OCR Text |
Show Page 6 The Utah Independent January 1, 1976 Continued From Page 1 analogy must have seemed ominous to many, since it was difficult to find a general advantage from the merger of the Soviet republics accruing to anyone but the dictators in charge of the merger. It was abundantly clear by now that Streits concept of union did not envision a mere loose association of nations, but rather one in which a new government would have power to impose a common citizenship on the peoples of captive nations; to directly tax their citizens; to make and enforce common laws; to coin and borrow money; to control the armed forces of the federated nations; and, to admit new member-nation- s to the union. Congress was then reluctant to sacrifice the sovereignty, independence, and integrity of the United States, and the scheme was largely ignored. The movement received an encouraging boost, however, when the United States joined the United Nations in 1945. And the following year Clarence Streit founded the monthly magazine Freedom And Union which he has edited ever since, and which serves today as an influential vehicle for transporting Atlantic Union propaganda. In 1949, the United States joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (N.A.T.O.), which was allegedly intended to serve as a military alliance defending the West against Communism. Unrecognized by most Americans, h'owever"was the ambiguous text of the N.A.T.U. treaty, which could be jnterpreted asauthorizing an international political union. This, of course, was "the interpretation which Streit and his colleagues favored. That same year, in an apparent attempt to capitalize on the popular reception accorded N.A.T.O., Streit formed the Atlantic UAioh Committee. A main goal of the Committee was to rally Congressional support for a Resolution asking the President to invite delegates from other N.A.T.O. countries to a convention where the feasibility of a federal union could be considered. On July 26, 1949, a Resolution to this effect was introduced by Senator Estes Kefauver with the support of eighteen other Senators and five members of the House. The measure died on the legislative vine for lack of additional support. On January 15, 1951, Senator Kefauver again introduced the Atlantic Union Resolution, this time with the The Paper That Dares To Take A Stand ATLANTIC UN WAR came president of the I.M.A.U., and other members of the Atlantic Union Commitee on the Board included Mrs. Chase Osborn, Percival Brundage (C.F.R.), Melvin Ryder, A.W. Schmidt (C.F.R.), and Robert Strausz-Hup(C.F.R.). Subsequently, Senator Theodore Green Island) introduced a Resolution calling on Congress to endorse a citizens convention on N.A.T.O., and it received the Foreign Relations Committees unanimous But when" SenaToFCreen then attempted to ram it through the Senate by the procedure of unanimous consent, he was blocked by Senator Willijm FTKngwjand Senator' Knowland propei jy believed that such an important measure should be debated, and his objection effec- William e' (D.-Rhod- e ap-prov- al. tively killed the Resolution. The Atlantic Unionists were disappointed by this setback, but were invigorated by the results of the November Congressional elections. Senator Knowland had retired to seek another office, and a number of influ- ential opponents of Atlantic Union had been defeated. In addition, many friends of the movement had been elected, and the groundwork was thus laid for a major escalation of the drive to gain Congressional approval foi an Atlantic Union Resolution. By 1959, Streits basic Policy had become quite familiar to readers of Freedom And Union. Almost every issue carried a large part of the Policy. Its internationalist flavor was made clear in the first paragraph, which urged people To think, write and act always in terms of all the democratic world, and not of any one country in it. That year, Senator Hubert Huma member of phrey the C.F.R., introduced a revised version of the rejected Kefauver and Green Resolutions. The Humphrey Resolution received strong support, including the endorsement of Secretary of State Christian Herter (C.F.R.) on behalf of the Eisenhower Administration. International support recame from a fi ved ayAl tart theN-A.T-O. Pap gress sponsors dTIy Senators (inbacking of twenty-seve- n cluding Californias junior Senator, Richard Nixon) and nine Representatives. Again the Resolution did not receive so much as a Committee Hearing. On February 9, 1955, Senator Kefauver once more introduced the measure, and this time it reached a Hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before running out of steam. In 1958, in an attempt to stoke a fire under his crusade, Clarence Streit founded the International Movement for Atlantic Union (I.M.A.U.). An impressive list of supporters was gathered from several N.A.T.O. countries to serve as the new organizations Board of Directors. Streit himself be- Freedom And Union is now published every two months and is available at four dollars a year from Federal Union, Inc., 1736 Columbia Road, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009. L Clayton (C.F.R.). At an Ganhlan1iri'sTohTcrirrice in London 3uiirig"'JiTnir'ofT9597heJijricmber An ie ri ca rf clcgati orr"t o that Congress was soIidIyllackedwilhTixTecn "theCouricir on Foreign inem-bers"- Rela- - tioris7 incliidingan young intellectual named Henry' - 6f Kis-SlngeT- T gffild7 the various delegations agreed to a declaration which endorsed the on proposed citizens convention N.A.T.O. called for by the Humphrey Resolution. The Humphrey measure was not passed in 1959, but the patient gradualism and persistence of the Atlantic Unionists finally paid-of- f in I960, when it sailed through both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and eventually passed both the Senate and House This significant breakthrough became 9 Public Law on September 7. 19SD, and the U.S. Citizens Commis-sTon'oN . A T.O . was created. Clarence "Streit was jubilant! He brought out a revised edition of his book Union Now in 1961, and his Policy statement in Freedom And Union no longer called for a mere federal constitutional convention of the democracies, but rather for action by an Atlantic Cpnyentionof Citizens from N.A.T.O. . Appointments to the U.S. Citizens Commission on N.A.T.O. were, predictably, rigged heavily in favor of Establishment advocates of World (51-to-4- (288-to-103- 4) ). 86-71- rf the time, Roper was president (and Clay-to- n was vice president) of the AtIailtic ' Onion Commi t tee . "During January of 1962, the Citizens Commission on N.A.T.O. attended an Atlantic Convention of the N.A.T.0 countries in Paris. In his opening-da- y address, Christian Herter referred to the necessary compression of our United States sovereignty, and condemned what he termed the excessive insistence on complete and national freedom. At the conclusion of the Convention, the Americans joined with the other national groups in adopting the Declaration of Paris, which made four proposals to the governments of the N.A.T.O. countries. The first, and v Whe n t he" NTA.T.O." C digress' Senator Nixon backed Atlantic Union Resolution. Government. Named as the dominant Commissioners, for instance, were former Secretary of State Christian Herter (C.F.R.), David Rockefeller (C.F.R.), Elmo Roper (C.F.R.), and eign Affairs Committee, but went no further. In 1969, it came up again, and again failed. On September 30, 1971, Congressman Findley introduced House Joint Resolution 900, which called for an Atlantic Union convention. On March 16, 1972, it was approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the next day Senator McGee introduced a similar Resolution (Senate Joint Resolution 217) in the Senate. No further action was taken by . either the House or Senate until September 19, 1972. With the attention of most legislators focused on the pending national election, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee made a spur of the moment decision to hold Hearings on Senate Joint Resolution 217. The one-daHearings were for scheduled September twenty-secon- d and consisted of testimony y Nelson Rockefeller called for federal Senator Humphrey sponsored Atlantic citizens convention. most pertinent to our present discussion, railed for., appointment of a special government commission to study tiie organization of an Atlantic Community. Clarence Streit was not entirely satisfied with the results of the Atlantic Convention. He had hoped the Convention would tackle directly the job of working out an Atlantic government, but most participants apparently felt that public opinion had not yet been sufficiently molded to accept such a move. Streit was, however, pleased to note as did the New York Times that the idea of Atlantic Union is on the march. And his disappointment over the Conventions results was somewhat alleviated by a series of lectures which Nelson Rockefeller (C.F.R.) delivered at Harvard University in February of 1962, urging the United States to take the initiative in leading free nations into a federal union. Streit arranged to have Rockefellers lectures serialized in Freedom And Union , and they were later published as a book entitled The Future Of Federalism. Clarence Streit advertised the book as required reading: During 1963, no Atlantic Union Resolutions were introduced in Congress. Streit worked during the year to collect hundreds of names for the Advisory Council of the I.M.A.U., and in 1964, during Atlantic Unions twenty-fift- h anniversary, he reaffirmed the movements commitment to the goal of One Woild government in these words: The Atlantic Union it means to see constituted now will be but a nucleus, designed to grow in peace through generations to come, until the Federation of the Free embraces the whole race of mortal men. On October 18, 1965, Resolutions calling for a constitutional conven- tion of N.A.T.O. citizens were introduced in the House and Senate, but went nowhere. In 1967, an Atlantic Union Resolution was approved by the House For- Shortly thereafter, the Atlantic Union Committee was merged with a number of similiar organizations to form the Atlantic Council of the United States. We have in our files an undated Council brochure listing of its officers, directors, and honorary chairmen. Fully fifty-si(including eight of nine officers) have appeared on membership rosters of the Council on Foreign Relations. eighty-eig- ht x union of nations. from only three witnesses: Congressman Findley, Clarence Streit, and George S. Springsteen. (It was Mr. Springsteens assignment, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs to give the Nixon Administrations blessing to the measure.) No voices in opposition to the Resolution were heard, and only one brief (but excellent) letter expressing opposition appears in the Committees printed Report. The Committee received the letter after the Hearings were concluded, and when The Review Of The News contacted its author (a d lady who lives in New Jersey) we were told a rather interesting story. For more than a decade, this lady had been following closely the 'various Atlantic Union proposals before Congress. An expert on the Atlantic Urtion issue, she was anxious to testify against Senate Joint Resolution 217 when Hearings were held. She had made it a practice to call the Foreign Relations Committee regularly to determine the status of the legislation. She had, in fact, called the Committee on September eighteenth the day before the Hearings were scheduled and had been told that no Hearings or other action on Senate Joint Resolution 217 were planned. On September nineteenth, as luck would have it, an associate of Clarence Streits just happened to contact the Committee to see how things stood, thus learning of the Hearings in time to arrange for Streit to testify. less to say, Congressman Findley and Mr. Springsteen received advance invitations to testify. But no attempt was made to notify the lady in New Jersey who had so consistently and persistently expressed an interest in the Atlantic Union Resolution. It should be made clear that the Foreign Relations Committee was not legally obligated to notify her, nor any other specific individuals, regarding the scheduled Hearings although some of the Resolution's supporters were so notified. But the Committee did have an obligation to give general public notice of the Hearings. Usually, this is accomplished through the Daily Digest section of each days Congressional Record, wliich lists Committee Hearings scheduled for the following day in both Houses of Congress. The Congressional Record for well-informe- - |