this prospect, and treaty supporters in the Senate were quick to make the confrontation. Put another way, many of the important parts of a smooth treatymaking structure were clearly present in the situation in which Mr. Dulles operated; yet it is also true that these parts had to be stuck together. In the words of one participant who observed Mr. Dulles closely, "The cement has to be of the right texture and quality for the mixture to hold together. The personality factor is tremendously important." We have already noted some of the qualities that fitted Mr. Dulles for this task, and which enabled him to make the pieces stick. Here we shall explore the contacts established and procedures employed by Mr. Dulles in developing effective working relations with the Senate and the parties in it. This was his only assignment, it should be remembered, and thus he had both the independence from other commitments and the necessary time and energy per­ sonally to cultivate political relationships in a way not customarily open to high-level policy-makers. DISTINCTION BETWEEN BIPARTISANSHIP AND EXECUTIVELEGISLATIVE RELATIONS Much has been written about bipartisanship and Executive-Legis­ lative relations, but this matter is still subject to confusion and a 1 "Individual Views of Certain Members of the Joint Committee on Armed Services and Foreign Relations of the United States Senate relating to Hearings held on the Dismissal of General MacArthur and the Military Situation in the Far East," in Military Situation in the Far East: Hearings before the Committee on Armed Sermces and the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 82nd Con­ gress, 1st Session, Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1951, Part 5, pp. 3602-03. The report was signed by Senators Bridges, Wiley, H. A. Smith, Hickenlooper, Knowland, Cain, Brewster, and Flanders.

BIPARTISANSHIP

certain amount of contention. Consequently, before we consider the actual relations between parties and branches in this case, and the way they were developed so as to expedite the peace settlement, it will be useful to make clear the nature of the problem as it is conceived here. In the first place, it is not always possible to make an operationally useful distinction between these two logically and theoretically separable sets of relationships. The relations between parties and branches were particularly complicated in the case of the peace settlement by the fact that Mr. Dulles was a Republican. The lines were thus crossed, and the simple classic situation did not exist. On the operational level, it was less a case of an Administration trying to gain the cooperation of the opposition political party in the Congress, than it was of an Executive agent of the opposition party seeking to retain the confidence and cooperation of the Legis­ lative elements of his own party. From the viewpoint of the Presi­ dent and the Secretary of State, this was a marvelous instance of bipartisanship in practice, but from Mr. Dulles' vantage point it was in addition a major exercise in Executive-Legislative collabora­ tion. Most of the time, in truth, these two sets of relationships were inextricably intermingled. So pervasive was their mixture that even someone as knowledgeable as a staff member of the Foreign Rela­ tions Committee described as "the only mistake in the bipartisan conduct of the peace settlement" the State Department's failure to include any Senators in the ceremony when it deposited its instru­ ment of ratification. There were only a few situations in the development of the peace settlement, however, which one might point to as examples of Executive-Legislative relations relatively uncomplicated by con­ siderations of bipartisanship. We shall examine one of these situa­ tions in detail later; and in the subsequent discussion of political party relations, it should be kept in mind that there was in them an inseparable component of Executive-Legislative relations.2 Understanding of Bipartisanship

The word "bipartisanship" conveys many different meanings, and 2 Cf. Max Belofif, Foreign Policy and the Democratic Process, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1955, p. 83: ". . . bipartisanship reveals itself as simply one more aspect of the executive-legislative relationship. Insofar as Congressional support is necessary for the execution of the Administration's policies, majorities must be found; in a system of this kind, such majorities are likely to be bipartisan to some extent, and from the point of view of continuity it is desirable that they should be."

BIPARTISANSHIP

is subject to widely conflicting evaluations.8 Snyder and Furniss note after searching the literature that "at least six different interpre­ tations of the term are current": consultation between the Executive branch and party leaders, exclusion of certain issues from presidential campaigns, continued support of policies after normal constitutional processes, bipartisan voting, elimination of partisan considerations in reaching agreement, and appointment of minority party members to responsible policy-making roles.4 The advocates of a bipartisan­ ship with any or all of these meanings argue that foreign policy in our time is too much a matter of life or death to rest on the shifting sands of partisan politics; its opponents object to the stifling of dis­ cussion and the obscuring of responsibility which they see as an inescapable companion of bipartisanship, and which they fear will spread cancerlike through democratic government as the recognition grows that much of erstwhile domestic policy really has important foreign policy implications.5 To analyze a concrete experience in Executive-Legislative col­ laboration on a two-party basis of course requires some theory or conception of the phenomenon itself; but there is little new insight to be gained by approaching bipartisanship either as necessary at least in certain circumstances and therefore good, or as bad in any or all cases and therefore unnecessary. In the present state of knowledge, it seems more productive to avoid these incomplete and extreme formulations, and for purposes of analysis to view the kinds of inter-branch and inter-party collaboration that go by the name of bipartisanship simply as types, or as different forms of a type, of political process involving certain factors in certain ways 8 The literature on bipartisanship is unimpressive, reflecting a basic lack of empirical research and analysis. Only recently has there appeared a major study of the subject: H. Bradford Westerfield, Foreign Policy and Party Politics: Pearl Harbor to Korea, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1955. Westerfield's book contains an up-to-date bibliography of relevant literature; see also Richard C. Snyder and Edgar S. Furniss, Jr., American Foreign Policy: Formulation, Principles, Programs, Rinehart and Co., 1954, Chapters 11 and 12. 4 Snyder and Furniss, op.cit., pp. 497-500. 5 The general public seems to share the ambiguities and disagreements that en­ velop this subject. In June 1950, shortly after Mr. Dulles came to the State Depart­ ment as part of a Democratic effort to restore a measure of two-party cooperation in American foreign policy-making, only 26 per cent of a national sample could give a correct or a "reasonably correct" definition of the term "bipartisanship." Most of these (21 per cent) thought it was a "good idea" to have a bipartisan foreign policy, but substantial agreement stopped at that point: 9 per cent felt that there was a bi­ partisan foreign policy in existence at that time, and 14 per cent felt that there was not. AIPO poll released June 10, 1950. There is no indication of the range of mean­ ings which were accepted as "reasonably correct."

BIPARTISANSHIP

with attendant consequences. The study of bipartisanship will make useful progress only when the normative element can be set aside long enough to accumulate more specific knowledge about the forms, the substance, and the results of the various political processes that the word describes.® In previous chapters we have noted some of the basic structural elements in the particular kind of bipartisan collaboration involved in the peace settlement: the political and policy settings, the leading personnel, and some of their important political characteristics. And we have reached some tentative conclusions about the effects of bipartisanship on the Senate debate. In this chapter, after a discus­ sion of Executive-Legislative relations by themselves, we shall examine the actual substance and techniques of the bipartisan relationship on the peace treaty issue. Then we will be in a better position to evaluate the larger results of this process of bipartisan­ ship: its apparent consequences for policy, for discussion and under­ standing, for the parties and the political system. THE EXECUTIVE-LEGISLATIVE RELATIONSHIP There was only one major problem in the relations between the Executive and Legislative branches which was quite separate from the problems of bipartisanship, and which was to some extent independent of Mr. Dulles. The question involved was largely procedural, although it had policy implications: it concerned the timing of the Senate's action in the matter of ratifying the settle­ ment. This was the only instance where the smooth operation of the governmental machinery was temporarily interrupted as a con­ sequence of institutional friction. The problem of the timing of the ratification was mostly a matter between the President and the leadership of the Senate. The details of the situation that arose reveal both the character of this problem in Executive-Legislative relations and what was required to resolve it. The State Department representatives had returned from the San Francisco Conference in September 1951 with a major dilemma on their hands. Having done everything they could for the better part of a year to hasten international agreement on the treaties, and having stressed at the Conference itself the importance of speed, eWesterfield has made a noteworthy step in the collection of relevant data, even though he is against what he defines as partisanship and bipartisanship, and in favor of a kind of highly flexible two-party collaboration which he calls "extrapartisanship." He is interested in these three types of political processes as possible "solutions to the problems of achieving democratic control of foreign policy." Op.cit., p. 16.

BIPARTISANSHIP

they were naturally eager to see their own government take rapid action toward bringing the settlement into force. Yet the Depart­ ment of Defense was unwilling to have the treaties ratified until the United States had signed an Administrative Agreement with Japan governing American troops and military installations remain­ ing in that country, and the terms of such an Agreement had not been worked out yet. In these circumstances, Mr. Dulles was aware of the impracticability of asking for immediate ratification; never­ theless, he felt that some action toward ratification was necessary as an earnest of American intentions, to avoid any imputation that American representatives had been insincere in their past argu­ ments for speed. His thought was to send the treaties to the Senate soon, before the first session of the 82nd Congress adjourned, so that the Foreign Relations Committee could start its hearings im­ mediately and have its report in shape for prompt action by the full Senate when it reconvened in January 1952. Mr. Dulles received some encouragement when he raised this question with Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee as soon as he returned from San Francisco; but before such arrangements could be explored further the President, apparently unaware of these plans, spoke publicly in quite different terms. At his press conference on September 13, President Truman responded to a reporter's question about the timing of ratification by saying that he would send the treaty to the Senate as soon as it was ready, and would ask for prompt action. The reporter then mentioned to the President that he asked his question because there had been some talk about letting the treaty wait until the next session of Congress. To this the President repeated that when he sent the treaty to the Senate he would ask for prompt action, and then he forecast that the Senate would, as usual, take its own de­ liberate time. This statement by the President, which was inter­ preted by Senators as an attempt to transfer the blame for a delay in ratification from the Executive branch to the Senate, created the brief crisis in Executive-Legislative relations. As a consequence of this exchange, the State Department found it advisable to explain informally but in detail to strategically placed persons on the Senate side its reasons for not wanting immediate ratification but rather for desiring some other form of early action so that the United States could not be charged with dragging its heels. Hopes for early hearings waned, however, as the Depart­ mental representatives learned of a growing feeling in the Senate

BIPARTISANSHIP

that as long as no final action on the settlement was to be taken before adjournment, it would be better if the President did not transmit the treaties to the Senate until the beginning of the new session in January; in that way the Senate would not be charged unfairly with responsibility for the delay. Reluctant to give up its favored procedure of early hearings by the Foreign Relations Committee or perhaps a subcommittee, fol­ lowed by ratification in January when the Congress reconvened, the State Department several days later took its argument to the President. The President was sympathetic to the Department's way out of its dilemma, consented to the working-out of arrangements for early hearings, and hoped for ratification in early January; nevertheless he was not willing to modify the position he had taken publicly on behalf of immediate ratification, and he wanted the State Department to arrange for him to submit the treaty promptly to the Senate. The President's reluctance to retrieve the situation and restore the Department's position by abandoning his own created no little difficulty for the Department, particularly since important members of the Senate, including leaders of the President's own party, had in the interval since the offending press conference become more and more irritated at what seemed to them an effort to put them in an unfair position. The State Department was distressed to dis­ cover that the Senators' sentiments were increasingly hardening around a position diametrically opposed to that of the President: if he and others in the Executive branch did not want immediate ratification, they should not submit the treaty at that time, nor should the President go around publicly saying he would do so and that he hoped for prompt ratification. A few days after the talk with the President, in fact, an officer in the State Department went to the office of a Democratic member of the Foreign Relations Com­ mittee on quite another matter, and unexpectedly found himself on the receiving end of a very strenuous objection to what the Senator took to be the Department's—rather than the President's— preferred procedure. Among other things, the Senator said he would not stand for any attempt to make the Senate seem responsible for delays which were the fault of the State Department, and added that most of his colleagues held the same view. Within the State Department, at about this time, a proposed solution to this impasse in Executive-Legislative relations was offered. It was suggested that in a situation in which neither party

BIPARTISANSHIP

wanted to bear the responsibility for the delay in ratification, the best course would be for the President to transmit the treaty promptly to the Senate, but with the recommendation that it be made the first order of business in the new session in January. Such a procedure, it was felt, would satisfy both the President and the Senate, and would at the same time enable the Senate to take posi­ tive steps in the direction of ratification, thus meeting with the State Department's approval too. At this juncture, however, a compromise solution was no longer practicable. The Senate by now held all the high cards, in the very nature of the game, and the amount of pressure it could bring to bear on the Executive branch was tremendous. Finally, when the Vice-President argued that the President should not submit the treaty during the current session if he did not want it ratified im­ mediately, the President accepted the inevitable and authorized the Vice-President to tell the Senate leadership that he would not submit the peace treaty during that session of Congress. The problem of the timing of ratification continued to plague the policy-makers for some months, although with the Senate's victory in September it never again became an occasion for a serious split between the Executive and the Congress. The brief exchange be­ tween Mr. Dulles and General Bradley during the Committee hear­ ings, on the subject of delaying ratification, has already been mentioned in Chapter 8. In the midst of the hearings, Dean Rusk, who had recently resigned as Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, flew to Tokyo to help negotiate the Adminis­ trative Agreement on which hung the Defense Department's con­ sent to ratification. It was the President's desire following the hearings to press ahead rapidly with ratification, irrespective of the status of the Administrative Agreement; he felt that if it were neces­ sary he could always withhold his deposit of the instrument of ratification until the Agreement had been signed. But enough Senators were aware of and responsive to the quite opposite desires held by the Defense Department, and so the Senate delayed sched­ uling the ratification debate until the end of February 1952, when the Agreement was signed and the Defense Department quickly indicated it no longer had any objection to action on ratification. The Senate leaders then had to fit the ratification debate into a tight schedule, which meant postponing it another two weeks, until March 14.

BIPARTISANSHIP

The Senate's victory in this single major contest with the Execu­ tive the previous September had been a quick one, gained only eight days after the hassle began in the Presidential press conference. It may not have been accidental that within the next month all the necessary steps were taken in the State Department and the White House to put into Mr. Dulles' hands the job of presenting the treaties to the Senate for ratification; too much was at stake to risk a repeti­ tion of the incident, especially since it could be avoided so easily. Mr. Dulles' two conditions for the job, readily met, were that the treaties be presented to the Senate immediately upon its return in January, and that the ratification, like the negotiations, be a biparti­ san matter. BIPARTISANSHIP Mr. Dulles handled the bipartisan aspects of the peace settlement with the confidence born of considerable experience. Not only had he been experimenting with this method of procedure under varying political and policy circumstances for almost a decade; he had also doubled as a sort of Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Bipartisan Relations during the few months in which he prepared himself for the treaty task, and thus he had a working familiarity with the prevailing political constellation even before he began to work on the treaty. He advised the Secretary on such questions as who were the proper Republican Senators with whom to carry on a discussion about bipartisanship, and what things it would be useful to say or desirable to omit in speeches designed to elicit favorable Congressional reactions. He also worked closely with Republicans in both Houses, keeping them informed on phases of the Korean War and on his own trip to Korea and Japan on the very eve of hostilities, and discussing with selected members problems growing out of the Korean struggle, such as the conditions of military assist­ ance. Consequently, the more he worked into the Japanese treaty project, the better equipped he was to organize the bipartisan rela­ tions appropriate to it. Bipartisan relations on the peace treaty issue—including always an inseparable Executive-Legislative component—ran on two more or less distinct levels, which might be called the strategic and the tactical. The strategic level was concerned with establishing the necessary basic Republican consent to the bipartisan regime itself, and to Mr. Dulles' major concepts concerning the Japanese peace settlement, without which Mr. Dulles himself could serve no useful

BIPARTISANSHIP

purpose in the Executive branch. The tactical level was concerned with the construction and maintenance of a sufficiently large con­ sensus in the Senate on an actual set of treaty terms. Sometimes these levels overlapped to the point where they could not be differ­ entiated, and sometimes they were wholly distinct. The purpose of the action they comprised was to maximize agreement, which in turn would facilitate favorable and rapid Senate action on the settle­ ment. In the substantial achievement of this purpose can be seen Mr. Dulles' skill in fusing disparate political interests, desires, am­ bitions, and prides into an effective majority. The Strategic Level

This phase of the bipartisan relationship on the treaty issue re­ flected Mr. Dulles' sound conviction that effective bipartisanship involved more than simply the appointment of a member of the opposition party to an important policy position. In Mr. Dulles' own words, "An invitation to members of the opposition to participate in making foreign policy bipartisan is meaningless and is a sham unless it is made to loyal members of their party, trusted by party leadership."7 Paradoxical though it sounds, therefore, Mr. Dulles had first of all to ensure basic Republican consent to the establishment and maintenance of a bipartisan regime. In other words, he had always to make certain, as he moved into action anywhere, that sufficient Republican support would flow through the pipelines to sustain his varied offensives. At the same time, he also had to secure basic Repubhcan consent to his ideas on the peace settlement itself, giving his specific undertakings political viability. In effect, then, these requirements meant that he had to incorporate some funda­ mental Republican viewpoints into his treaty policy even as he re­ newed or reaffirmed the personal trust and support of the most respected figures in the Republican Party. In the course of his treaty work, Mr. Dulles dealt personally with many important members of the Republican Party, but perhaps the most crucial ones from his point of view, in terms of the political and ideological leadership they exercised, were Senators Taft and Millikin, and, in a different way, General Douglas MacArthur. These were the men who had to trust Mr. Dulles and support him—or at the very minimum not oppose him—if the peace settlement were to gain the favor of the majority of the Republican members of the 7

John Foster Dulles, War or Peace, New York, The Macmillan Co., 1950, p. 183.

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Senate. These, especially the Senators, were the men to whom Mr. Dulles turned for counsel on the difficult issues at every important juncture in the development of the treaty, such as his initial mission to Japan, for example, and his later flight to Tokyo after General MacArthur's dismissal; and they were the men whose shared atti­ tudes would become his own position when he went later to the President and the Secretary of State. The problems involved in gaining the confidence and the con­ tinued support of General MacArthur and Senator Taft seem to have been particularly delicate. General MacArthtir was important not only because of his wide experience in the Far East and Japan, but also because of his heroic stature in the eyes of Congressional Re­ publicans. He and Mr. Dulles shared a lofty yet practical idealism on the subject of a peace settlement with Japan which made their cooperation easy while the General was in Tokyo, but his dismissal from command created fears about his future attitude. Were he to turn against the peace settlement he would very likely take with him the votes of enough Republican Senators to jeopardize the treaty's ratification. Mr. Dulles was relieved to discover as he flew to Tokyo in April 1951 that the General's feelings were unchanged; but he was nonetheless diligent after that in keeping the General well informed and personally involved, although it may well have been MacArthur's own sense of proportion which caused him to maintain unwavering support for the treaty project. Senator Taft presented problems of a different sort: chairman of the Republican Policy Committee in the Senate and a powerful figure among the more conservative elements of his party, Taft had always preserved an independent attitude toward bipartisan­ ship, frequently voting against a policy that had bipartisan support. Mr. Dulles approached Senator Taft immediately after the an­ nouncement of his appointment to the State Department as a con­ sultant to Secretary Acheson, seeking an exchange of views with the Senator; Taft reminded him then of a fact of which he was already keenly aware—that the Republicans in Congress were the Republicans who mattered most for bipartisan purposes. "While I do not regard the appointments made as in any sense the adoption of a bipartisan foreign policy," Taft wrote to him on April 12, 1950, "I do feel that they will give the State Department a direct contact with the Republicans in Congress from which a reasonable amount of bipartisan cooperation can be secured." Mr. Dulles turned to Taft again in November, before he took on the Presidential mission

BIPARTISANSHIP

to negotiate the treaty, to talk about his future plans and to get Taft's views on the foreign policy situation. Mr. Dulles succeeded in winning from Senator Taft only the minimum amount of cooperation and support necessary for his pur­ poses. Taft publicly excepted him and the Japanese peace treaty from his repeated charges that serious bipartisan consultation had been abandoned by the Democratic Administration after President Truman's surprising election victory in 1948.8 Yet he never added his voice prominently to the chorus that sang the treaty's praises. He did not speak about the peace settlement in the Senate during the months before the formal debate, and he was absent from the Senate during the ratification debate itself, which occurred during the last hectic months before the Republican National Convention, in which he hoped to gain his party's Presidential nomination. In his absence, however, it was announced by Senator Saltonstall, the Republican Whip, that, if present, Senator Taft would vote in favor of the treaties, but also in favor of nearly all the reservations which the critics of the settlement proposed to attach to it. Mr. Dulles must have had moments of gratitude during the last hours of debate and voting that Senator Taft was not on hand to speak in support of these reservations. But even as he appealed to these leading Republicans for advice and sought their cooperation through a sense of involvement, Mr. Dulles knew that more was required to ensure the continuance of the bipartisan relationship than just these individual approaches designed to establish or renew confidence and personal support at the top party level. It was equally important that he choose policy alternatives which were acceptable to the Republican side and, better still, were identified with it. At the same time, he had to be careful that in the process he did not alienate the Democratic majority in the Senate; this was not very difficult, however, since the Democrats were sympathetic to Mr. Dulles' approach to the settlement, and they could in any case look to the President and the Secretary of State for clues as to the continued acceptability of his work. A rough measure of Mr. Dulles' success on the Demo­ cratic side is offered by one Democratic Senator who is reported to have remarked, "If things would always go that smoothly I'd be willing to have the State Department call in a Republican every time."9 8

New York Times, October 16, 1950, p. 27. Quoted in Douglas Cater, "What's Wrong with the State Department?" The Re­ porter, Vol. 5, No. 10, November 13, 1951. 9

BIPARTISANSHIP

The "Republican viewpoints" which were built into the peace settlement were an imposing list of treaty essentials. One of the most important was the decision of the Japanese government to recognize and deal with the Chinese Nationalist regime, in accord­ ance with the so-called "Yoshida letter" to Dulles. This was a necessary concession to Repubhcan sentiment, even though it had Democratic support as well. In fact, before the letter was made public, Mr. Dulles was under rather heavy pressure from several Republican Senators to give some indication of Japan's intentions with respect to the China problem. Despite the concession, and the strain it put on American relations with the United Kingdom, it was by a rather narrow margin that the Jenner-Margaret Smith reserva­ tion to the peace treaty, defining "China" as "Nationalist China," was defeated. Twenty-nine Senators, 25 of them Republicans, voted for the reservation, even though it was strenuously opposed by Senator Knowland and Senator H. A. Smith, both of whom were active and long-time Republican defenders of the Nationalist regime. Mr. Dulles seemed convinced as a result of the vote that the reservation would have been adopted had it not been for this concession to what was preponderantly a Republican sentiment. And he was certain in his own mind that if the reservation had been adopted, it would have been rejected by so many of the other signatories that the treaty structure itself would have collapsed. Other Republican foreign policy positions accepted in the peace settlement were equally notable though perhaps a Httle less striking in their public impact. With little fanfare, and with apparent Demo­ cratic consent, the Republicans had made the first breach in the wall of the Yalta Agreement by pushing the kind of reservation which the Foreign Relations Committee ultimately adopted as its own. Also, the key provisions of the security treaties with the Philippines, and with Austraha and New Zealand, were formulated on the Monroe Doctrine model which had Senator Taft's approval, and not on the North Atlantic Treaty model which he opposed. In this connection, it is interesting to recall that in the hearings Mr. Dulles brought up his experience in the Senate during the debate on the language used in the North Atlantic Treaty, and said, "It seemed to me and to the other governments concerned that there was no occasion to reopen that precise kind of debate again. . . ."10 Furthermore, the human rights provisions were placed in the preamble rather than the text and were thus not made a 10

Hearings on the Japanese Peace Treaty, p. 62.

BIPARTISANSHIP

treaty obligation, gaining thereby the endorsement of Senator John Bricker even as his own constitutional amendment relating to the treaty power was in Committee. There was, in addition, a series of less specific policy features which were defined and accepted by some of the policy-makers as reflecting Republican attitudes or desires: an American option on broad military rights in Japan, but without corresponding obligations; a special financial position for the United States as a result of the priority accorded the $2 billion GARIOA claim, but without any corresponding promises to pay anything; and not least, evidence of positive action in the Far East designed to protect at least part of the island chain off the coast of Asia. Indeed, the popularity of the settlement which had so many Republican policy labels and so much outstanding Republican support led Mr. Dulles to believe that Republican Senators would be doing themselves and their party a disservice if they were finally to oppose it in any substantial way. The Tactical Level Important as it was for one in Mr. Dulles' position to maintain the trust of the leading members of his party, this was only half of his formula for an effective bipartisanship. That kind of high-level support seemed to be an essential requirement for his success, but not an automatic guarantee of it. It was further necessary, in view of the division of labor in the Congress, to obtain the specific consent of the rest of the foreign policy leadership of the Republican Party—and naturally of the Democratic Party also, but most of the time this was virtually assumed—to the terms of the settlement as he envisaged it. This was a rather small group, most of whom were on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but a few, notably Senator Knowland, were not; and at times there was a sprinkling of Representatives in the group, too, even though a decision was not required in that House. These were the men whose foreign policy opinions tended to be accepted by their colleagues, and if they all were to lean the same way on the treaty, its future would be assured. Always aware that part of this group had been acquiring the habit and learning the virtue of disagreeing with Administra­ tion-sponsored foreign policy in the Far East, Mr. Dulles gave them all a sense of participation in the making of important decisions, and put himself and his facilities at their disposal for whatever information or policy advice they wanted either for themselves or for their constituents. He had, in addition, to counteract incorrect

BIPARTISANSHIP

sources of information, temporize when the pressure was weak, and on occasion make substantive alterations in proposed policy, in order to carry the bipartisan relation into the hour of Senate voting. Despite the tremendous effort and energy he put into this process, there was still—counting the votes on the reservations as well as on the treaties—a significant number of Republican Senators, and a few Democrats too, who were partially or wholly uninfluenced by it. But on the other side of the ledger there were Senators with whom Mr. Dulles established the most cordial and effective personal and political relations. Let us consider, in turn, some of these tactical or operational aspects of bipartisanship as it was practiced on the peace settlement. Not the most important device of bipartisanship, by any means, but useful as a starting point because it provides a background to the others, was Mr. Dulles' effort to establish warm personal rela­ tions alongside of, or perhaps as a base for, effective political rela­ tions. This was inspired by his determination not to manipulate the Senate from a distant point of power, but rather to get the Senators themselves to accept willingly, through a better under­ standing of its purposes, the program he was able to work out. It was relatively easy for him to develop these close ties, since he had been a member of the Senate only two years earlier and con­ sequently knew a great many of the Senators personally. Mr. Dulles used varied means to cultivate more personal relation­ ships with the Senators in whom he took some interest. He would send them copies of speeches, or diplomatic notes, or letters which he thought they might appreciate; on occasion he would send a copy of his new book, War or Peace, or a subscription to a periodical. He would write frequent letters of appreciation for kind remarks made about him or other honors paid him, or for actions taken to help the settlement along; and where feasible he would help them out by doing a small favor for one of their constituents. And since it was a kind of personal bipartisanship for him to work well with Democratic members, even though they posed no special problems, Mr. Dulles treated the more important Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee the same way. A much more important feature of bipartisanship on the treaty issue was the feeling of real participation which Mr. Dulles was able to generate among the Senators of both parties who were most interested in the settlement. To some extent it was the Senate as a whole, through its Committee on Foreign Relations, which was

BIPARTISANSHIP

being brought into the treaty-making process, and in that respect this was partly a case of Executive-Legislative relations. But the Democratic majority in the Senate had a sort of claim to participa­ tion in the activities of a Democratic Administration which the Republican minority did not share, and so the equal treatment of both parties inevitably favored the Republicans. And in some ways, the Republican foreign policy leaders were even treated like members of the majority party. The sense—possessed by Democrats and Republicans alike—of being in on the birth of great events and of securing a respectful hearing for their views was not an illusion; it had a legitimate basis in the ways Mr. Dulles involved them in the problems of treaty formulation without demanding in return any heavy commitments of time or of responsibility which were not in keeping with their positions in the Senate. For one thing, Mr. Dulles met regularly with both the Senate and House Committees on foreign affairs to tell of his plans, to report progress, to hear their views, and to thrash out a problem or two. Some of the details of these meetings have been mentioned in earlier chapters. The fact that he went before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House as well as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, even though the former had no immediate functions in respect of the peace settlement, was in itself testimony to the importance which he attached to the role of the Congress in foreign affairs. Outside of these meetings, too, Mr. Dulles kept the foreign policy leadership informed about important developments, and where possible he gave them information in advance of its general circulation—even in advance of its circulation among other Senators. And in return he would give his immediate attention to whatever information of a substantive or political nature a Senator might send on to him—a copy of an A.F. of L. resolution, for example, or a specific treaty suggestion forwarded by a constituent. There was thus established between Mr. Dulles and most of the foreign policy leadership the feeling of a shared experience; and the feeling grew as the Senators could see some specific instances where policy was changed as a result of their opinions. After one meeting in which an early draft was being considered, for example, the members of the Far Eastern Subcommittee were informed that several altera­ tions they had suggested were being incorporated in the text. From their point of view, the consultation was genuine because it actually helped to shape policy. Yet the process did not consume a lot of time that the Senators

BIPARTISANSHIP

could ill afford. Many exchanges took place through written cor­ respondence or over the telephone, and personal meetings were often conveniently sandwiched into odd hours of the day. Neither did the process disadvantage Senators intellectually, for Mr. Dulles' procedure had the effect of pouring more into them by way of information than it withdrew in the way of demands for advice. Nor did any Senator have to accept responsibility for anything that had been done on the treaty, or make advance commitments that at the moment of ratification he would support everything that had been done. Apart from their convictions on the matter, some of them may well have felt a moral obligation to uphold the settle­ ment, but there were others, as we shall see in a moment, who felt free to express criticism even at the end of the treaty-making process. In other words, the participation of Republican and Democratic Senators was both real and extensive, yet it was not so intensive that it made inadmissible claims upon their regular positions in the Senate. In sum, these active, involved Senators generally knew what was being done to get an acceptable treaty draft, why it was being done, what some of the alternative choices were and why they were not acceptable; in addition, they had a chance to voice objec­ tions to Mr. Dulles' plans,11 and they could see some of their sugges­ tions bearing fruit. As a consequence, most of them were highly enthusiastic in their praise of the settlement and unrestrained in recommending its ratification. Another major technique of cementing the bipartisan relationship was the provision of useful and essential policy information to all the members of the bipartisan team in the Senate. This was not current factual information, to keep the Senators well informed, but rather interpretive information and analysis, to supply them with arguments on behalf of the settlement and through them to counter­ act distorted kinds of communication which were reaching the Senate in the literature of reactionary nationalist groups and being repeated there by a few sympathetic Senators. This interpretive material was also useful in replying to constituents who echoed the arguments of deviant interest groups. In lessening the depend­ ence of this small bipartisan group of Senators on their own 11 When Mr. Dulles first went before the House Foreign Affairs Committee with his treaty ideas and his thoughts on policy for the Far East, he received a penciled note from a Republican friend on the Committee containing this blunt criticism: 'Tour whole Far Eastern lay-out sounds fuzzy, discouraging, lacking any clear thread of principle, or expediency, or logic or common sense."

BIPARTISANSHIP

inevitably inadequate resources for policy interpretation and analy­ sis, Mr. Dulles was simultaneously increasing their dependence on him for such material, and building them up into more potent forces for the forthcoming debate. The stronger and more effective his support proved to be, the more were the Senators inclined to accept what he had to offer them. On several occasions during the preparation of the peace settle­ ment, Mr. Dulles had taken time to analyze the developing argu­ ments of the opposition and to provide the cooperating Senators, particularly the Republican ones, with detailed replies and explana­ tions of treaty provisions and their consequences. This device was used most extensively and with greatest effect during the ratification debate itself, which Mr. Dulles naturally followed intently. On the last day of the debate, in fact, he sat in the Gallery of the Senate playing nervously with a pencil as he listened to the arguments. Thus familiar with the points raised against the settlement, he was able after each day's debate to fashion appropriate rejoinders for use by particular Senators at their discretion. The practical importance of this technique for coordinating the efforts and improving the quality of performance of an informal bipartisan group may be judged by the expressions of thanks it evoked from some of the principals after the treaties had been approved. From the Senate side came "warmest appreciation" and "sincere gratitude" for Mr. Dulles' prompt help; and Secretary Acheson wrote him on the completion of his service with the State Department: "I am particularly grateful that after the signature of the treaties at San Francisco, you were willing to defer your return to private life so that your unique knowledge of the treaties and the negotiations could be made available to the Senate during its consideration of them." A further gambit that Mr. Dulles employed—one which scarcely achieved the level of a technique of bipartisanship—was the per­ ceptive use of particularly impressive symbols, in order to temporize, or keep a situation stable when initially weak but potentially power­ ful pressure was put against it. He found, for example, that the name of General MacArthur was exceedingly effective in containing certain types and sources of criticism. Few devoted Republicans would risk further argument after hearing that "this is certainly General MacArthur's view." Another way of smoothing the feathers of ruffled conservatives was to reassure them that the substantive points they raised were so important that they deserved extensive

BIPARTISANSHIP

consideration by the full Senate itself. The capacity to understand what symbols would be effective in specific circumstances was perhaps a facet of that characteristic of Mr. Dulles which was noted earlier: the ability to differentiate his audiences and to communicate effectively to each one in some unique, individual way. The Fringes of Bipartisanship

The bipartisanship which Mr. Dulles engineered on the leadership level was remarkably effective, winning much praise from par­ ticipants and observers alike, and resulting in an impressive final vote on the treaty. The Senators who opposed the peace treaty all the way represented what has been called the "hard core of isola­ tionism" then in the Senate; and it is doubtful whether there was anything that Mr. Dulles could have done to win these men over and still preserve his integrity. In any case, he did not really try. He concentrated on doing what was necessary to weld a coalition that would carry through the crucial voting, and he wasted no time on those who refused to join it except under circumstances unac­ ceptable to himself. The great majority of the Senators went along with the leadership of both parties; but it is important to note that they did so with varying degrees of enthusiasm and conviction. There remained, indeed, a large number of Senators who suggested both by their words and their actions that they were less than totally enchanted with the peace settlement, and who seemed to feel that they had been poorly informed about alternative possibilities and conse­ quences despite the intimacy of the collaboration on the leadership level. The votes in favor of the various reservations, ranging from 22 to 29 and including three Republican members of the Foreign Relations Committee, indicate the number of Senators who had some reason to favor a newly expressed alternative to the ideas in the treaty, or to register indirectly an objection to so Hberal and internationalist a foreign policy. Among those who voted for some of the reservations was Senator Bourke Hickenlooper, a Republican member of the Far East Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations Committee, and thus a member of the group for whom consultation with Mr. Dulles was a quite frequent occurrence. Senator Hicken­ looper had not always taken part in the sessions with Mr. Dulles, and he made no secret of the fact that he regarded the information he had received as an inadequate basis for a sound judgment on all the details of the settlement. During the hearings, in fact, he

BIPARTISANSHIP

joined a private witness in criticizing the claims provisions of the peace treaty, recalling the objections he had raised in the past to that part of the treaty draft. He added, candidly, "The treaty has been negotiated. We were not completely aware of all its implica­ tions until some time after it had been completed and signed and agreed to by the various drafting powers."12 CONCLUSIONS

Leaving aside the undeniable personal achievement registered by John Foster Dulles in organizing and maintaining the bipartisan coalition on the Japanese peace settlement, there remains the pertinent question as to the wider political and policy consequences of this kind of bipartisanship. Since different types of bipartisan regimes follow different paths of development and have different kinds of consequences—even a superficial comparison of the Japa­ nese peace settlement with the Etiropean Recovery Program or the United Nations Charter reveals this—they cannot fairly be lumped together in a general discussion of bipartisanship as a single phenomenon. For that reason, it is necessary to repeat that our concern here is not with bipartisanship in general but rather with this particular instance or variety of bipartisanship, where an accomplished member of the opposition party enjoys the authority of an Executive agent in a limited policy situation in which most of the relevant factors are favorably disposed. The reasons for insisting on this obvious but often forgotten distinction will be immediately apparent, if we consider the con­ sequences which bipartisanship on the treaty had for public dis­ cussion and understanding of the policy matters involved. The evidence in this case seems to support the argument that bipartisan­ ship has an inhibiting effect on policy discussion, with all that that signifies for "democratic control of foreign policy." But other cases seem to refute this proposition, which suggests that there may be other factors besides bipartisanship which affect the volume and character of public discussion and understanding. The public debate on the European Recovery Program, a bipartisan policy matter, was long and thorough, for example, while Reciprocal Trade renewal in its most partisan periods hardly caused a ripple on the surface of the public's foreign policy consciousness. In the case of the Japanese peace treaty, it is at least as true that the general lack 12 Hearings

on the Japanese Peace Treaty, p. 143.

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of interest in the settlement facilitated the workings of bipartisan­ ship by minimizing the incentive of a possible partisan advantage as it is that the bipartisan regime itself accounted for the lack of interest and discussion by providing no clear focal point for public attention. Yet public discussion of the peace settlement was undoubtedly less than it would have been had bipartisanship not been established on the issue; the data on the hearings, on the Senate debates, and on the treaty coverage in the press all point in this direction. Hence it seems reasonable to conclude that the bipartisan regime itself had some adverse consequences for public understanding which may someday come back to plague the policy-makers. The extent of public indifference to the basic problems of the peace settlement makes it unclear, however, whether any degree of partisanship short of the kind that eventually caught up with American policy in China could have stirred up a substantially greater amount of dis­ cussion and stimulated greater understanding of and interest in the issues at stake. In the case of the Japanese peace settlement, responsible criticism was not so much stifled as it was rechanneled in time and space. Thus the slight inhibiting effects which this bipartisanship probably had on public discussion found a balance of sorts in the positive effects it had on policy itself. The bipartisan handling of the settle­ ment seems to have shifted some of the critical functions of legisla­ tive activity from the public arena to the privacy of Committee meetings and personal contacts, and from the stage of Senate debate to the earlier period of policy formulation in the Executive branch. On the assumption that widely differing policy views can be more easily accommodated in private than in public, and at an early stage of thinking about policy rather than later when positions have hardened, it would appear that the bipartisanship on the settlement resulted in a more effective exchange of views and more efficient employment of constructive criticism than would otherwise have taken place. But for sound public discussion in the market place was substituted private discussion on the governmental level. Policy was enriched by early contributions made in the confidence of a private political process, but it also underwent certain deprivations because of the negative character of the discussion that prevailed in the public forum. For when responsible criticism was re-channeled in private directions, the exercise of criticism in the public discus­ sion was left to the irresponsible extremists. Whether the system

BIPARTISANSHIP

itself gained in policy wisdom or in immediate consensus on an important issue more than it may have lost through a diminution of public comprehension and discussion of costs and risks, advantages and alternatives, is an open question; and any answer must be based on individual value judgments as well as on the measurement of highly intangible properties. There is no visible evidence that bipartisanship in this case had any adverse effect on the parties or the party system. Policy was changed, of course, to the extent that the opposition party was allowed to participate in its formulation; in this way, the opposition party even advanced its own policy notions, leaving a net gain for its principles if not for its power position, and no corresponding loss for the party inviting and supervising cooperation. This kind of bipartisanship hardly obscured "responsibility," since responsi­ bility in the strict sense was obscure to begin with. In fact, the absence of substantial differences of opinion on the question of peace with Japan among Senators of the two parties made it con­ siderably easier for Mr. Dulles to forge his bipartisan coalition. Just as this instance of bipartisanship was facilitated by the lack of public interest, so it was made simpler by the amount of agreement already obtaining on the political level.18 Put another way, this bipartisanship was a type of governmental process which drew its strength from the fact that it fitted neatly into other aspects of the larger political process on the same policy issue; it was both cause and effect, itself a consequence of other factors as well as a producer of consequences. By itself, then, it was neither the salvation of treaty policy, as its eager defenders seemed to think, nor the ruin of that policy, as its opponents tire­ lessly argued; rather it was a means for the better mobilization of a supporting majority, a majority which every aspect of the political process had a hand in creating. 13 In some ways, this corresponds to the situation about which Robert Dahl writes, "Bipartisan consultation . . . may well be desirable, although it is scarcely urgent." Congress and Foreign Policy, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1950, p. 236.

Cliapter 12 SALT WATER POLITICS A history of the political process that produced one phase of the peace settlement—the North Pacific Fisheries Convention—may serve as a useful means of summarizing the preceding chapters, and of illustrating how private groups and "public opinion" may actually enter into foreign policy-making. The group involved is the West Coast fishing industry, and this "case study within a case study" deals with the industry's attempts to protect from uncontrolled exploitation by Japanese fishermen the high seas fisheries that had been developed and conserved by American interests. The full story is a long one, and only its highlights can be mentioned here. These events are naturally subject to varying interpretations, de­ pending on the vantage point which one chooses to observe the arena of policy-making. Thus, they may be seen as an example of the responsiveness of government officials, Executive and Congres­ sional, to interest groups when the latter take on the characteristics and coloration of a general rather than a special public opinion. Or they may be viewed as an example of the farsightedness of political interest groups in coming to understand and accept the claims of national rather than group interests. Or they may be regarded as an example of internal diplomacy as skillfully handled as any external negotiation encountered in the course of the peace settle­ ment. The events, in fact, illustrate all of these at once; and, in a sum that is greater than its parts, they comprise the greatest effort made by any single kind of political interest group with respect to the Japanese peace settlement. Politics, which is sometimes presumed to stop at the water's edge, literally began there in this instance, among the men who take their livelihood out of the Pacific Ocean. Fishing is a large and well-organized industry on the Pacific Coast. It includes many different kinds of groups, such as associa­ tions of boat owners, canners, and packers, and fishermen's and canners' unions. The various companies and union locals are spread along the shores of the three coastal states and the territory of Alaska; most of them, however, are represented in a single organiza­ tion, the Pacific Fisheries Conference, which was established in January 1946. The Conference has been described by one of its

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officers as "a federation of all branches of the fishing industryemployees, employers, vessel owners, and fishery biologists, from Alaska to the Mexican border."1 Its mission is to protect and further the well-being of the industry, a task in which it is joined by official state and territorial conservation agencies. The postwar objective of the fishing industry was shaped by vivid and angry recollections of the years before World War II, when Japanese boats began to appear with disturbing regularity in salmon waters which were being developed and husbanded by American fishermen and American capital.2 In its most general formulation, this goal was "some kind of international arrangements for the fisheries of the North Pacific Ocean to preserve our conservation programs and eliminate the constant source of international friction which plagued our international relations in the 1930's."3 There was never any question about the legitimacy of this over-all objective; it was shared by all those who had anything to do with a fishery settlement. The real differences lay elsewhere: in interpre­ tations of the character and substance to be given to the "internanational arrangements" so that they would in fact preserve the conservation programs and eliminate the sources of friction. Representatives of the industry were at every point more inclined toward restrictive clauses than were the government officials, who had to consider the effect which restrictions on Japanese fishing would have on the "total interests of the United States."4 But before 1Edward W. Allen, "The North Pacific Fisheries Treaty—Friendly Settlement of a 20-year Dispute," printed in the Congressional Record, Vol. 98, No. 120, July 4, 1952, p. 9442. The structure, purposes, and policies of the P.F.C. were officially described for the first time at the fourth annual meeting of the organization, November 17 and 18, 1949; see Pacific Fisherman, Vol. 47, No. 13, December 1949, p. 14. Pacific Fisherman is a trade magazine published by Miller Freeman, organizer and first chairman of the P.F.C. 2 Congressional Record, Vol. 98, No. 120, July 4, 1952, p. 9441; see also statement by William C. Herrington, Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State, Inter­ national Convention for the High Seas Fisheries of the North Pacific Ocean, Together with a Protocol Relating Thereto, Signed at Tokyo, May 9, 1952, on Behalf of the United States, Canada, and Japan: Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Rela­ tions, United States Senate, 82nd Congress, 2nd Session, Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952, Appendix No. 1, pp. 32-34 (hereafter cited as Hearings on the Fisheries Convention). 8 Herrington, op.cit., p. 35. 4 Officials with continuing responsibilities in the State Department felt that any treaty provision barring the Japanese from fishing in the eastern part of the North Pacific "would run counter to the doctrine of the freedom of the seas and might be used as precedent for limiting American fishing interests in such areas as those off the west coast of Latin America, the banks fisheries off Nova Scotia, and else­ where. Moreover, as a practical matter Japan needed to have fish resources available

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the fishery people could hope to translate their ideas into policy, they first had to gain access to the chambers where decisions on the fishery issue would be made. Most of their early efforts were thus directed at securing a voice in fishery policy; later, when the time for decision actually came, they were in a better position to advance their ideas. THE EARLY STAGES Between 1945 and 1947, peace treaty provisions were among the subjects discussed at frequent meetings between representatives of the fishing industry and officers of the Fisheries and Wildlife branch in the Department of State. Since an actual treaty with Japan was thought to be remote at that time, and since the De­ partment spokesmen in these meetings were without much authority, the discussions had to be of a general and inconclusive nature. But in the summer of 1947 the State Department began to discuss with other countries on the Far Eastern Commission the possibility of holding a Japanese peace conference. This step forward spurred the fishing industry into action; in early September, it launched a double campaign to gain a toehold on die heights of influence. As one of its first moves, the industry sought to enlist the support of West Coast members of Congress in its drive for recognition by the Department of State. Senator Knowland of California took up the cause, arguing that experts within the fishing industry were particularly well qualified to see the full implications of any techni­ cal provisions that might be suggested as a means for securing Japans adherence to conservation regulations. The State Depart­ ment at that time had gone no further in its formal thinking than to accept the premise that Japan should be obliged to abide by conservation regulations and practices. Still actively considering the treaty provisions it would seek, the Department was unable to provide the Senator with specific information on its proposed policies. He did secure assurances, however, that the Department would actually seek provisions that would ensure Japan's compliance with fishing regulations, and, more important, that it would welcome in that connection the views and suggestions of the fishing industry. Senator Knowland's interest in the fishery problem gave the State Department occasion to think about effective public and Congresto her because of her dependence on the sea for much of her food supply." Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Report on International Convention for the High Seas Fisheries of the North Pacific Ocean with a Protocol Relating Thereto, Executive Report No. 15, 82nd Congress, 2nd Session, p. 2.

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sional liaison on the matter, and induced the Department to formu­ late a position with respect to future inquiries from those sources. As a consequence, the Department was ready to assure members of Congress that appropriate officers would be happy at any time to meet with industry representatives to discuss fishery problems involved in a Japanese peace treaty, and that they would give the most careful consideration to the views of the industry. Even as they were being assured of a hearing, the leaders of the industry were pressing the second aspect of their campaign: an improvement in the nature of their regular contacts with the State Department. The Department's Fisheries and Wildlife Service had policy-level status at the war's end, under the authority of a Special Adviser on Fisheries who worked first with the Counselor and then with an Assistant Secretary. Under the impact of several depart­ mental reorganizations, however, the Service's position was quickly deflated to the level of a branch in the International Resources Division of the Office of International Trade Policy. Representatives of the industry had been trying since that time to have the im­ portance of fisheries recognized anew through the creation of a Fisheries Division under the charge of at least an Assistant Secretary.® The industry thought it had achieved its goal in December 1946, when Under Secretary of State Will Clayton indicated that he would handle international fishery problems in the future. But the follow­ ing April, Clayton had to acknowledge that the State Department found it "inadvisable to make an organizational change with regard to the placement of responsibilities for fisheries."6 When the possi­ bility of a peace treaty with Japan arose in 1947, the fishing industry once again threw its full weight into the task of raising the status and the power of the Fisheries and Wildlife branch, in the hope of creating a policy-making institution sympathetic to the industry's ideas. Atop Nob Hill in San Francisco, in the fashionable Fairmont Hotel, the Pacific Fisheries Conference met for two days of discus­ sions on September 8 and 9, 1947, to consider safeguards for the 5 See, for example, the article by Edward W. Allen, representing the Association of Pacific Fisheries, entitled "What Follows Fishery Proclamation?," printed with his testimony on August 6, 1946, in Alaskan Fisheries: Hearings before a Subcom­ mittee of the Committee on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries, House of Representa­ tives, pursuant to the authority of H. Res. 38, A Resolution Authorizing Investigation of the National Defense Program as it Relates to the Committee on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries, 79th Congress, 2nd Session, Washington, D.C., U.S. Govern­ ment Printing Office, 1947, Part 2, pp. 188-90. β Pacific Fisherman, Vol. 45, No. 5, April 1947, p. 27.

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future of American fisheries under a peace treaty with Japan. The ideas and resolutions formulated at this meeting were presented the next day, September 10, at a public hearing of a subcommittee of the House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries which seems to have been called for the sole purpose of hearing what the fishing industry, through the P.F.C., had to say.7 The parade of witnesses talked on many topics, such as their dissatisfaction with the lack of consultation in the past between the State Department and the industry on the fishery aspects of the Japanese peace treaty, the desirability of expanded federal research on fishery resources, and their disapproval of reciprocal trade agreements when they were applied to the importation of fishery products. But the domi­ nant and recurrent theme in their testimony was the inadequacy of the industry's representation in the State Department. Their request was for an Assistant Secretary of State for Fisheries, and it was advanced on the basis that the Pacific coast fisheries were international in scope, and thus should be represented in the De­ partment on a high policy-making level.8 One of those who testified during these hearings was Dr. Wilbert M. Chapman, at that time the director of the School of Fisheries at the University of Washing­ ton. On June 8 of the following year, the State Department formally announced the creation of the position of Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State, in charge of Fisheries and Wildlife matters, and the appointment to this position of Dr. Chapman.9 One can only guess at the full sequence of events which led the Department to elevate the Fisheries branch in this manner, and to place it in the hands of a man with such excellent connections in the fishing industry. Edward W. Allen summed them up in these words: "Persistent efforts of the industry, made more effective by the organization of Pacific Fisheries Conference . . . finally (with con­ gressional assistance) persuaded Mr. Robert A. Lovett, as Under Secretary of State, to rescue the Fishery Division from its low status in the Department by creating the position of Special Adviser on Fisheries and Wildlife to the Under Secretary of State."10 7

Ibid., No. 10, September 1947, p. 25. Policy for Fisheries, A Policy for Peace," ibid., No. 11, October 1947, pp. 35-43. 9 Department of State Bulletin, Vol. xvm, No. 468, June 20, 1948, p. 815. 10 Allen, "The North Pacific Fisheries Treaty," op.cit., p. 9442. Some conception of the scope of these "persistent efforts" may be gained from occasional references to them in the pages of Pacific Fisherman, Vol. 46: No. 2, February 1948, pp. 21, 25; No. 4, March 1948, pp. 17-18; No. 5, April 1948, p. 21; No. 6, May 1948, pp. 1, 51; No. 8, July 1948, pp. 23-24. 8 "A

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In this first stage, then, the industry was quite successful. It won a major battle on the procedural level, having secured a channel through which its influence might flow in the future. Less progress was made on the substantive level, but less was needed since the prospects of an early treaty swiftly faded. One can quickly sum­ marize the main ideas prevalent in fishery circles at that time. In the first place, there were the demands that Japanese fishermen be prohibited in the peace treaty from fishing near the coasts of the United States. A second approach was that Japanese fishermen be required by the treaty to observe any conservation regulations which might be applicable to any resource in the high seas areas in which the fishermen were operating. A third view, finally, called for the Hmitation or complete prohibition in the peace treaty of imports of fish or fish products from Japan into the United States. These general approaches to the solution of the fishery question, it will be noted, all demanded some kind of severe restriction in the treaty of peace itself. This was the common starting point in the thinking of fishing people in this early stage. THE SECOND ROUND The next wave of activity on the question of a fishery solution came and went much like the first, although it churned up some new and lasting ideas before it finally subsided. In September 1949, Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary, who was in Washington for North Atlantic Treaty Organization conferences, met with Secretary of State Acheson to discuss other problems of mutual concern. As a result of these talks, it was made clear that the two Foreign Ministers were in agreement on the urgency of concluding a treaty of peace with Japan. Like the announcement two years earlier that the State Department was discussing with other nations the possibility of a peace conference, this latest statement stressing the need for a peace treaty stimulated the fishing industry into action. In October, industry representatives made new inquiries at the State Department, seeking some knowl­ edge of the Department's precise plans. The occupation of Japan had by this time passed through its most restrictive stage and had entered a phase of reconstruction that made a highly restrictive peace treaty somewhat anomalous. The State Department had not fully completed the transition in its own thinking, however, and in effect straddled the issue by trying to devise a liberal treaty which would simultaneously restore Japan

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to a sovereign status and yet deal in a clear and specific manner with all the issues that were involved in the re-establishment of relations with Japan. At the same time, there were undoubtedly some differences within the Department on the fishery question between the fisheries' representatives recently established in the Under Secretary's office, and personnel elsewhere who had pre­ viously been dealing with fishery matters.11 The Department's position with respect to fisheries reflected these problems. Official thinking with respect to a formal treaty of peace in the fall of 1949 contemplated, as it had since 1947, a single article dealing with fisheries. The purpose of the article would have been to require Japan to observe all present and future international fishery and wildlife conservation agreements, whether or not she was a party to them; and in those areas where there were no international agreements, Japan was to observe the conservation regulations which a state having primary interests in those resources applied to its own nationals and vessels. Even though this article was descended from earlier and more restrictive treaty drafts, however, it represented in 1949 the more liberal aspect of the State Department's position. Possibly because the fishing industry now had a spokesman of sorts within the Department, acceptance of that article was made contingent on the negotiation, along with the peace treaty, of a separate reciprocal agreement between the United States, Canada, and Japan, designed to conserve the fishery resources to which the three powers had access in the Pacific Ocean. But even though the Department was able to compromise some of its internal differences in this fashion, it still had not been able to agree on the kind of three-power treaty which would best achieve the conservation goal; thus it had not really disposed of the basic question of how severe should be the limitations imposed upon Japan. Its intention at this point, however, was to explore a number of techniques of conservation, including reciprocal restric­ tions on the geographical area of fishing operations.12 11 One of the officials of the P.F.C. who was instrumental in securing the creation of the post of Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for Fisheries and Wildlife remarked at the time, "We know that on the 'desk' levels of the State Department our program has had bitter and implacable enemies. We can expect they will continue their enmity." "A Voice in High Places," Pacific Fisherman, Vol. 46, No. 5, April 1948, p. 21. 12 Consideration was given, for example, to proposals that Japanese fishing opera­ tions be limited to the waters west of the International Date Line, or that they be barred from waters within 150 miles of the American coastline. Cf. William C. Herrington, "Problems Affecting North Pacific Fisheries," Department of State Bulletin, Vol. 26, No. 662, March 3, 1952, p. 341.

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With Dr. Chapman in the post of Special Assistant to the Under Secretary, the Department was more responsive to the industry's request for information than it had been in the past. Operating now on the assumption that the representatives of the industry were trustworthy and capable of swinging the rest of the industry behind them, the Department chose to show them the exact treaty language as it was then drafted.18 The fishing industry undoubtedly desired a clearer statement of the restraints that might be imposed upon Japan, but one was not forthcoming at this time. In any case, the flurry of interest and activity in fishing circles died down, as evident progress on the Japanese peace treaty came to a halt in November 1949, only two months after its reconsideration had begun. It was not until the following June that a formula was worked out between the State and Defense Departments which allowed the State Department to proceed with the peace treaty.14 This second round of activity was brief, but it had significant results. The Department of State had planted the seed of an idea and gotten it to germinate. It had apparently induced some of the leading elements of the fishing industry to accept, although with great reluctance, the position that extensive restrictions on Japan's fishing rights did not properly belong in the forthcoming treaty of peace. But to accomplish even this much at this time, however, the Department had had to agree that restrictions might be incorporated in a separate instrument to be signed at the same time as the peace treaty.15 This was but the first in a series of concessions made by both the State Department and the industry in the interests of an acceptable general peace settlement with Japan. The Department got the chance to explore some techniques of conservation the following spring, when the suggestion was made 13 The appreciation of the fishing industry for these consultations was recorded in various tributes to Dr. Chapman and the State Department at the annual meeting of the Pacific Fisheries Conference in November 1949. See Pacific Fisherman, Vol. 47, No. 13, December 1949, pp. 11, 12. 14 Cf. Burton M. Sapin, "The Role of the Military in Formulating the Japanese Peace Treaty, in Gordon B. Turner, ed., op.cit., pp. 751-62. 15 In November 1949, the Association of Pacific Fisheries, a member organization of the Pacific Fisheries Conference, was told by Charles R. Carry, director of the fisheries branch of the National Canners Association and a delegate to the annual P.F.C. meeting, that it was "improbable that provisions covering fisheries problems and obligations will be written into the Japanese peace treaty itself; but there may be 'economic' treaties negotiated at the same time—and fishery matters could be dealt with in these 'economic' conventions." Pacific Fisherman, Vol. 47, No. 13, December 1949, p. 19.

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by the occupation authorities, with the concurrence of the Japanese government, that a tripartite fishery treaty conference be held as soon as possible. In preparation for such a conference, Fisheries and Wildlife formulated a set of instructions to a prospective United States delegation, contemplating a situation in which Japanese fishermen would not be permitted in the conserved fisheries off the coast of North America. These instructions were then sent out for clearance within the Department of State, a process which if com­ pleted would have forced intensive consideration in many different offices of the basic issues involved. Such clearance was not forth­ coming, however, and thus the basic problem was still not solved when the peace treaty came up for discussion again later in the year. THE ISSUE IS DECIDED The third and final try for a peace treaty began in September 1950, exactly a year after the start of the second effort. And, as was the case in the first two attempts, the fishery question was raised almost immediately. It stayed raised almost continuously for the next twenty-two months, at which time the Senate "resolved" it by ratifying the three-power North Pacific Fisheries Convention. The resolution, like any compromise, was fashioned from a middle ground acceptable but not wholly satisfactory to any of the chief contenders. Mr. Dulles, who guided the fishery settlement but who did not engage actively in either its domestic or its foreign negotia­ tion, approached it with the intention to give the industry as much of its demands as possible, but always within the context of a liberal and non-coercive over-all peace settlement. The fishing industry clearly did not get all that it wanted in the fishery settle­ ment; but the State Department's ideas of a desirable settlement had to give way also. The Japanese were the ones who made the actual compromise possible; for the industry's objectives were assisted and the Department's basic standards simultaneously upheld by the willingness of the Japanese voluntarily to accept what were in their experience quite severe fishery restrictions. This third phase started on September 14, 1950, when President Truman announced in his press conference that the State Depart­ ment had been authorized to initiate informal discussions regarding a Japanese peace treaty. The response was immediate. Phone calls and letters from West Coast Senators and Representatives began to come into the Department the very next day. Senator Knowland, for example, asked for information on the Department's stand re-

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garding fisheries, and Senator Cain of Washington asked for assist­ ance in reassuring the industry that the Japanese peace treaty would give sufficient protection to American fishing interests. They both were told that the problem would be the subject of a separate treaty, and would receive consideration at the appropriate time.18 It was quite apparent at the start, then, that Mr. Dulles, who started writing the peace treaty on a new slate, had accepted at least the structure of the fishery settlement which the State Department had worked out the year before. Dr. Chapman, still head of Fisheries and Wildlife in the Under Secretary's Office, seems to have estab­ lished a good working relationship with Mr. Dulles, and among other things kept him well informed of Congressional interest in the future of the West Coast fishing industry. The industry itself maintained its pressure on both the State Department and the West Coast Congressmen for some time, trying with little success to get the Department to adopt its preferred solution to the problem, which envisaged the United States and Japan each abstaining from the coastal fisheries of the other. In early November, a luncheon discussion was held on the West Coast between the members of the Executive Committee of the Pacific Fisheries Conference, on the one hand, and three prominent Japa­ nese, on the other. The results of this discussion with the Japanese, one of whom was a member of the Fisheries Committee of the Diet, another a former chief of the Fisheries Agency of the government, and the third the secretary of the Japanese Foreign Office, were communicated to Secretary of State Acheson in a letter from Miller Freeman, chairman of the Pacific Fisheries Conference, on November 9.17 Mr. Freeman wrote that the members of the P.F.C. Executive Committee had gained the impression "that the Japanese are willing to enter into some kind of binding treaty or agreement, reciprocal in nature, whereby they would effectively bind themselves to abstain from the coastal fisheries of this country, including island possessions, to whatever distance these coastal fisheries extend, and that they anticipate some such treaty or agreement being made." "Reciprocity," however, was for the American fishing industry a form of pressure rather than a real or an immediate concession; as Mr. Freeman wrote to Secretary Acheson, "It was pointed out 16 The State Department's viewpoint is made clear in Assistant Secretary Jack McFall's reply to Senator Knowland, printed in ibid., Vol. 48, No. 12, November 1950, p. 16. 17 This letter is printed in ibid., Vol. 49, No. 1, January 1951, pp. 19-20.

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[to the Japanese] that American vessels are sufficiently large to operate in off-shore Japanese waters and that if fishing conditions in American waters deteriorate, economic pressure here would result in American competition on the Japanese side of the Pacific. . . ." In other words, if the Japanese did not agree to abstain from fishing in American coastal waters, Americans might start to fish in Japanese coastal waters. The threat implied in this suggestion was too serious to be ignored by the Japanese, who were anxious in any case to facilitate a peace treaty and the return of sovereignty. So, with signs of their support for the idea of reciprocal abstention, the West Coast fishing industry was not inclined to give up the notion without first carrying it as far as possible. At the end of November 1950, the P.F.C. passed a formal resolution putting into blunt words what reciprocal absten­ tion meant to it: ". .. be it resolved, that in the treaty of peace with Japan, or any separate treaty to be concluded prior to or at the same time, suitable treaty provision be made which will ensure that Japanese fishermen will stay out of the fisheries of the Northeast Pacific Ocean which have been developed and husbanded by the United States and the other countries of North America." Armed with this new statement of its aspiration, and with the editorial support of the Seattle Times, the Portland Oregonian, and other West Coast newspapers, the fishing industry turned its heaviest guns on West Coast members of Congress. First, copies of the November 29 resolution were sent to the Secretaries of State, De­ fense, and Interior, the heads of the foreign affairs Committees in both houses, all Pacific Coast Senators, and selected Representatives particularly concerned with fisheries.18 Then a long letter was sent to Senator Knowland in early December, stating the prevailing fears as to the consequences if Japanese fishermen entered the conserved fisheries of North America; recalling past efforts by the industry to influence the State Department to conclude a treaty with Japan incorporating the principles of reciprocal abstention; complaining of an inability to discover the State Department's plans for handling the problem; restating the belief that Japan was pre­ pared to negotiate such a treaty, and the necessity of negotiating it no later than the conclusion of the treaty of peace; and, finally, asking the Senator to try as best he could to persuade the State Department to conclude such a treaty with Japan as soon as 18

See account of the November meeting of the Pacific Fisheries Conference in

ibid., pp. 15-17.

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possible, and certainly not later than the conclusion of the peace treaty. Senator Knowland passed the views contained in the letter on to the State Department, with the suggestion that the treatymakers discuss the fishery problems with Dr. Chapman, who was familiar with them. On the heels of its plea to Senator Knowland to use his influence with the State Department, the fishing industry provided him with some specific language for incorporation in the proposed peace treaty with Japan, designed to keep the Japanese out of North American fisheries by reciprocal promises to abstain from developed and conserved fisheries. This language also was passed on to the treaty-makers in the Department for their consideration. The State Department, despite its earlier consideration of a policy of restricting on a reciprocal basis the area of fishing operations in the Pacific, had at the end of 1950 no clear idea as to what it should do about the importunities that were coming in waves from Capitol Hill. Answers were obviously called for, but, as the Pacific Fisheries Conference had discovered to its dismay, no forthright answer could be given since the Department had not yet agreed upon a position. Mr. Dulles, in fact, was still "initiating discussions" at this time, and had not yet been asked or authorized to proceed with treaty negotiations. Mr. Dulles himself replied to Senator Knowland's letters in a necessarily inconclusive way, promising that the suggested treaty language would receive the most careful consideration. By also mentioning his doubts whether the fishery problem would come up for international discussion in the near future, Mr. Dulles unin­ tentionally sharpened his differences with the fishing people, who believed that the fishery issue should be solved as soon as possible. This series of moves by the industry had its effect, however, for it stimulated serious discussion within the Department which proved to be a forerunner to concrete steps in the direction of fishery con­ servation. The proposed language submitted by the industry was sent to the Fisheries and Wildlife office for study and for comments that might be used in framing a more substantial reply to the Senator. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Dr. Chapman raised in forceful terms the questions which the State Department had not yet answered. In direct reply to the request for comments, he argued in early January 1951 that nothing useful could be said to anyone until a departmental policy decision had been made on the question whether Japanese fishermen should be permitted to enter the fish-

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eries off the coast of North America which had been developed by the fishermen of Canada and the United States. He recalled that such a policy decision had been pending since the previous spring, when his office tried to get clearance for a set of instructions to a prospective fishery conference delegation, and that his office had been telling Senators for several months that, with the question being considered at the top level in the Department, a decision was imminent. Mild annoyance showed through in his final suggestion, which was to cease answering such letters from Senators until a Departmental position was reached. Dr. Chapman followed this up immediately with a brief but strongly worded message to Mr. Dulles, stressing the urgent need for a Departmental decision on the fishery problem. The lack of such a decision, he complained, was rapidly undermining the excel­ lent relations his office had developed with the Congress, with other parts of the Executive branch, with the state fishery agencies, and with industry organizations. A plea of this sort from Dr. Chapman, one of whose virtues was his appreciation of the interests of all of these groups, could hardly fail to make an impression on Mr. Dulles, who was particularly sensitive to the problem of maintaining an uninterrupted flow of good-will between the State Department and the Congress. For Mr. Dulles could easily imagine the fate of the Japanese peace treaty in the Senate if the West Coast Senators were against it to a man; and he already had seen impressive evi­ dence that West Coast Senators of both political parties were concerned about the future of the fishing industry within their states. As long, then, as Mr. Dulles regarded an acceptable solution of the fishery issue as a form of insurance to protect an otherwise satisfactory peace treaty, Dr. Chapman's message was bound to get a favorable response. It was another month before the response was visible, and then it took the form not of any long-run solution, but rather of an emergency device designed to allay concern among fishery circles until the peace treaty could be disposed of. During the course of the month, letters continued to come into the Department, convey­ ing the constant interest of Congressmen and industry representa­ tives in the solution of the fishery problem. Mr. Dulles gave a hint of impending measures when he countered one correspondent's suggestion that fishing restrictions be written into the peace treaty with the remark that there was more than one way to skin a cat. The cat got skinned publicly on February 7, 1951, in a manner

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not wholly satisfactory to the fishing industry. On that day, an exchange of correspondence between Mr. Dulles and Japan's Prime Minister Yoshida was made public. The significant letter bore Mr. Yoshida's signature; in it, Japan promised to enter international negotiations establishing fishery arrangements after she regained her full sovereignty—meaning, of course, after the projected peace treaty had been signed, ratified, and come into force. Until such time, however, Japan agreed voluntarily to prohibit her nationals from fishing in presently conserved fisheries in all waters where arrangements had already been made to protect fisheries, and in which fisheries Japanese nationals were not conducting operations in 1940. "Among such fisheries," the letter stipulated, "would be the salmon, halibut, herring, sardine and tuna fisheries in the waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea."19 The reaction of American fishermen to this statement of Japan s intention was to some extent unanticipated by Mr. Dulles and Dr. Chapman, who thought it would be a satisfactory temporary resolu­ tion of previous differences within the State Department, and be­ tween the Department and the industry. Indeed, Mr. Dulles sent copies of the exchange of letters to a number of people, expressing the conviction that it would give the fishing industry ground for real satisfaction. One of the major purposes of Mr. Yoshida's letter was to settle for the moment the question whether the Japanese would be allowed to operate in conserved fisheries. But a negative answer had been an article of faith within the industry for so long that the fishermen were not very impressed with the fact that it now received formal recognition for a brief time span. Instead, they were openly disturbed by this formal statement of the State Depart­ ment's intention to delay fishery negotiations until Japan had re­ gained her sovereignty.20 Their opposition to such a delay was of long standing, based on the belief that irresponsible elements of the Japanese fishing industry, freed from the restraints of the occupa­ tion, would attempt to enter the developed fisheries of North America, and that this would lead to a renewal of the incidents that were a feature of Japanese-American relations in the 1930s. The State Department thus had to embark on a "selling job," to round 18

Department of State Bulletin, Vol. xxiv, No. 608, February 26, 1951, p. 351. from Miller Freeman, chairman of the Pacific Fisheries Conference, to the Secretary of State, printed in Pacific Fisherman, Vol. 49, No. 5, April 1951, pp. 17-18. 20 Letter

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up support for the procedure outlined in Prime Minister Yoshida's letter. It proved to be a difficult and time-consuming task, par­ ticularly because the industry was convinced, as a result of further inquiries like the one it had made the previous November, that Japan and the United States could agree on a fishery treaty at almost any time, and that the chief obstacle to an immediate agreement was the Department of State. The Department's purposes in wish­ ing to postpone fishery negotiations have never been clearly stated, but they probably included a desire not to complicate further the already delicate negotiations for the treaty of peace, as well as a genuine feeling that the United States should provide a positive example to the world by showing how it could settle important matters with Japan by negotiating with her as a sovereign equal rather than as an occupying power. In any event, as the desired reaction to the letter failed to materialize, Dr. Chapman put his talents to work not only to turn aside the opposition but even to generate some favorable comment. First he talked to West Coast members of Congress, explaining the Department's position to them. Important as this was, however, he recognized that his apparent success in gaining their understanding would hang in the balance until he could similarly win over the leaders of the Pacific Fisheries Conference, who were in constant communication with their Congressmen. Dr. Chapman also acknowl­ edged the responsibility of the State Department during this period to avoid upsetting the sensitive Congressional situation by a hasty or ill-conceived letter. Through it all, however, Dr. Chapman did not forget, nor did he let colleagues in the State Department forget, that the fishery controversy was only being postponed until the peace treaty was in effect; in his opinion, the Department had not yet faced realistically the hard fact that only a tripartite treaty incorporating some kind of principle of regulated abstention from conserved fisheries could maintain fishery peace in the Northwest Pacific. With the interested Congressmen temporarily neutralized, Dr. Chapman lost no time in approaching the most important of the fishery representatives, the officers and members of the Executive Committee of the Pacific Fisheries Conference. In his opinion, these men were ultimately strategic, for their approval of the govern­ ment's fishery plans meant approval by the West Coast Congressmen and thus by many other Congressmen. In early March, he secured

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the consent of several of these men, who were in Washington on other business. Then, a week later, he went out to the West Coast to see the others, and to make a thorough canvass of the industry. His efforts were immediately and overwhelmingly successful. After prolonged debate in which the point was made that Mr. Dulles had risked much to secure the exchange of letters with Prime Minister Yoshida, the Executive Committee of the Pacific Fisheries Confer­ ence met him halfway, accepting his opinion that it was in the national interest to delay negotiation of a fishery treaty until after the conclusion of a treaty of peace, but not relinquishing its own view that, no matter when it was negotiated, the fishery treaty should be restrictive. Dr. Chapman was confident that the leaders of the P.F.C. would make their decision to accept a delay in negotiations prevail; but just to be on the safe side he also met with individuals in many of the P.F.C.'s member organizations. These meetings increased his sense of confidence that the decision reached by the Conference leaders was agreeable to all important fishing groups on the coast, especially those with effective lines of communication to Congress. The fruits of Dr. Chapman's labor were received in Washington the last week in March, again in a letter from Miller Freeman, P.F.C. Chairman, to Secretary Acheson. Disclaiming any desire to delay the conclusion of a peace treaty with Japan if the national interest dictated an early treaty, Mr. Freeman urged the State Department to formulate, in consultation with the industry, specific fishery treaty terms for submission to Japan just as soon as the government felt that such a move would not interfere with the conclusion of the general peace treaty. This letter, even though it conceded nothing in the way of even­ tual treaty terms, bolstered Mr. Dulles' position immeasurably. The steady flow of inquiries and protests from Pacific Coast fishery people and legislators dried up for several months; the few complaints that did come through could be taken care of easily. The industry's concurrence also enabled Mr. Dulles to say something on the fishery issue in his public speech in Los Angeles on March 31, 1951, when he summarized the treaty draft as it then stood. He explained, first, why he had opposed making the peace treaty itself "a universal convention on high seas fishing"; then he repeated the sense of Mr. Yoshida's letter to him, concluding on a note of optimism: "The Japanese now see the importance of avoiding practices which in the past brought Japan much ill will, and, if we can hold to our tentative

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timetable, there can, I believe, be an early and equitable settlement of this thorny problem."21 In the comparative peace and quiet that followed, the State De­ partment gave more time and thought to the substance of a fishery agreement, considering such problems as, for example, whether a more effective and substantial quid pro quo could be found to secure Japan's abstention from the North American fisheries than the purely formal one of prohibiting American fishermen from entering Japan's coastal fisheries. In early May, a working group was established, consisting of representatives of the State Department offices in­ volved in the fishery issue, and was given the task of producing a draft agreement quickly. In the course of that spring and the early summer, a new approach to the fishery problems was devised, one which ultimately prevailed. The principle of abstention was no longer to be applied to arbitrary geographical areas, but rather to stocks of fish. In brief, it was proposed that the three countries agree on principles and conditions of conservation and exploitation, and that when these principles and conditions were fulfilled with respect to a stock of fish, the country or countries not sharing in the exploitation would agree to continue to abstain, encouraging the continued conservation by those who were exploiting the stock. These proposals were new, and required considerable discussion among the interested parties, but in July 1951, agreement on them was reached, and they were made the basis for future negotiations with Japan and Canada.22 In May, before this solution was finally found, there came a change of personnel. After three years as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary, Dr. Chapman resigned his post to become director of research for the American Tunaboat Association. He was replaced by Mr. William C. Herrington, a veteran fishery administrator in charge of various fishery investigations in the North Atlantic for sixteen years, and for the preceding four years chief of the Fisheries Division of SCAP in Tokyo. By coming late, Mr. Herrington missed some of the more exciting and delicate domestic political negotiations which it fell to the Special Assistant to perform. But the problems were by no means all solved when he took over the post; not only did he have to preside over the working out of the American position, and even21 Mr. Dulles' speech was released in April 1951 as Department of State Publication 4171, Far Eastern Series 40. 22 Cf. Herrington, "Problems Affecting North Pacific Fisheries," op.cit., p. 341.

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tually to negotiate a fishery treaty with Japan and Canada, but even sooner he had to cope with the rebirth of the crucial domestic issue, the question of timing that had seemingly been settled by Dr. Chapman and Mr. Dulles in March. In March, the industry had yielded with grace to the Depart­ ment's plea that fishery negotiations be postponed until Japan had regained her sovereignty. In the next few months, however, some­ thing happened to upset this timetable, leading Mr. Dulles to feel by July that it might be possible for negotiations to begin not long after the peace treaty was signed. The advantages of the speed-up to the fishing industry were obvious: it gave them a lever under the Japanese, who were obliged to negotiate as a still-occupied power, and at the same time it gave them a sort of domestic veto over the terms of the fishery agreement, for if they were displeased there would still be time left in which they could try to persuade Congressmen not to ratify the peace treaty. Two factors seem to have played a part in formalizing the decision to advance the negotiating date. One was the mushroom growth of discontent in the tuna industry over the growing percentage of the domestic market occupied by imports of foreign tuna. To counter­ act this competition and to prevent the bankruptcy of numerous firms, the industry sought a higher tariff on imports of fresh and frozen tuna fish, the bulk of which was coming from Japan and Peru. The seriousness of the tuna fishermen's dissatisfaction was suggested by announcements toward the end of August that tuna boats from up and down the West Coast would converge on San Francisco Bay at the beginning of the Peace Conference to demon­ strate in favor of tariff revision. A few of the tuna boat operators claimed a direct relationship between the Japanese peace treaty and the floating picket line, but many others, including the leaders of the tuna industry, praised the treaty and specifically disclaimed any intention to embarrass the government at a time when unity was so desirable. Despite these disavowals, the State Department could hardly have ignored the implications of such massive and outspoken dissent by an important branch of the West Coast fishing industry. Even though a tariff was the issue, and not any threatened depredation by Japanese fishermen in American-developed fisheries, the festering sore of dissatisfaction in the tuna industry could easily grow into a major political infection if the rest of the Pacific Fisheries Conference were to conclude that

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a satisfactory fishery arrangement with Japan was not an immediate prospect. Speculation in this vein by the State Department would have been justifiable in late August of 1951, for just as the San Francisco Con­ ference was about to convene, some of the members of the Pacific Fisheries Conference were assailed by doubts and worries. These new signs of weakening support, coming at a moment when the treaty-makers wanted every convincing sign of domestic and inter­ national unity they could find, undoubtedly were the compelling reason for the decision to advance the negotiating schedule for the fishery agreement. The nervousness of the fishing people was con­ veyed to Mr. Dulles by the leaders of the Pacific Fisheries Confer­ ence, who reiterated their wish to cooperate with the State Depart­ ment but who needed some reassurances of the Department's intentions with respect to fisheries in order to keep the support of their members. Their concern was also communicated to Mr. Herrington, who was then on the West Coast working out the terms of a fishery treaty which it was believed would be acceptable to the three governments concerned and to the fishing industries of each. Mr. Dulles talked with Mr. Herrington just a few days before he was to leave for the San Francisco Conference, and immediately after­ ward suggested to the Under Secretary that concern on the coast because nothing definitive was happening about the fishery prob­ lem would be allayed if the Under Secretary and Mr. Herrington would talk to a few leaders of the West Coast fishing industry and assure them that the United States was prepared to negotiate with Japan and Canada promptly following the signing of the Japanese peace treaty. Mr. Dulles' further expectations were that the negotia­ tions would lead to a treaty text similar to the draft Mr. Herrington had been working on, that this text would first be initialed or other­ wise informally approved, and that it would be signed as soon as the Japanese peace treaty came into force. A formal statement repeating these assurances was given to Miller Freeman by the State Department immediately after the peace treaty was signed.23 The new timetable which these assurances contained was a source of considerable satisfaction to the fishing industry, and not wholly unwelcome to the State Department either. It may have been a concession finally wrung from the Department at a moment when its bargaining position was weakest; yet the Department regarded the new procedure as consistent with the principles under which it was tzPacific

Fisherman, Vol. 49, No. 11, October 1951, p. 16.

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operating vis-a-vis Japan, for Japan would not undertake the formal acts of signature and ratification until she was again a sovereign power. Even further, by securing the industry's adherence to the new schedule, the State Department not only minimized the possi­ bility that the Pacific Fisheries Conference would obstruct the processes of ratification of the peace treaty; it also ensured that the P.F.C. had a positive stake in seeing that the peace treaty was ratified and came into force as soon as possible. THREE-POWER NEGOTIATIONS The negotiation of the North Pacific Fisheries Convention began in Tokyo on November 4, 1951, two months after the peace treaty had been signed. This was not exactly the promptness that had been promised, especially since it was first thought that the peace treaty would be sent to the Senate for immediate ratification. Yet the fish­ ing industry was well treated by the State Department, which earlier had given assurances that the American delegation would include advisers from the industry.24 The eight-man delegation as finally chosen consisted of a chairman, an alternate delegate, a member, and five advisers. Mr. Herrington was the chairman; the alternate delegate was Milton C. James, assistant director of the Fish and Wildhfe Service in the Department of the Interior; and the member was Warren F. Looney, foreign affairs officer in Mr. Herrington's office. Of the five advisers, one represented the official conservation agencies of the West Coast: Richard S. Croker, chairman of the Pacific Marine Fisheries Commission. The other four advisers, com­ prising half of the delegation, were high officials of the Pacific Fisheries Conference: Edward W. Allen, lawyer, United States Com­ missioner on and chairman of the International Fisheries Commis­ sion, and vice-chairman of the P.F.C.; Milton E. Brooding, of the California Packing Corporation, chairman of the Executive Com­ mittee of the P.F.C.; Donald P. Loker, president of the High Seas Tuna Packing Company, and member of the Executive Committee of the P.F.C.; and Harold E. Lokken, manager of the Fishing Vessel Owners Association, and member of the Executive Committee of the P.F.C. Both the industry and the State Department gained from the presence of these advisers on the delegation: the industry, be­ cause it was able to participate in the negotiations and affect them at significant points; the State Department, because it secured the cooperation and support of key members of the West Coast fishing 24

Ibid., p. 16.

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industry essential for the immediate acceptance of the Convention by the Senate as well as its long-run acceptance by the people who had to Hve and work under its rules. Six weeks were required to complete the negotiations, which ended on December 14 with an initialed draft of a fisheries con­ vention. It was not an easy treaty to negotiate because Japan, while willing to participate in an effective fishery arrangement, did not want to set any unfortunate precedents that might be invoked in other negotiations with Asian countries to restrict her fishing opera­ tions in the Western Pacific. Thus the Japanese delegates searched every proposal with sharp and critical eyes, to establish the best precedents possible.25 Both the Canadians and the Japanese had Parliamentary members as well as industry representatives on their delegations. The Ameri­ can delegation contained no member of Congress, but one was hardly needed. The chairman of the American delegation has him­ self described the usefulness of the industry representatives on the delegation in terms that reflect their influence over fishery decisions in the Congress and elsewhere: "Moreover, the U.S. delegation went to Tokyo with a set of proposals which had been drafted so tightly to get agreement among differing United States interests that there did not seem to be room for any further changes without losing needed support at home. Yet, to meet the Japanese and Canadian requirements and get an approved draft, it was necessary to dis­ member the U.S. draft almost completely and then salvage the most essential fragments and build a new structure. Without the advisers' knowledge of the problem, representation in the industry, and assistance in drafting and planning, it would not have been possible to proceed with the negotiations and have reasonable assurance that the completed draft would not be repudiated in the United States."2® In the outcome, Japan was for the time being prevented from entering the developed and conserved coastal fisheries of North America, not by the simple and rigid device of reciprocal abstention which had long been the favored solution of the fishing industry, but rather through the more flexible system devised the summer before which protected the fisheries while drawing Japan closer to American and Canadian principles and practices of fishery conserva25 Cf. Herrington, "Problems Affecting North Pacific Fisheries," op.cit., p. 342; also, Herrington's testimony, Hearings on the Fisheries Convention, p. 25. 26 Herrington, "Problems Affecting North Pacific Fisheries," op.cit., p. 342.

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tion. In essence, the Convention recognized that certain exploited and regulated coastal fisheries of any contracting state might be classified as entitled to protection in the form of abstention by the other contracting parties. Further, the Convention established a Commission to perform investigatory and other functions, out of which might come recommendations that the stocks of certain fish within the area defined by the Convention would qualify or con­ tinue to qualify for abstention. And in an all-important Annex it was provided that Canadian and American salmon, halibut, and herring fisheries in specified waters off the coasts of the two coun­ tries now qualified, and hence that Japan would abstain from fishing there as long as the classification was maintained. Canada also agreed to abstain, along with Japan, from the Bristol Bay salmon fishery. The treaty was designed to remain in force for ten years, beyond which time it might be terminated after one year's notice by any contracting party. During the course of the Tokyo negotiations, the Alaska Fisheries Board, the official conservation agency of the territory, introduced a note of disharmony by protesting to the Secretary of State the lack of Alaskan representation on the American delegation. There was some justification for the Board's complaint, as the Secretary acknowledged, but it was deemed too late to add another member to the delegation. Alaskan discontent carried over to the proposed treaty itself, which many territorial fishermen felt did not give ade­ quate protection to the less important of Alaska's fisheries. It was necessary, consequently, for Mr. Herrington to go to Alaska and do there for the Fisheries Convention what Dr. Chapman had to do on the West Coast a year earlier for the Dulles-Yoshida exchange of correspondence. Mr. Herrington's performance must have been equally impressive, for the Alaska Fisheries Board met in executive session after his explanation and endorsed the treaty as the best it was possible to negotiate.27 Mr. Herrington had similar success with other groups in Alaska, but protests still came in from indi­ vidual fishermen.28 This anxiety at the level of individuals persisted, so in March 1952, after the peace treaty had been ratified, the Delegate from Alaska in the House of Representatives, E. L. Bartlett, wrote to Mr. Dulles to express the concern among Alaskans over what might 27 See letter from C. L. Anderson, on behalf of the Alaska Fisheries Board, to Secretary Acheson, printed in Hearings on the Fisheries Convention, p. 56. 28 See Pacific Fisherman, Vol. 50, No. 5, April 1952, p. 77, for a general discussion of Pacific opinion on the Fisheries Convention.

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happen to the high seas fisheries off the Alaskan coast if the Con­ vention were ratified, and to ask Mr. Dulles for his views on the matter. Mr. Dulles replied in a letter that countered Alaskan fears while it summarized the fishery solution as seen from the State Department: "I do not profess to be an expert on fisheries. However, after talking with some who are, I came to the conclusion that the tripar­ tite treaty initialled in Tokyo last year gives about as much protec­ tion as we can reasonably ask for. Of course, most of the non-Japanese people in the whole Pacific area would like to drive Japanese fishermen completely off the seas. Very extravagant demands in this respect are being made by other Pacific countries. The problem was one of finding a formula which would preserve the principle of the freedom of the seas and, on the other hand, give reasonable protection of fisheries that were con­ served and that needed to be conserved. "You state that it is hoped by Alaskans that 'Japanese fishermen would be required to remain in the western Pacific.' Any principle that we could invoke to require this would also be invoked by Korea, China, the Philippines, Formosa, etc., to keep the Japanese from fishing in the western Pacific. Since the Japanese are vitally de­ pendent upon fishing and since the free world, in turn, is vitally dependent upon Japan being part of it and not part of the Soviet world, there must be some adjustment. This factor, and not the timing of the negotiations, was, I believe, determining."28 LEGISLATIVE HISTORY OF THE FISHERIES CONVENTION The subsequent history of the International Convention for the High Seas Fisheries of the North Pacific Ocean is an illustration of how easy it is to sail a treaty through the Senate when the tides of Congressional and articulate public opinion are flowing in a favorable direction. Or, more accurately, it demonstrates how the legislative history of a policy may be smooth and simple if its earlier political history was written by determined, skillful, and responsible men. The necessary number of instruments of ratification having been deposited, the treaty of peace with Japan came into force and Japan regained her sovereignty in full on April 28, 1952. The way was thus clear for the formal signing of the previously initialed Fisheries 29 Quoted in statement by William C. Herrington, Hearings on the Fisheries Con­ vention, Appendix No. 1, p. 34.

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Convention, which took place soon afterward, on May 9. Because the negotiations had been so difficult, some members of the delega­ tion had felt on returning from Tokyo that it might be wise to try to get the Convention signed even before the peace treaty became effective, in order to commit all parties to it more deeply. Despite the advantages of such a tactic, the State Department successfully resisted it because it was contrary to the previous understandings and commitments that existed among the three parties to the Con­ vention. And, since Japan was not yet legally free to make such a choice on her own, it was felt that to oblige Japan to accept an earlier signing in violation of these understandings would under­ mine the voluntary character of the undertaking. In any case the Japanese soon signified their desire to sign the Convention shortly after the peace treaty would be effective, and so the earlier schedule was maintained. Public hearings on the Convention were held on June 27, and the Senate debated and approved it just one week later, on July 4. Two themes that ran through this formal Senate consideration were the need for quick action on the Convention, in order to get it into operation as soon as possible, and the lack of any organized or significant opposition to it. These themes were made explicit in the course of the discussions, and, even more important, were also made manifest in the way the discussions were handled. The public hear­ ings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee were over less than an hour and a half after they had begun. There were only four witnesses, two from the State Department, one from the Department of the Interior, and one from the Congress, Senator Magnuson of Washington. A number of interested persons from the fishing in­ dustry were in the audience but they did not testify; they even declined an invitation from Senator George, acting chairman of the Committee, to voice any objections they might have to the treaty. An impressive collection of letters and telegrams addressed to the Foreign Relations Committee and to the Department of State, urging the early consideration and approval of the treaty, was mentioned during the hearings and included as part of the record; they came from Senators and Representatives of both parties, and from a wide variety of fishery organizations. The only person to disturb the calm proceedings in any way was Senator Green of Rhode Island, who often enjoyed an opportunity to demonstrate how lightly he wore his eighty-five years by seizing a carelessly used phrase or a conveniently ambiguous generalization and turning

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it on its author, pursuing that harried gentleman until he acknowl­ edged defeat. In this instance, he chased Mr. Herrington through two and a half pages of the printed record trying to find the signifi­ cance in his use of the word "generally." Despite such diversions, the sense of unanimity among Executive, Congress, and public groups was inescapable, and was amply reflected in the speed with which the Fisheries Convention was relayed to the Senate floor for ratification. In comparison with the earlier Congressional interest in virtually all phases of the fishery settlement, the brevity of the ratification debate was somewhat anticlimactic. The entire procedure consumed hardly more than fifteen minutes, with Senator Magnuson doing most of the talking; Senators George and Smith, both on the Foreign Relations Committee, also spoke briefly on behalf of the Convention. The only new point was made by Senator Magnuson, who with an undisclosed audience in mind made a sharp distinction between questions of conservation embodied in the treaty and questions of trade in fish. Trade and tariff agreements with Japan were vitally necessary, he argued, but they were a separate matter, a next stop to be taken after the conclusion of the Fisheries Convention. The preceding two years had not been easy ones for the State Department, which was trying to establish a viable peace settlement, or for the fishing industry, which was trying to protect its interests by international agreement rather than by international incident, or for the West Coast members of Congress, who in trying to help both of these bodies were sometimes caught between them. It must have been a great relief to all when, without a single question being asked from the floor, the Convention was approved by a voice vote.

PART

VI

Conclusion

Cliapter 13 CONCLUSION In the preceding chapters, many hypotheses have been advanced concerning specific relationships within the process of policy-making on the Japanese peace settlement. There remain a few general ob­ servations growing out of this particular case study which it may be appropriate to consider here by way of conclusion. In rising to a slightly higher level of generalization, it is suggested that case studies can be very useful in the development of theory concerning the political process and, more specifically, that what has been learned about the political process on the Japanese peace settlement may serve as a point of departure for the more systematic accumula­ tion of data and propositions about the foreign policy-making process in all its varied forms. The usefulness of further studies of foreign policy-making may be underlined by restating here two major caveats on interpretation that have had to be entered in this examination of the peace settle­ ment. In the first place, it is not suggested that all the propositions which we have cast either in specific or general terms are equally valid in all policy circumstances. It is precisely the limited basis of our present knowledge about policy-making relationships which makes it necessary to stress this. The study of other cases of foreign policy-making is an obvious way of defining the area in which these propositions are applicable, and the circumstances in which they need to be modified or refined. It is also premature, on the basis of just one study of this type, to attach orders of importance to the many variables in the process of policy-making. It would seem, by way of example, that the nature of the policy issue itself has an important effect on the character of the political process that attends it; but it is too early to say if it is a controlling effect, or in what circumstances it may be a con­ trolling effect, or even to make definite statements about the range of types of issues that have any effects at all. Here, too, the study of other cases would be a useful method of securing data relevant to these crucial aspects of the political process. But propositions can be refined only after they are put to some use. The study of the Japanese peace settlement has been productive

CONCLUSION

of hypotheses that have some bearing not on this case alone but also on the larger study of the political process. We shall consider the more important of these here, pausing to examine some of their research implications. What began as a useful assumption in organizing this study emerges from it with the somewhat higher status of an unrefined hypothesis: that the climate of public opinion in the body politic, organized and unorganized political interest groups, and the media of mass communication are integral and important parts of the po­ litical processes of foreign policy-making. This is not just to say that they may perhaps exert some influence on the decisions of policy­ makers—which was the approximate order of the initial assumption —but, more significantly, that they fundamentally affect the very character of the process through which a foreign policy decision is made. The assimilation of these "public factors" into the center of a theory of foreign policy-making has been slow, held back in part by the claims of older conceptions and by various normative judg­ ments. Those who have felt that surveys of general public opinion distort representative government, for example, or alternatively that political interest groups distort true democracy, have found it diffi­ cult to visualize a process of policy-making in which public opinion or pressure groups play legitimate and major parts. But without such a conception or hypothesis one is likely to miss many of the basic relationships that motivate policy choices, and to be left with a process of policy-making that is more governmental or in­ stitutional than political in the deeper sense of that word. The Japanese peace settlement provides two different demonstra­ tions of the intimate connection between these public factors and the political process. All the indicators of public interest in the peace treaty itself were low: the polls reported general public opinion as indifferent though favorably inclined, political interest groups were in much the same frame of mind, and the press was scarcely interested in following the policy-making story. In these circumstances, the governmental elements in the process were sub­ stantially free to work out the treaty as best they could. These con­ ditions were not repeated in the case of the fishery treaty, however. While the state of public opinion on the matter is not known, local interest groups and media of communication were intensely inter­ ested in the subject. Because the dimensions of the public factors in the process were thus altered, there was a corresponding change in the character of the governmental factors. The presence of an active

CONCLUSION

public following for fishery policy ruled out the kind of freedom of discretion that prevailed in the government with regard to the peace treaty; in the new arrangement, the public factors actually shared power, through deference by Congressmen and through semi-formal representation at the policy-making level of the State Department. To say in these two instances that public factors were not part of the process on the peace treaty, but were a part of it on the Fisheries Convention, would be to overlook the real effect which these factors had on the peace treaty and to see only their more obvious impact on the fishery treaty. In fact, they were major features of both processes, although their characteristics and thus their roles were different in each. In the peace treaty, these public factors augmented the power of the Executive; in the fishery treaty, they claimed, and exercised, power for themselves. The importance of these public factors in the process of foreign policy-making brings to the foreground some problems that contain interesting and significant research possibilities. These are meant to be suggestive rather than exhaustive of the research potentialities in this set of political relationships. For one thing, the position of political interest groups in the process needs much more clarifica­ tion than it has yet received. Earlier in this study, we pointed out some of the differences in the behavior of interest groups on the treaty issue, and suggested that issues of another kind would prob­ ably give rise to a different pattern of interest group activity. But there are undoubtedly some limits to the number of different pat­ terns that this activity can assume, and one might indeed raise the question whether such limits may be set by the very nature of the policy substance—in other words, whether the bases and scope of interest group power are of the same order in the foreign policy­ making process as in domestic policy-making. Since most foreign policy is by nature designed to deal with large national interests rather than special group interests, then it may turn out that the motivations of interest groups, the intensity of their involvement, and the extent to which they can advance legitimate claims to share official power tend to be more circumscribed in these foreign policy situations than they would be under typical conditions of domestic policy-making. Certainly the development of the Japanese peace treaty encourages this kind of speculation—as in fact does the ob­ vious exception, in the case of the Fisheries Convention, which arose precisely because interpretations of the national interest met the

CONCLUSION

claims of special group interest in an uncommonly direct collision. Even more inviting as subjects for intensive research are the many different relationships between the media of mass communication and all the other elements in the process of foreign policy-making. The analysis of press coverage of the peace settlement only opens up—rather than answers—the really difficult questions about the effects of the media on the universe of policy-making. For example, one extremely significant problem concerns the role of the media in helping to "create" or shape policy issues as a result of the way they define and report events, situations, decisions, or actions. In a political milieu, what people think is so may be more important than what is actually so; and an intrinsically unimportant circum­ stance may acquire significance simply because tens of millions of people are made aware of it all at one time. Hence it would be sur­ prising if the channels of public communication did not exert some kind of major and perhaps steady influence on the calculations of both governmental and private persons involved in an act of policy­ making. Another important question concerns the occasionally de­ liberate and positive steps by the media—particularly the press—to influence foreign policy-making. There is little systematic or ac­ curate information on the activities of members of the press in calling attention to situations or in stirring up issues when they think that certain problems have gone far enough without solutions, or in lending themselves to similar uses by one or another of the agencies or branches of the government. In these and other ways, the media have become so important and powerful that they now need to be studied not as passive facilities but as active agents in the policy-making process. Finally, the deeper dimensions of "public opinion" and its rela­ tion to other factors and aspects of foreign policy-making, as well as the attitudes of policy-makers themselves to this subject, espe­ cially call for further study and extensive thought. This is one area where knowledge and new ideas might help to overcome some of that paralysis of will and initiative in public policy matters about which Walter Lippmann has written so eloquently and so often.1 In many vital respects, American foreign policy is still chained to some very ancient bulwarks partly because policy-makers do not know how to discover how much freedom they possess. The timehonored method is trial and error, but an ill-prepared venture of 1 See, for example, his Essays in the Public Philosophy, Boston, Atlantic Monthly Press, Little, Brown and Co., 1955.

CONCLUSION

this kind tends to produce discouragement and timidity rather than genuine enlightenment. Yet the most striking and important single lesson that the development of the Japanese peace settlement pro­ vides is that there are many opportunities for bold and constructive initiative in the foreign policy realm to be picked up by American political figures who understand or have discovered what imagina­ tive leadership can do with "public opinion." This kind of under­ standing is commonly regarded as part of the "art" of politics, but that should not make it immune to rigorous examination. Through such study, we may be able to separate fact from fantasy in what the American people are prepared to tolerate or support by way of foreign policies, and thus in what American political leaders need to regard as public obstacles to some much-needed policy inven­ tiveness. A second major proposition—or set of propositions, to be more exact—about the foreign policy-making process reflects the inordi­ nate complexity of the patterns of influence that run within it. "Influence" is used here in the broad sense to cover the many con­ siderations that affect political behavior, and not merely those which seem to be most important in determining it. For purposes of sim­ plification or even of analysis, it may be useful to conceive of a rather stable or static process in which relationships are paired— for example, Legislative-Executive, or Interest Group-Congress— or in which major factors like Interest Groups or the Media are introduced one at a time in order to observe their influence. In reality, however, the process is one in which there is a constant meshing of interests and attitudes, actions and reactions, of different, frequently competing groups in a more or less orderly fashion. Con­ gressional behavior vis-a-vis the Executive on any issue, for example, may be dependent on the prevailing state of public opinion and its stability or instability, on the character and intensity of interest group activity, and on the daily prospects of gaining a profitable press, as well as on the political and constitutional factors that are relevant as between the two branches of government. But what the press will do about this Congressional behavior at any given moment is in turn dependent on Executive behavior, and on the apparent interest reflected in the prevailing state of public opinion—and even on the things that are happening elsewhere which will compete with Congressional behavior for space and attention in the press. And what the interest groups will do, which will help to shape the decisions of Congressmen, may depend on how well the press brings

CONCLUSION

the issue to their attention and on the likely shape and future of the issue itself as its key elements are reported and structured by the communications media. In other words, policy-making is a contin­ uous process of achieving a new political equilibrium in the service of new political goals; and in order to achieve it each political ele­ ment involved is continuously affected by all the others. This complex conception of the flow of influence complicates research because it requires the simultaneous consideration of a very large number of highly relevant variables; and for this reason, it casts many familiar problems of research in political institutions in a little different setting and possibly in one that contains deeper insights. The subjects of bipartisanship and Executive-Legislative relations, for example, are generally thought of as problems on the govern­ mental level, revolving around some institutional factors and some matters of tact and tactics. But this more elaborate hypothesis about the patterns of influence in the political process suggests that these two subjects have a much broader significance, and that their study involves the analysis of more than a few governmental factors. Prob­ lems of inter-branch and inter-party cooperation are political problems involving political calculations and choice, as well as techniques of implementation, and thus their study necessarily ranges over the whole of the process of policy-making. Indeed, one of the most basic decisions—namely, whether there should or should not be bipartisan cooperation on any issue—cannot be understood without reference to the non-governmental political situation and its varied potentialities for political advantage. This political situation includes not only the extra-governmental party alignment, but also the salience of the issue among the general public and the relevant organized political interest groups; the prevailing and probable states of public and elite opinion; and the willingness and ability of the communications media to exploit all of these things in search of newsworthy material. No less than an extended analysis covering all of these factors would be required, for example, to explain con­ vincingly the reasons for, and the consequences of, the decision of leading Republicans to alter their pattern of cooperation with the Democratic Administration on foreign policy matters in the late 1940's and to make a political issue out of China policy. The internal functioning of separate branches or agencies of gov­ ernment is also affected by the interrelatedness of all the parts in the policy-making process; what consequences this may have for

CONCLUSION

straight institutional analyses it is difficult to say. One small example may show the problems and possibilities of research in this area. One does not need to look very far to find many instances where Congressional discussion or debate was intellectually povertystricken, lacking any real substance or distinction, or even merit. This kind of evidence has been sufficiently impressive to give rise to various negative judgments about the intellectual caliber of the Congress, and to some hypotheses doubting its capacity to carry on the public business, and especially the business of foreign policy, in these first years of the nuclear age. Yet such judgments and hypotheses seem to be incomplete in certain respects. Congressional debate on any policy matter has to be viewed as part of the wider public debate on the same subject, since the dimensions and char­ acteristics of the public debate lend political tone and meaning to the discussion in the Congress. If public debate on an issue is thin and sporadic and if there is no sizable public audience for such discussion, as was the case on the Japanese treaty issue, there may be little justification for Congressmen to stage an impressive debate of their own. The reasons for superficiality undoubtedly tend to disappear, however, as public interest in an issue becomes manifest; and in such instances, one might find Congressional debate taking on more substantial proportions. The study of foreign policy-making—by the method of case anal­ ysis and by research into specific problems of the kind discussed in this chapter—can be expected ultimately to turn up a large body of related and comparable data on the various processes of policy development. Such material cannot help but give us deeper insight into the very fundamentals of these processes. Eventually, this improved understanding of the pitfalls and the opportunities that strew the path of policy development may reduce in some measure the uncertainties that render foreign policy-making such a hazardous enterprise today. The promise is a modest one, but sufficiently im­ portant to be attractive.

INDEX Acheson, Secy, of State Dean, 11, 16, 25, 126, 127, 129, 155, 167, 168, 216, 228-29, 230, 233, 239, 241, 242, 248, 258, 262, 263, 268, 274 Administrative Agreement, see U.S.-Japan Administrative Agreement Alaska, 253, 274, 275; Fisheries Board, 274-75 Allen, Edward W., 257, 272 Allison, John M., 13, 15, 221 Allman, Roy S., 221 American Association of University Women, 83 American Baptist Convention, 75 American Bar Association, 213 American Federation of Labor, 64, 71, 246 American Institute of Public Opinion, 31, 40, 59 American Legion, 64, 84-85, 86 American Peace Crusade, 89 Americans for Democratic Action, 89 American Tunaboat Association, 269 American Veterans Committee, 64, 85-86 American Veterans of Foreign Wars (AMVETS), 85, 86 ANZUS Pact, see U.S.-Australia-New Zealand Security Treaty articulate public, 62-93, 179; composi­ tion of, 29, 62; types of, 62-63; func­ tion of, 65, 94-95 fishing industry (commodity groups), 22, 67, 72-73, 77, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 107, 218, 227-28, 270-71; pacifist organizations, 64, 74, 76-80, 86, 89, 97, 99, 100, 101, 107, 218-20; women's organizations, 64, 67, 80-84, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 107; ideological groups, 64, 67, 88-91, 97, 99, 100, 101, 107, 218-20; agricultural groups, 66; reli­ gious groups, 67, 74-76, 80, 86, 89, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 107, 218-20; business organizations, 70-73, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 107, 217-18; labor or­ ganizations, 70-73, 96, 97, 100, 101, 107; shipping organizations, 72, 77; veterans' organizations, 84-86, 96, 97, 100, 101, 107; ethnic groups, 86-88, 96, 97, 101; financial interests, 88, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 107; political agencies and individuals, 91, 107, 220; private individuals, 92. See also opinion on Japan; political interest groups; public opinion Australia, 19. See also U.S.-AustraliaNew Zealand Secvirity Treaty

Bailey, Stephen K., 147 Barkley, Vice-President Alben W., 238 Bartlett, Delegate E. L., 274-75 Battle Act, see Mutual Defense Assistance Control Act of 1951 Bevin, Prime Minister Emest, 258 bipartisanship, 147, 172, 179, 189, 194, 228, 229, 230, 231-35, 239-52; effect of MacArfhur's dismissal on, 14; effect on discussion, 200, 204, 250-52; and Executive-Legislative relations, 232-33; understanding of, 233-35, 250, 286; strategic aspects of, 239-44; tactical aspects of, 240, 244-49; fringes of, 24950; effect on policy, 251-52; effect on parties, 252. See also Dulles; ExecutiveLegislative relations Bonin Islands, 17, 74 Bradley, Gen. Omar, 13, 23, 155, 156-57, 158, 163, 238 Brethren Service Commission, Church of the Brethren, 80 Brewster, Sen. Owen, 225 Bricker, Sen. John W., 82, 187, 212, 244 Bridges, Sen. Styles, 151 Brooding, Milton E., 272 Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, 73 Cain, Sen. Harry P., 172, 262 California Packing Corporation, 272 Canada, 19, 22, 265, 273-74. See also North Pacific Fisheries Convention Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 131 Catholic Association for International Peace, 76 Chamber of Commerce of the U.S., 64, 70, 217 Chamber of Shipping of the United King­ dom, 72 Chapman, Dr. Wilbert M., 257, 260, 262, 264-70, 274 Chiang Kai-Shek, 15, 55 China, Communist, 11, 12, 13-14, 15, 86, 89, 90, 179; Nationalist, 15, 81, 88, 90, 108, 184; relations with Japan, 18, 19, 22-23, 24, 60, 75, 76, 79-80, 82, 85, 89, 146, 150-53, 243, 275; and Ameri­ can policy, 126, 251, 287; Dulles' view of, 141-42. See also Formosa; opinion, on Japanese-Chinese relations; Sena­ tors, attitudes toward Japanese-Chinese relations and toward China Clayton, Under Secy, of State Will, 256 Commission on a Just and Durable Peace, 132

INDEX

Committee on Foreign Affairs (H.R.), 246, 263 Committee on Foreign Relations (Sen­ ate), 145-69; Subcommittee on Far Eastern Affairs, 16, 145-46, 147, 14950, 157, 167, 168, 169, 201, 246, 249; participation in Japanese Peace Con­ ference, 16, 146,150; hearings on peace treaty, 23, 65, 67, 79, 87, 91-92, 104, 105, 141, 146, 152, 153, 154-66, 17072, 183, 215, 221, 224-26, 236, 237, 238, 249-50, 251; preparation of report to Senate, 23, 165-68; hearings on Fisheries Convention, 25, 276-77; staff of, 146-47, 233; participation in treaty formulation, 148-52, 243, 244, 245-46; participation in ratification debate, 15354, 184-85, 201-4, 224; party differ­ ences in, 164-65, 168, 202-4 Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries (H.R.), 257 communication, media of, 109, 138, 179, 251; and public interest, 110, 111, 117, 120-21, 160, 229-30; regional differences in, 110-11, 112; amount of treaty coverage in, 112-14, 158-59, 211, 214, 229-30; timing of coverage in, 114-17, 230; composition of coverage in, 117-19; and Executive branch, 11920; substance of coverage in, 211, 214 communication, political, 94-109; methods employed in, 99-100, 104; timing of, 100, 104; Executive and Legislative audience for, 101-4, 106-8; as seen by Executive and Congress, 104-9, 214-15. See also articulate public Congregational Christian Church, 76 Congressional Record, 91, 180, 182 Congress of Industrial Organizations, 64, 71 Connally, Sen, Tom, 16, 146, 158, 168, 201 Cooper, John Sherman, 12 Coston, Herbert, 224 Council of Foreign Ministers, 11, 131 Council on Foreign Relations, 131 Croker, Richard S., 272 Daughters of the Revolution, National Society, 83 debate, public, 67-68, 83, 287; govern­ mental, 69, 170, 178, 182, 287. See also Senate, debate in Defense, Dept. of, 12, 13, 14, 23, 130, 156, 236, 238, 260, 263 Devereux, Rep. James P. S., 91 Dewey, Gov. Thomas E., 131, 132

Dirksen, Sen. Everett M., 24, 105, 187, 214 Domestic Sewing Machine Company, 73 Dooman, Eugene, 92 Draper, William, 92 Dulles, John Foster, 6, 8, 11, 73, 77, 11920, 125-42, 194, 198-99, 200, 225, 228-29, 230, 231, 274; appointed to State Dept., 12, 126-27, 229, 241; ap­ pointed Special Representative of the President, 14, 130; praise of, 17, 91, 248; resignation, 25 consultations with Senators, 12, 14, 141-42, 146, 148-50, 151, 165-69, 239, 240-42, 244-49; with Representatives, 12, 14, 239, 244, 246; with Republican party leaders, 13, 14, 240-42; trips to Far East, 13, 14, 22, 146, 150, 152, 239, 241; negotiations on Chinese ques­ tion, 15, 150-53; guidance of ratifica­ tion process, 21-22, 238, 240, 248; participation in hearings, 153, 155, 156, 157, 160-65, 170-71, 238; conduct of bipartisanship, 231-52; and fishery settlement, 261, 262, 264, 265, 266, 268, 270, 271, 274-75 attitude toward bipartisanship, 12-13, 16, 240; views on peace settlement, 127-29, 240; policy-making roles, 12930, 132-33, 167-68; sources of author­ ity, 130-33; information policy on peace settlement, 133-37, 219, 221-22, 229; differentiation of audiences, 13742, 248; and public opinion, 212, 21622. See also bipartisanship Eisenhower, Gen. Dwight D., 10 European Recovery Program, 7, 83, 155, 181, 250 Evans, Luther, 92, 220 Evans, Jr., William H., 225 Executive-Legislative relations, 141, 231, 233, 235-39, 246, 285, 286. See also bipartisanship Far Eastern Commission, 11, 255 Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, 132 Fellowship of Reconciliation, 64, 76-78, 225 Fishing Vessel Owners Association, 272 Foreign Bondholders Protective Council, 88, 217 foreign policy-making, research in, 3-8, 281, 283-85, 286-87; role of articulate opinion in, 65, 253. See also political process

INDEX

Formosa, 17, 86, 88, 151, 152, 275. See also China, Nationalist Fortune, 54 France, 15, 19 Freeman, Miller, 262-63, 268, 271 Friends Committee on National Legisla­ tion, 76-77, 79-80 Furniss, Jr., Edgar S., 234 Gallup, Dr. George, see American Insti­ tute of Public Opinion General Federation of Women's Clubs, 83 George, Sen. Walter F., 146, 156, 160, 276, 277 Germany, Western, 71, 73. See also opinion on Japan, comparison of, with Germany Great Britain, 15, 19, 34, 150-52, 174, 243 Greek-Turkish Aid Program, 180 Green, Sen. Theodore F., 157, 276-77 Herrington, William C., 269-70, 271, 272, 274, 277 Hickenlooper, Sen. Bourke B., 146, 151, 249 High Seas Tuna Packing Company, 272 Holman, Frank E., 92, 213-14 Hoover, Herbert, 92 House of Representatives, 7, 11, 91, 244; and Fisheries Convention, 261, 263, 267, 276, 277. See also Committee on Foreign Affairs; Dulles, consultations with Representatives Human Rights, Universal Declaration of, 17, 82, 90, 227 Indonesia, 18, 19 Interior, Dept. of, 263, 276; Fish and Wildlife Service, 272 International Court of Justice, 82 International Fisheries Commission, 272 James, Milton C., 272 Japanese American Citizens League, 87 Japanese-Chinese relations, see China Japanese Peace Conference (September 1951), 9, 15-17, 41, 58, 66, 88, 112, 114-17, 118, 119, 140, 146, 183, 184, 211, 229, 230, 270, 271 Japanese peace settlement, as subject of study, 7, 281-87; agreements compris­ ing, 9; history of, 9-25; structure of, 11; ratification process, 21-25, 235-39; salience as a policy issue, 58, 111, 118, 230 Japanese Peace Treaty, 9; conception of, 11-12; and American security, 12, 13,

23, 69, 84, 86, 179; and Japanese security, 13, 157; drafts made public, 15; signed, 16, 146; provisions of, 1719, 243-44; preamble to, 17, 82, 166, 187, 213, 243-44; treatment of fishery question, 18, 255, 256, 259, 260, 262, 263, 264, 268; reparations, 18-19; to come into force, 19; proposed reserva­ tions, 23-24, 158, 166-68, 187-88, 242, 249; approved by Senate, 24 Jenner, Sen. William E., 24, 175, 187, 200, 214, 243 Johnson, Secy, of Defense Louis, 13 Kefauver, Sen. Estes, 10 Knowland, Sen. William F., 151, 195, 200, 202, 227, 243, 244, 255, 261-62, 264 Kohlberg, Alfred, 92 Korea, 17, 152, 275 Korean War, 10, 13-14, 23, 34, 35, 76, 126, 135, 138, 174, 179, 210, 220, 231, 239 Kurile Islands, 17, 23, 158, 166, 167 League of Women Voters of the U.S., 83 Legislative branch, see Executive-Legis­ lative relations Lehman, Sen. Herbert H., 131 Libby, Frederick J., 79 Lippmann, Walter, 156, 284 Loker, Donald P., 272 Lokken, Harold E., 272 Looney, Warren F., 272 Lovett, Secy, of Defense Robert A., 155; as Under Secy, of State, 257 Lutheran-Missouri Synod, 75 MacArthur, Gen. Douglas, 54, 73, 147, 198-99, 231; hearings on dismissal, 10, 15, 231-32; support of peace settle­ ment, 14, 200, 240-41, 248 Magnuson, Sen. Warren G., 276, 277 Malone, Sen. George W., 172, 200 Maritime Committee, Intra-Industry, 72 McCarran, Sen. Pat, 151, 189, 197-98 McCarthy, Sen. Joseph R., 10 Methodist Church, 74; Commission on World Peace of, 75 Millikin, Sen. Eugene D., 240 Morrison, Foreign Secy. Herbert, 150, 152 Muste, Rev. A. J., 225 Mutual Defense Assistance Control Act of 1951, 60 Mutual Defense Assistance Program of 1949, 180, 181 Mutual Security Act of 1951, 181

INDEX

National Association of Manufacturers, 64, 70-71, 98, 217 National Council for the Prevention of War, 76-77, 79 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S., 64, 74, 75 National Economic Council, 64, 90, 91,

166 National Federation of American Ship­ ping, 72 National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, 83 National Opinion Research Center, 38, 40, 54, 60 National Society for Constitutional Se­ curity, 83 New York Times, 92, 110-20 New Zealand, 19. See also U.S.-Australia-New Zealand Security Treaty North Atlantic Treaty, 48, 50, 65-66, 83, 85, 155, 180, 181, 243, 258 North Pacific Fisheries Convention (U.S.­ Canada-Japan), 7, 9, 21, 73, 227, 25377, 283; negotiation of, 22, 266-68, 270, 271, 272-73; provisions of, 22, 273-74; signing of, 25, 275-76; Ameri­ can delegation, 272-73, 274; Annex to, 274. See also articulate public; Japa­ nese Peace Treaty; opinion on Japan; Pacific Fisheries Conference opinion on Japan and peace settlement, 57-58, 64-65, 70-71, 74-93, 106-8, 211; climate of, 29-61, polls, 30-61, 211-12; characteristics of, 30-35, 52-57, 60, 63-69, 84, 105-8, 159, 210-15; com­ parison of, with Germany, 31, 32, 34, 35, 53, 55-57, 66; superficiality of, 53-55; instability of, 55; significance of, for policy-makers, 57-61, 64, 209-30 by age, 38, 40; by sex, 40-41, 59; by education, 41-45, 59; by social class, 45; by income, 45, 48, 59; by occupation, 45-48; by region, 48-52, 59, 67, 190-92 on Japanese people, 34-35, 37-39, 40, 44, 51, 52, 59, 67; on Japanese armaments, 35-36, 67, 75, 76-79, 85, 86, 89, 92, 156, 220; on postwar treat­ ment of Japan, 36-37, 43; on U.S. bases in Japan, 37, 57, 67, 89; on Japanese elections, 40, 52; on Japanese Peace Conference, 41; on job discrimi­ nation, 41, 43, 51; on reparations, 43, 45, 46, 51; on Japanese trade, 43-44; on Pacific security pact, 51, 84, 85-86, 89; on occupation of Japan, 54-55; on willingness to sacrifice, 59-60; on Japa­

nese-Chinese relations, 55, 60, 75, 76, 79-80, 82, 85, 86, 89, 90, 108; on Japanese shipbuilding, 72, 86; on fishery question, 73, 91, 210, 215, 216, 218, 227-28, 253; on American sover­ eignty, 81-82; on Japanese immigra­ tion, 87; on Nationalist China, 88, 108; on private claims against Japan, 91, 166, 221, 250. See also articulate public; public opinion Oregon, Senate and House of Representa­ tives, 91 Pacific Fisheries Conference, 22, 73, 25354, 256-57, 262, 263, 264, 267, 268, 270-71, 272 Pacific Marine Fisheries Commission, 272 Paracel Islands, 17 Pennsylvania State Senate, 91 Pescadores, 17 Philippine Islands, 18, 19, 84, 275. See also U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty Picon, Miss Elsie, 78 political interest groups, 69, 76, 108, 253; character of membership in, 94, 95-97; character of interests served by, 94, 95, 97-99. See also articulate public; com­ munication, political political process, policy-makers' image of, 3-4, 109; factors in, 6, 204-5, 281; general characteristics of, 8, 102, 117, 170, 215-16, 228-30, 231-32; char­ acteristics of, on peace settlement, 93, 111, 120-21, 154, 282-83; involvement in, 94, 109; and bipartisanship, 252; significance of, for policy-makers, 28485; complexity of, 285-86 role of public opinion in, 64, 65-69, 215-16, 282-83, 284-85; role of articu­ late public in, 104-5, 282-83; role of media in, 109, 110-11, 282-83, 284; role of Congress in, 142; role of Com­ mittee on Foreign Relations in, 145, 147-48, 160, 169; role of Senate debate in, 175-78; role of interest groups in, 283. See also foreign policy-making Portland Oregonian, 263 Post War World Council, 80 Potsdam Conference, 24, 82, 158 press, see communication, media of public opinion, 29, 38, 94-95, 212; types of, 29, 60-61; significance of, for policy-makers, 209. See also articulate public; opinion on Japan Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, re­ newals of, 102, 155, 180, 250

INDEX

Republican National Convention (July 1952), 9, 242 Roosevelt, President Franklin D., 32 Rusk, Dean, 238 Ryukyu Islands, 17, 74 Saltonstall, Sen. Leverett, 242 San Francisco Chronicle, 110-20 San Francisco Conference, see Japanese Peace Conference Seattle Chinese Benevolent Association,

88 Seattle Times, 211, 263 Senate, 119-20, 131-32, 164, 235-39, 275, 276; ratification debate in, 19, 23, 24, 135, 146, 153, 161, 164, 166, 170-205, 223-24, 226-27, 251; approves Japanese Peace Treaty, 24; approves security treaties, 25; approves Fisheries Con­ vention, 25, 277; party differences in, 187, 188-89, 194-200; regional dif­ ferences in, 188-94. See also Commit­ tee on Foreign Relations; Senators Senators, 119-20; attitude toward Japa­ nese-Chinese relations, 22, 57, 150-54, 243; mail to, 105-6; attitude toward China, 108, 151, 174, 184, 198; West Coast, 179, 218, 227-28, 261, 263, 265, 267, 277; participation in ratification debate, 180-81, 182-88; and public opinion, 213-15, 227-28, 247-48; and timing of ratification, 237, 238; atti­ tudes on treaty, 244-50. See also Com­ mittee on Foreign Relations; Dulles, consultations with Senators; Senate Smith, Sen. H. Alexander, 22, 146, 147, 150, 152, 153-54, 155-56, 195, 200, 243, 277 Smith, Sen. Margaret C., 24, 187, 243 Snyder, Richard C., 234 South Sakhalin, 17, 23, 158, 166, 167 sovereignty, 184, 186, 187, 188; Japanese Peace Treaty a threat to American, 17, 81-82, 90; Executive usurpation of Congressional powers, 20, 90, 168 Soviet Union, 11, 13, 16, 23-24, 34, 81, 82, 89, 90, 114, 166, 167, 168, 225 Sparkman, Sen. John J., 22, 146, 147, 149, 150, 152, 153, 157, 195, 225 Spratly Islands, 17 Stassen, Harold, 17 State, Dept. of, 12, 13, 14, 23, 66, 91, 92, 126, 127, 129, 130, 145, 156, 159, 164, 166, 172, 174, 187, 198, 213, 214, 218, 219, 222, 223, 233, 241,

242, 248, 256-72, 275, 276, 277, 283; mail to, 105, 212, 216-17, 276; Public Studies division, 211-12; and timing of ratification, 235-39; Fisheries and Wildlife branch, 255, 256, 257, 259, 261, 262, 264, 269, 272; Office of International Trade Policy, 256 Taft, Sen. Robert A., 240-42, 243 Taper, Bernard, 116 Tobey, Sen. Charles W., 153 Truman, David, 213 Truman, President Harry S., 13, 14, 25, 129, 151, 152, 154, 159, 167, 168, 216, 228, 230, 233, 235-39, 241, 242, 261. See also White House United Kingdom, see Great Britain United Lutheran Church, 75 United Nations, 13, 17-18, 79, 83, 89, 90, 116, 131, 151, 174, 187, 213, 250 U.S.-Australia-New Zealand Security Treaty, 9, 14, 16, 58-59, 84-85, 159, 243; provisions of, 20-21; proposed reservations, 24; approved by Senate, 25 U.S.-Japan Administrative Agreement, 9, 11, 21, 23, 24, 156-57, 236, 238 U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, 9, 16, 18, 58-59, 146, 159; provisions of, 19-20; proposed reservations, 24; approved by Senate, 24-25 U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty, 9, 14, 16, 58-59, 159, 243; provisions of, 20; proposed reservations, 24; ap­ proved by Senate, 25 Wagner, Sen. Robert F., 131 Watkins, Sen. Arthur V., 23, 153, 157, 158, 168 Webb, Under Secy, of State James E., 271 White House, 66, 105, 212, 238 Wilcox, Francis O., 146-47 Wiley, Sen. Alexander, 16, 146, 201 Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, 64, 76-77, 78-79 Women's Patriotic Conference on Na­ tional Defense, 26th, 81-83 Wood, Robert W., 76 Yalta Agreement of 1945, 17, 24, 158, 166, 167, 168, 243 Yoshida, Premier Shigeru, 22-23, 146, 150, 152; "Yoshida letter," 23, 150-54, 243, 266, 267, 268, 274