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I would like to add this one point, we have the technical means of communication behind the iron curtain. The content of the message is equally important. I'm afraid we have not always told these people that we are with them in the defense of their freedoms, and we will eventually use every possible legitimate means to bring their freedom about.

MR. MERRIAM: I'd like to call on Mr. Howell, now a Philadelphia businessman, to ask an additional question of the panel.

MR. HOWELL: I would like to direct my question to Dr. Judd. Doctor, just what do you think our policy toward the emerging nations of Africa should be?

DR. JUDD: I think our policy towards the emerging nations of Africa should be the same as all emerging nations. That is these people, particularly in Africa, are having their first chance at self-supporting independence, national pride. I think there are better hopes in Africa in some respects than there are in Latin America. It is their first chance. People have stars in their eyes in Africa. In Latin America you run into, shall I call it, disillusionment,

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cynicism. They had this program, and it didn't succeed. And that program, they are trying to say "Oh yeah", and that is a great deal harder to deal with than lack of experience, but it is powered by enthusiasm.

Now all of these countries suffer from certain legacies of colonialism. They have inadequate or primitive agriculture, primitive or nonexistent industry, primitive education, primitive health measures, primitive communications, primitive transportation, and worst of all, shortage of trained personnel. This is not their fault. The colonial powers managed all the essential services, and you can't take people and develop in them three or four years of training in one year out in Africa any more than you can in Philadelphia. This is a test of their patience and our patience while they acquire the skills, the experience, the maturity to manage their affairs. On the whole, I believe they have done extraordinarily well, better than most people thought they would do.

There is another aspect. Many of those countries, there is a handicap under which they suffer. There is a hangover of the distrust of the former

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colonial powers which were mostly western European, and to which they are very closely related. People are always against the imperialism they have been under.

Your children at high school age are not against some other imperialism. They are against yours. That's the only one they have been under. After they have been to college a year and they come back, they discover the dean is even worse, and they decide to rejoin their family because they are not so bad.

And so you see, in these African countries these students go to Europe. They wanted to go to the Soviet Union. There was Jim Crowism, racial discrimination, inequality of race in the United States. They knew about that. Over on the other side it was supposed to be Utopia. Yet they got there, and they find that there is total segregation, not just partial, and it is official policy, not unofficial as it is in this country. And you find right in Bulgaria and even in the Soviet Union they are demanding either change in the policies or that they be permitted to come out and come to the United States because there is some hope here.

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We are working at the problem. Not as well or as fast as we like, but we are making headway. Now these are the places that are tests of our maturity. I think if we will work with them, not work for them, not handouts -- that doesn't help any better there than when they try it here -- work with them as they solve their problems.

MR. MERRIAM: Thank you, Dr. Judd. There are a number of questions here pertaining to the broader question of foreign aid of which you just recently sponsored a very interesting and, I think, thought provoking study. But in line of the belief that we should get these things head on, I will take one question, Mr. President, which is addressed to you by Allen Beane. It is just what would happen if America stopped all foreign aid?

GEN. EISENHOWER: It would be chaos. After all, you can't put three and a half or four billion dollars out a year throughout the world, and particularly in such places as Korea, Formosa, South Viet Nam and Iran, Turkey -- if you stopped it off the bat, they would surrender. They would have to quit. This just can't be done.

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I think this, I think the so-called enemies
of foreign aid do have a point. We have never been
able to establish an efficient system because of this.
The Congress, through its subjective committees, will
take foreign aid, and they go through and study it, and
after long and laborious work they say you ought to
have so much. Now there is some question as to the
skill with which they handle the program. Then we go
before the appropriations committee, who frequently
have less than adequate information. And just to save
money in the one place we shouldn't be saving it so
much, why they cut it down. So this means you have
now to change your whole organization worldwide because
you expected, you had last year, let's say, four billion
and a quarter, and next year you are going to have two
point nine or so. How can you get good people to go
out and administer this thing?

Why I should think you couldn't get better
people than who just were out of a job and wanted to go
out for an adventure. This has got to be a clear --
this is a firm, basic, fundamental policy of the United
States, and it's got to be done better. The objective
and the purpose, and in many ways the accomplishments

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have been all right. They are not what they should be,
but at least there is vast areas of the world today
that are not communist and who would otherwise have
been so. This is a great bust.

But what we need is a firm, long range
program carefully thought out, and with congressional
approval put it on a permanent basis. And with civil
servants and people that can be experienced and carry
it out to the greatest benefit of the American taxpayer
and certainly to the great benefit of our national
objectives in the world.

CONG. FRELINGHUYSEN: As the one cynic
member of Congress present, maybe I should attempt to
defend the institution of Congress in this discussion
about foreign aid. I have no intention to argue with
the president on this point. I might say that in my
opinion the record proves, and the House voted last
week to support an authorization for foreign aid of
about three and a half billion, I would think that
Congress is somewhat skeptical of the program. They
would like to see some improvements in it, but they
recognize the points that you made.

There is a basic necessity which prevents us

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from killing it altogether. I think it is unrealistic,
and I think it would be very dangerous if we should
pursue a course which might lead to the end of the
foreign aid program.

The problem is, of course, that the legislative branch do not think that the executive branch has always done a very good job with the money we have made available. And the reorganizations of the executive branch have gone through have not been the result of legislative pressure. I might say also that there has been too little ability on the part of Congress to watchdog it in a very meaningful way. There has been practically no earmarking of funds. So there has been a flexibility within the administration which lends itself to almost anything including some highly newsworthy abuses, even though they don't represent the basic cause of our aims.

I do think that perhaps we are reaching a point where we can recognize the necessity, where we can eliminate some of the agitation. And I would hope that we eventually are reaching a point where it will settle down. How is that going to be done?

I would say we need still more wisdom than we

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are getting from the executive branch to achieve the
result. A case in point; the present Secretary of
Defense, Secretary McNamara, is obviously worried about
Viet Nam. He has been out there five times in two
years. And as recently as last March he came and
said we are only going to ask Congress for a billion
dollars in military aid this year even though the
country's basic security was adversely affected last
year because we only had a billion dollars to spend.
Well, we were somewhat startled by this request of a
billion dollars, because we had given him too little
last year. So we looked into his statement, and the
reason he asked for no more, and he put it in so many
words, is that Congress had already made it crystal
clear we would support no larger amount.

Well, of course the foreign aid committee was
the first port of call, the first request anybody from
the administration had made, so how could we have made
it crystal clear we would not give him what he felt was
necessary is hard to figure out. Anyway, as a result
of his fifth trip, he did persuade the president to
come out with the request for one hundred twenty-five
million more just for Viet Nam. And as a result of

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some discussion in committee and debate on the floor, we did earmark for Viet Nam a total of about four hundred million dollars both for economic and military aid for that one little country. We felt this was an appropriate way to designate our interest in what the administration is presumably trying to do, and perhaps money would be of some assistance in doing it.

Part of our problem is the fact we are still not defined with such clarity what the recipient countries should do in order to qualify, how many of them should get it, and whether we can eliminate some more. We are gradually moving towards what I hope will be a program more people will support without arguing that we should kill it altogether.

GEN EISENHOWER: I think one of our great difficulties here is one Congressman, who shall be name-less here, but who is less than astute in this whole problem.

MR. GATES: I think that both the Congress and the executive branch have not been as wise as they could have been in defining foreign aid. Foreign aid is a bad name to begin with. It is a catchall package. You really ought to get the American people to under stand what it is all about.

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In the first place, there is a lot of foreign aid that goes to pay for military base rights, which is pure base rights for military purposes that we want and have decided in our national security we must have. There is military aid that goes to emerging nations which we all agree we should in proper fashion give to them. One can't be a rich neighbor in a poor country.

There is foreign aid that goes to, I guess you would call it somewhat poetically, people that may be wavering between our two worlds. We might say we have gambled this amount of foreign aid in the hope we will be of some influence upon them. This foreign aid, which is military assistance, which nobody much objects to because the equipment as represented by military assistance is all made and manufactured in the United States, and this does not affect our balance of payments or anything else. But the foreign aid is to me always a misnomer.

I am not claiming it has been perfectly administered, and I agree with everything that has been said here by my friend, Peter Frelinghuysen. But to me it's never been clear that their categories of foreign aid, which are explainable and ought to be

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discussed, categorized category by category or broken down.

MR. MERRIAM: Thank you, Secretary Gates. As a matter of fact, this point was extremely well brought out by Dr. Judd's reports. The largest number of questions we have received from the audience by far pertain to the situation in Southeast Asia to which we have just alluded and we will turn to that as our final question. However, before we do that, Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, we have asked Mrs. Raymond Fels, who is a State Membership Chairman of the Pennsylvania Committee of Republican Women to take just one minute to give a report on the Party to People Forums they have had throughout the State of Pennsylvania.

MRS. FELS: Thank you, Mr. Merriam, General Eisenhower, distinguished panellists and guests. I have been asked to summarize what the Republican Women in Pennsylvania did with General Eisenhower's suggestion, United Statesmanship on the Party to People program. First of all, we had asked our State Chairman for a good idea to generate interest at our regional meetings that were held in seven different

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areas throughout the State last month. The suggestion was the Party to People program, which we did incorporate. The next step was to procure speakers. We got nine speakers. Our next step was the actual presentation in which we treated all six subjects that the national hearings have used in these past months. We touched on them lightly because, of course, in one hour's time you can't go too deeply. However, the purpose of this was to promote thinking on the part of women, to stimulate and also pull out some opinions that they could use on these issue questionnaires that Mr. Merriam referred to and attached these to their program so these would be sent back to Washington where the headquarters of the Party to People program is of the National Committee.

The excellence of the program was due in large part to the speakers we had because of how fine they are worked. We had twelve hundred women in this Party to People program. They represented three hundred seventy-eight councils which has a state membership of sixty-four thousand women in Pennsylvania. But this was accomplished because of the realistic approach of the Pennsylvania Council under the leader-

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ship of the thoughtful and responsible leadership and
progressive leadership of Mrs. Deitch, its president.

In closing, I want to say we witnessed the
finest kind of cooperation and coordination between the
men and women at both the National and State level.
And it was a privilege, General Eisenhower, to have the
use of a very fine idea, and we thank you.

MR. MERRIAM: Our final question will be
posed by a gentleman, a neighbor of yours from across
the river, the Honorable Bernard Shambley.

MR. SHAMBLEY: So there won't be any
confusion, I have been campaigning in my state. I
think I know what the people think. My question is,
I find as I go around the state great confusion among
them, and a great many of our people are frightened.
They are concerned, and I will tell you they are
concerned, because of the contradictory and confused
statements that have been coming out of Washington in
the last few months about Southeast Asia. I have a
quote here from a former member, Assistant Secretary of
State Roger Hillsman, who was in this administration
and has just retired, and he said "A crisis exists
among the nations of Southeast Asia caused by doubts

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about America's intentions in that area". My question, therefore, I don't think we can stop the contradictory statements, Mr. President, but perhaps we can learn what we ought to do in Southeast Asia from you.

GEN. EISENHOWER: Ladies and gentlemen, I will start this off, that I have no feeling whatsoever this is going to end it, because this is a complicated question. I will start off with the generalization which I think we have proved correct, and that is this; when you get into any nation where you have turmoil and forces to be used by any outsider, from any outside source, then you must make certain of the unity of view between the people that want to be helped and the people that are trying to help. There must be, in other words, a moral that is based on a clear understanding in the nation that is asking the help so that help can really be given.

Now this would seem to be just commonplace. But the fact is that when people are so bewildered that they have no understanding of the situation, that whole divisions, upon the appearance of a few communists, will say come in and take our arms, we don't want to have anything to do with this, we are neutral, we don't know

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what it's all about. Now since 1951, there has been
a great uproar on the part of many American people to
get first the French government and later the Viet
Namese governments to insist that this war was in fact
a war against freedom and communism.

In the early stages, it started right after
1945, if you will recall, the world thought of it as
a new effort of France to restore the integrity of her
old empire, and they wanted to continue colonialism.
It was never gotten down to the Viet Namese and to the
citizens of that country that the real purpose of the
war was to make or give them the opportunity to
determine their own fate. They didn't know anything
about it. They were just pawns. That is the way
the people of these villages today have surrendered.
They are pawns. Why should we be killed for something
we don't know anything about.

So the first thing that is needed in all of
these areas is an intense, an intelligently conceived
informational, or if you like, propaganda campaign to
be handled by the friendly government that is asking
for it that is in there. The only thing is are we
going to get the kind of situation, the kind of setting

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where American help can be really useful?

Now I think possibly we must make, as long as we are into this thing, and I do believe it is of very vital importance to keep Southeast Asia from falling into communist hands, particularly the area we are talking about, I do think we must have a military plan that will at least give us an enclave, or one little area that is clean, and from that we can start this indoctrination that is so important.

If an army is operating in a friendly nation, you've got spies and helpers all around them. As soon as you go into hostile country, the opposite is true. Until we get morale in the Viet Namese that will say, or it will be said by the vast majority we want freedom, we want independence, and we do not want communism, that is the first thing. And until this is done, this war is never going to be ended. However, I do not believe we should quit.

For the United States today, after the last seven years of fighting on a larger scale, to turn around and walk away from that place would not only be a tremendous loss of prestige, it would be a loss of Southeast Asia. And since we know that Indonesia is

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already trying to undermine the Malaysia Federation, we would have a situation that now would make the condition of Burma untenable; this whole subcontinent would be in the greatest danger. So I just want to emphasize with all the power at my command, we must inform these people. They must be indoctrinated. They must understand what is happening, and they must understand how much it is to their advantage to get on our side. And we cannot use high faluting terms. Even freedom and liberty mean nothing to them. They don't know what you are talking about. They do know this, in order to be free people, people of dignity, they have got to have something to eat. You start with the very least of human necessities and satisfy them, and at the same time begin to tell them what the struggle is all about. And if we can do this, then it will not be long before the military will be much more successful than they are now. Because then you have a fine army that will not surrender every time a threat is made. They will be those who will want and choose victory.

One other thought, and then the others around here can take me to pieces; having a place like this,

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look at every friendly nation you've got; take Thailand
I would strengthen Thailand with every possible thing
I can help them with. I would take any of these
countries that are still viable and help them so they
can get their shoulders on this area of Laos and
South Viet Nam, which are so torn up, to get them
stronger so from there they could have a really good
active basis. Because the Thais are just as fearful
of these things happening as are we and the other
patriotic Viet Namese. So I say until morale has been
solved, the solution will have been started, I think.

MR. MERRIAM: Mrs. Luce suggested earlier
that in the crisis, the desire of the administration
may be to postpone a major decision in this area until
after the election.

CONG. FRELINGHUYSEN: Again, Mr. Chairman,
I hesitate to speak, because I may be the only member
of the panel who has actually been out to Viet Nam and
to Laos. But I think we ought to talk about both of
those countries if we are going to talk about either one.

I think part of our problem, the United
States' problem -- I'm not talking about just the
Democrats' problem -- but the national problem that

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Southeast Asia presents is the fact that we have
developed a very peculiar setup in Laos which has
apparently fallen to pieces. I am talking about the
neutralists, neutralization of Laos. There surely is
a country which does not want to get involved in any
kind of fight, no matter what kind of propaganda you
direct at it. They would rather not get involved and
have their friends and neighbors and themselves killed.
And yet we are involved in a power struggle with the
communists, the North Viet Namese.

GEN. EISENHOWER: Let me ask you one
question. You say the don't want to fight to save
themselves. How then do the Pathet Lao, the ones that
are communists, how do they get such a great incentive
to destroy the rest of them?

CONG. FRELINGHUYSEN: Again in Laos we have
precluded any active effort such as this kind. That
is what I am saying is the problem. We have closed
the doors to an all out kind of effort which we are
still able to make in South Viet Nam because of our
withdrawal from that country.

Going back in, in a way, there is no question
about that in Laos, but in my mind we are committed

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very deeply. But we are involved in something which
is only partly military, which is only partly a question
of how much money you will spend, or where our prestige
is very much at stake. I am deeply concerned about it.
Because I don't think this lends itself very easily to
a campaign issue. Yet inevitably, as Mr. Shambley
pointed out, people are asking about what is developing
in Southeast Asia, and this is going to be brought out
pro and con during the next few months. In the
process there may well be no development prior to the
elections for fear of repercussion among the electorate,
or there will be something like a grandstand play a
few weeks before the election which is designed
primarily to appease the people who may vote.

MR. MERRIAM: Dr. Judd, I think you have
been out there also recently. I wonder if you would
care to comment.

DR. JUDD: I have been there at least every
two years in the last decade. The first thing to say
is the problem is not some inherent cowardice on the
part of the Viet Namese. Who is killing the American
boys out there today? It's the Viet Namese. If the
communists are able to develop morale and we aren't

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able to, it is our fault, not the Viet Namese.

The second thing to say is we were in this thing over a year ago. In May of 1963, more than ten thousand Viet Cong defected, surrendered. They were out of rice. They were out of sweet potatoes. They said they had no hope. And at that particular moment, for reasons not fully explained, the United States government turned on the leadership of Viet Nam with the idea that they could get something better.

You can't, in a situation like that, you are so lucky to have a regime like that of Dhiem. They set out to discredit him. The line was given that he was persecuting Buddhists. Well, the UN has cleared him of that. He closed down about twenty pagodas out of four thousand seven hundred sixty-six in Viet Nam because they were carrying out open agitation for the overthrow of the government.

Show me a country at war that will openly hide behind the church and use it as a privileged sanctuary to try to overthrow the government. The line went on in this country. I can't understand it. The only thing I blame the United States government for is it didn't tell the truth. It could have stopped

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this thing by telling the truth.

What General Eisenhower says is absolutely true. You are not going to win that thing until you convince them that they can count on the United States to be a dependable ally.

We get back to where we were earlier. We are always demanding complete perfectionism and reform from all the rest of these countries. One of them said to me, "after one hundred seventy-five years I understand you don't have full and complete civil rights in the United States," and here we are demanding that they carry on this complete protection of people in the midst of a war.

What did we do in 1941? We, in the United States, after Pearl Harbor grabbed several tens, if not hundreds of thousands of American born citizens, tore up the Constitution, tore up the Bill of Rights, threw these people into concentration camps without one single act of hostility towards this government. Their ancestors were Japanese. That is what we did when we were scared. But we say to these countries you can't police agitation for the overthrow of the government.

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I am sorry for the Viet Namese, and I'm sorry for the American kids out there who have given their lives to try to rectify and save something out of this awful mistake. I am ashamed of the behavior of this administration in this debacle. The reason for that is Dhiem and the others had the audacity to stand up to some of our people and say that your attempt to get a neutral independent Laos and put your trust in the communists to stop themselves, not in the free people to stop them, will lead to disaster. And because he dared to defy us, and he was right and we were wrong, he had to go.

We've got a cause that is so much better than anything the communists have to offer, that it is the genuine against the fake. And the thing to do is to release the kind of enthusiasm that will rally in no time around forthright constructive contagious leadership in what we believe.

I don't agree with General Eisenhower that they don't understand freedom. I saw some eight hundred thousand North Viet Namese come down and Dhiem relocated some eight hundred thousand North Viet Namese who couldn't take communist enslavement. They under-

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stood human freedom. And he resettled them in a year
and a half with hardly an incident.

How well would we do if we were to bring in
more than ten million refugees from abroad in one year
and a half? This is how well the fellow did. And
these people did it because they wanted to be free, and
they wanted to have dignity, and they've got to have
hope too. But the reason people fight is for a cause.
Half of George Washington's men deserted out at Valley
Forge. But half of them didn't, and they are the ones
that saved the day. And there are those who are on
the side of freedom in Viet Nam today. It will
mobilize them and give them hope just as they had out
here at Valley Forge.

MR. MERRIAM: Dr. Strausz-Hupe?

DR. STRAUSZ-HUPE: I think the war in Viet
Nam and the events in Laos are easily forgotten in that
the Soviet Union happens to be a party to the settlement
in Laos. This happens to be an extremely important
point according to the present administration. As a
matter of fact, President Kennedy, on April twenty-
fourth, 1963, said "That the maintenance of the Geneva
accords from Laos are very essential to the security of

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Laos itself and also is a test of whether it is possible
for an accord to be reached between countries which
have serious differences. If we fail in Laos, then I
would think the prospects for accords are matters which
may be geographically closer to us to be substantially
lessened."

In brief, this administration itself made
the sincerity of the Soviets in Laos the very test for
all the agreements to come including the test ban,
including the present consular agreements and other
agreements yet to come.

Now I would feel very strongly that they
should not let the Soviets off the hook. The Soviets
bear primary responsibility in Laos. As a matter of
fact, the Pathet Lao are fighting the neutralists and
the loyalists in Laos with Soviet arms, not with
Chinese arms, with Soviet arms. And it is quite
likely that these arms are being supplied this very
day with Soviet ammunition. Do not let us fight the
war in Southeast Asia in a diplomatic vacuum. Always
let us keep our eyes firmly on the ultimate source of
the complication. And this happens to be in Southeast
Asia, the Soviet Union, at least as much as Red China.

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MR. MERRIAM: Gentlemen, we've had a very interesting discussion here. But we've gone over our time. And your patience and the audience is much appreciated. I thought it would be appropriate if we would conclude with whatever remarks you would like to make.

GEN. EISENHOWER: Ladies and gentlemen, I think it would be a very grave mistake if any of us came to the conclusion that in any of the specific problems that have been mentioned here today there are simple and apt solutions that can be applied in a minute, and, therefore, everything becomes lovely. Now we must remember that there is a great deal of ignorance in this country about the countries we are dealing with. Think how much more ignorance there is in those nations about us.

I would like to tell you one thing I found out in war. As American divisions began coming to Europe, I made it a practice, wherever possible, to wander around among the men. And I found this as almost a normal thing, one or two boys each evening, or during these walks with them, sometimes would say "General, what are we out here for? What did Hitler

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ever do to us? Why am I here and grabbed out and
somebody else I know is getting nine dollars a day
working while I'm getting two to get shot at?" All
that kind of thing.

Now this conviction of Mr. Judd's that all
of the Asiatics know it would bring freedom and some-
thing else, they do know the difference between slavery
and non-slavery. But the difference between the
communism and fatalism ideology -- well, I happen to
know these parties as well as he. I lived out there
five years. And I found that in the Philippines they
were like this. The first thing we ought to do is
inform ourselves about ourselves. Next we want to
inform ourselves about other nations. We hopefully
try to inform them about us and about each other. And
through this better understanding we will find better
solutions together.

I agree with Mr. Judd that what we have to
do, the problem we have, how we have to attack it.
But it is not going to be easy. It's not going to be
quickly done. We have to gird up ourselves with
patience, determination and readiness to sacrifice as
we try to bring about conditions in these various areas,

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and in every one of them the problem is different, that
we have to be as citizens ready to support actions that
are intelligently taken. Of course, we have to pray
that the proposals placed before us for our support
are intelligent and appropriate. And if they are not,
so far as I can see, we must do our best to get someone
else who will do that.

But we are in a field where all of us can do
something, even if it is only informing ourselves, and
it is very difficult to get the information at times.
And then if we can help to inform others and finally
reach a better state, level of understanding, I repeat,
that while peace will not come about just because of
understanding, I know this, without mutual understanding
there will be no peace.

I think we ought to remember the basic,
almost routine, trite truths as we contemplate the
discussion you have heard here today. Thank you very
much indeed.

MR. MERRIAM: Thank you very much, General
Eisenhower. Have you enjoyed this afternoon, ladies
and gentlemen?

(Applause.)

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MR. MERRIAM: My thanks to the General and distinguished members of the panel and to Mr. Sharples and the very able and effective local committee. And thanks to all of you for being here with us today.