The Waterbury Democrat., 1946-09-20
|Merry-GO-ROund

WASHINGTON, Sept. l8-Many of the state war and navy advisers close to President Truman were amazed at the approval he gave to Henry Wal laces controversial New York speech without con- sulting them.
 The secret of this Presidential OK was largely personal and highly confidential letter which Wal lace wrote Truman The two men had several talks together, but the Wallace letter probably counted more than the talks. After studying Wallaces argu ments Truman began to wonder whether Wallace might not be right and he finally concluded that it would be worth while to have Wallace's ideas set before the public the public could judge for itself
 This column has now obtained copy of the confidential Wallace letter, and because of its inn portance, hereby publishes it in large part
 TOP SECRET
 "The President
 '"The White House
 My Dear Mr. President:
 q hope you will excuse this long letter Personally hate to write long letters, and hate to receive them.
 My only excuse is that this subject is 8 very important one-probaby the most important in the world today. I checked with you about this last Thursday and you suggested after the Cabinet meet ing on Friday that you would like to have my views
 T have been increasingly disturbed about the trend of international affairs since the end of the war, and am even more troubled by the apparently growing feeling among the American people that another war is coming and the only way that we head 1t off is to ourselves to the teeth Yet all of past history indicates that armaments does not lead to peace but to The months just dllcdu AAidy well Uc pSI1Ou WHICH WIFI Oe- eide whether the civilized world will go down in destruction after the five ten years needed for several nations to arm themselves with atomic bombs Therefore want to give you my views on how the present trend toward conflict might be averted.
 "As Secretary of Commerce I talk to a good many businessmen, and I find them very much con- cerned over the size of the federal budget and the burden of the national debt
 "Of course, dollars and cents are not the most important reason why we all want peaceful world The fundamental reason is that do not wish to go through another war-and especially atomic war which will undoubtedly be directed primarily against civilian populations and may well mean the end of modern civilization.
 "Yet are we really concentrating all efforts on program to build lasting peace? There can be no doubt that the American people want and ex- pect that their leaders will work for enduring peace But the people must necessarily leave to their leaders the specific ways and to this objective think that at the moment the people feel that the outlook for the elimination for war is dark that other nations wilfully obstructing American eff forts to achieve permanent peace.
 How do American actions since V-J Day appear to other nations? mean by actions the concrete things like 13 billion for the War and Navy deparS ments the Bikni tests of the atomic bomb and con- tinued production of bombs, the plan to arm Latin America with our weapons production of B-29s and planned production of B36s and the effort to secure other half of the globe can be bombed cannot but feel that these actions must make it look to the rest of the world as if We were only paying lip service to peace at the conference table These facts rather make 1t appear either CD that we are preparing ourselves to win the war which we regard as in-