MAJOR ISSUES - I

November 19, 1956

# SUBPANEL I - U. S. INTERNATIONAL OBJECTIVES AND STRATEGIC CONCEPTS

## - Questions -

### I. Problems and Opportunities

A. What are the major problems the United States has to face in the international field during the next ten to fifteen years?

B. What are the major opportunities with which the United States may be confronted or can create relating to the international field during the next ten to fifteen years?

### II. National Purpose: Basis of U. S. International Objectives and Strategic Concepts *

A. How can we relate our national purpose and moral values to our international objectives and strategic concepts?

B. Can they be reconciled?

C. Are there any difficulties inherent in the nature of the democratic process that militate against the definition of long range objectives and consistent strategic concepts?

* Some of the questions listed under II, III and V will be dealt with primarily by other Subpanels (Question II C, II D and V by Subpanel VI; III C by Subpanel III; III D by Subpanel II). They are listed here to illustrate the interrelationship of the various Subpanels.

Major Issues - I
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D. What is the relationship between public opinion and the
national leadership in formulating national objectives?

1. Specifically, to what extent should the nation as a whole participate in this process and what scope does public opinion leave the national leadership?

### III. U. S. International Objectives

A. What are the basic factors that determine American interests abroad and what are the natures of these interests?

1. Do they derive largely from self-preservation?

2. From religious and moral beliefs and a sense of mission?

3. From a wish for isolation?

B. How can the U. S. implement internationally its concepts of freedom, opportunity, and respect for human dignity and racial equality?

C. Is an expanding free world economy essential to the preservation, strength and vitality of our own domestic economy and should it be one of our major international objectives?

D. What is the role of power in international relations?

1. What is required to maintain military superiority and what is the nature of military superiority in the nuclear age?

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E. How can the United States most effectively provide sustained, consistent, direct leadership politically, economically and morally throughout the free world?

IV. Strategic Concepts

A. Is there an irreconcilable antagonism between the U.S. and the Communist bloc or is it a policy of accommodation both possible and feasible in terms of basic U. S. interests?

1. What is the meaning and future possibility of recent developments within the Soviet orbit?

2. What is the relationship between Soviet internal developments and foreign policy?

3. What changes in policy may we expect once the Soviets have attained relative nuclear parity?

B. Considering military, political, and psychological factors, what should be the role and nature of alliances in which we engage?

1. To what extent can we establish common goals and objectives with our allies?

2. To what extent are the alliances valuable for other than military reasons and how can this value be enhanced?

3. To what extent will the rapid evolution of weapons systems make alliances, from a military point of view, progressively less important?

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C. To what extent can the United Nations deal with the contemporary revolution?

1. Can we foresee for the United Nations a role of growing strength and prestige in terms of international order, justice and freedom, and if so, what can be done to foster its growth?

D. Can the American values and institutions continue to flourish in a system of nation-states?

1. Is a different vehicle both more desirable and more suitable for the attainment of American objectives?

2. Specifically, should we seek to promote regional and international political and economic organizations?

3. Can regional organizations be made more effective and give greater strength to the United Nations?

E. Is it possible to adopt a single policy towards colonialism or is it necessary to adjust our policy to the various historical forms from which colonialism developed?

1. What are these forms and how should they affect U. S. attitudes and policies?

2. What are the implications for the metropolitan powers of the emergence into statehood of the remaining colonial peoples?

Major Issues - I
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3. What are the implications for the United States of the emergence into statehood of former colonial peoples?

a. In this connection what is a nation?

b. Must the boundaries of new states necessarily follow the lines of former colonial rule?

4. Can the United States play a really important and constructive role in relation to the preparation for and attainment of freedom and self-rule by colonial peoples?

5. Can the colonial peoples be prepared for freedom and self-government in such a way as not to weaken further the prestige and economic strength of the metropolitan powers?

6. Can the U. S. play a part in such a program without further compromising its position of moral authority or allied relationships?

7. Could it be done in such a way as to stop and even reverse the rapidly growing trend toward a split between the Afro-Asian and white races?

8. Are there other ways of reversing this trend?

Major Issues - I
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F. To what extent have social, cultural and psychological factors become increasingly important in international relations?

1. Do we understand sufficiently the socio-psychological forces that influence the international aspects of public opinion in the various areas around the world?

2. Can we more effectively identify the U. S. in a positive way with the hopes and aspirations of peoples throughout the world?

G. What problems and opportunities may confront us in:

Europe

Latin America

The Middle East

Africa

Asia

1. Can the U. S. develop objectives and strategic concepts relating to these areas that will further our own interests and at the same time reflect the hopes and aspirations of their peoples?

2. Can the U. S. policies in these various areas be so designed as to supplement and support each other?

Major Issues - I
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V. U. S. Government Organization

A. Is the Executive Branch of the Government organized
to permit the President effectively to carry out his responsibilities
in relation to the increasingly complex role of the U.S. in the world?

B. Does the relation between the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch permit the necessary freedom and continuity in developing long range objectives, strategic concepts and policies to permit the U. S. to carry the role in world affairs that lies ahead of it?

C. Can the U. S. effectively reconcile the conflicts that develop between its overall international interests and various segments of its domestic economy within the present government structure?

INTRODUCTORY REMARHS
(except+5)

My dear Nelson:

We have, for study and decision, an old but remarkable document. It can be stated concisely. In brief, what do we want to do for the benefit of the future of everyone ourselves and our children? It is as good a kit of tools as anyone is ever likely to have.

You ask what the situation is likely to be twenty years from now, and what the problems will then be, and what we ought to do about them now.

Most practical men speak sarcastically of crystal-glasses who tried to foresee the future, though every last one of them sees contradiction in betting huge amounts of his own or his corporation's money in future operations justified only by prophecy. There is a strong view that no problems should be anticipated, let alone met until they have reached the point of urgent crisis. In fact, the problem has yet been solved except with previously forged tools, wrought with some prescience of dangers to come, and the discovery of the nature of the combatting action now through the foresight of the first

Men with capacity who will not think forward are creating the selves and the next generation. The job of thinking forward is to have any understanding of what it involves is as agonizing as giving birth to a child or trying to arrange peace between factions lusting for each other's blood, or bringing an adolescent to maturity.

Whatever is done that will be significant for any great period of time will derive its significance from the fact that it liberates energies and minds and wills, and (one even dares to hope) informs the hearts of men and women who will have as scant respect for what we call the practical man of today now has for the "do-gooders" that young colleges and schools across the northern tier of the United States and places in civilization out of a wilderness.

Oddly enough in the American scene our problem is more difficult than those of the preceding generations. Then, a great deal of the United States lived in the grinding misery which prompted Karl Marx's savage attack on the entire capitalist system. Now the overwhelming majority of the United States is or will be, quite adequately fed, clothed and housed. On the economic front we have discovered that steady and predictable increase in productivity will pick up and take care of most of the bitterness and physical mixture with which our fathers had to cope.

We are, somewhat surprisingly, having present troubles, foreshadowing more to come, in the field of education.

What obviously is needed in the impetus of a few really first-rate educational philosophers to break through the complex of assorted habits, and the community will to make education what it ought to be rather than the somewhat dismal wall of organization it is now. But this cannot be hoped for until someone is prepared to commit to a

value system. Without such a system there is hardly any point in
trying to figure out the matter.

One of the mistakes of the contemporary scene is that it
supposes that the American way of life is the only possible way of
life for other people or even that the American way of life is the
only possible way of life for other people.

Our Communist enemies do have a value system -- a singularly bad one
it seems to me -- but they derive an inordinate amount of material strength
from it. Solid reason thus exists for risking a hypothesis. If anyone
produces a better one, both you and I will be quite well suited. The
point is that we have to begin somewhere, and it seems better to state
our point of beginning rather than rest on a tacit assumption of one.

One of the ways we can get a guide line of thinking forward is
by turning about face and looking back a little. Where were we all twenty
years ago? What has happened to us since? What, in the light of
hindsight, do we wish someone had done in 1936 or thereabouts which
we think would have filled some yawning gap in our present situation -
which perhaps might have prevented some of the driving tragedies which
darkened even the most brilliant days of the last decade? By looking
backward, we have at least some basis for present knowledge.

Turning around again, We can also look forward and make some
moderately reasonable estimates. There are unquestionably some
reasonably predictable trends. They can, of course, be altered by
spectacular catastrophe: atomic warfare or a new Black Death, but if
we assume these are going to happen, we probably would not be think-
ing forward at all in the sense in which we are doing it now. In any

case, even on the assumption that there will be a world catastrophe, we
can take some simple measures to assure that a surviving remnant will
not have to reinvent all the progress of civilization; we can assure at
least that a kit of tools and directions for their use, if only in the form
of a library, is accessible somewhere. But in general we have discarded
the catastrophic hypothesis; we have taken as our base the idea that the
world will jog on pretty much as it has jogged on through the rough
twentieth century. The essence of the problem is development from
where we are now, rather than reconstruction after a majestic holocaust.

When we look abroad, the problems multiply, yet their very
multiplication makes our problem simpler. There are plenty of places in
the world where we know something has to happen. We also know that a
good many of these places are intimately bound up with life in the United
States. We know that this vast structure we call "the United States"
depends to a degree few Americans realize on the existence of an inter-
national structure which permits it to exist. If the United States were
suddenly cut off from Latin America and Canada, the economic level of
the United States would drop fifteen to twenty per cent, in the existing
six months.

We know too, that many of these problems, especially those as
"foreign" problems by our contemporaries are just as much American
as they are foreign.

We shall see, I think, that this America, surprisingly, is not
wholly American; that this United States exists only as a part of some-

thing much bigger than the United States; that if those who come after
us have not found some manner of making our present foreign affairs
rational, we will either be fighting a desperate rear-guard action in literal
warfare, or engaged in a desperate attempt to make figs grow from thistles
in some totalitarian American system.

This prelude is quite consciously done in bravura style. When
you shove into the future you shove into the unknown. One is entitled
to a little bravura when setting out on that kind of conquest.

Faithfully,

Adolf A. Berle, Jr.

NH Comment on Chap. II

9/3/57

Page 9, end continuing para.

Put Dudley Kirk back in text and footnote.

Page 9, First full para.

Point does not get across.

Page 10, First full para.

Cut "especially Negroes". Feel whole subject not toned right.

Would consider moving most of urban redevelopment to Chap. III.

Page 14, last line

Sentence a little complicated.

Page 18, end first full para.

Word "lookstep" used here an in II, is to jargonny for lay reader.
(At least I stumbled)

Page 20

Beginning of section IV reads as though you were going to consider
the young and old in one section. Section V now shifts to Old.

In section on elderly people, add necessity of elderly people being
given the opportunity for constructive work (manpower problem,
psychological) which not just what they do with leisure and drain
on their relatives.

Page 21, First line first full para.

"coupling" old age with mental health not good. Possibility of
moving whole health section back to III.

Page 21, bottom of continuing para.

"coping" with parents not too friendly.

Paper No. A-2

# I. LOOKING BACKWARD

Attempt to look forward is a hazardous occupation at best and particularly where there is a general assignment. It is slightly less hazardous in a highly specialized field where trends and so forth can be considered. In either case, the best ballast is a glance backward.

By doing this we may gain some perspective for our own quest. The inscription over the National Archives building proclaims the past is prologue; it still is true that the future invariably proceeds out of the past, and (men being creatures of habit and limited thought) the influence of the past forceably projects itself forward.

If we look at the thinking of 1936, the outstanding fact is that the world in general, and the United States in particular, enormously underestimated its capacity to develop. We thought we were moving pretty fast. We had no idea of the speed at which we were actually moving. The population of the world in 1936 was estimated at 6000 million, and supposedly increasing rather gradually. By 1952 (Woytinsky's figures in "World Commerce and Governments, p. 565), it totaled just under 2 billion 800 million.

Underestimates of productivity were equally great. Surveying the country in the midst of the depression, President Roosevelt said the United States was entitled to have a national income of 80 billion dollars (allowing for inflation, this would roughly be 160 billions today). This was an achievement we had not reached. The national income for 1956 will probably cross 400 billions--

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comparable to the 160 billion figure which Roosevelt's estimate, adjusted, would attain.

The assumption then was that the population of the United States toward about 1975 would level out at perhaps 180 millions; but in 1956 we shall have attained 167 millions, and the present estimates indicate an increase to 187 million at least in the next decade; and we shall be going strong. The fear of war even in 1936 was abroad in most of the world; in 1939 it broke out; but nature's answer to death was more life.

We had then no real sense of the steady increase in productivity per man in the Western world. The assumption was rather that production increases with population; perhaps kept a little ahead of it, but not much. The current assumption is that the productivity per man in developed countries will increase 2.9% per year--compounded--so that every decade finds each man producing nearly one-third more than he did ten years ago. Calculations today are made more or less on that basis, but, perhaps with undue optimism, I regard them as unduly conservative. Fundamentally we are still working on the kit of tools developed when we were forced to draft war and war preparations which now have been translated into civilian use. We have barely begun to reap the harvest of the newer developments in chemistry and electronics, and are only beginning to envisage those of atomic power. Potentially the rate of increase of productivity per man may be a great deal greater than it has been in the past. The real question may well be whether men wish to go on producing commercial value goods and services, or whether they voluntarily spend more time in other pursuits.

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Certainly no one foresaw that war production in the United States would roughly double the national product and produce both butter and guns.

You can easily obtain from the economists in Standard Oil of New Jersey their forecasts as to the production of petroleum and the demand for petroleum products. They have forecast an increase. I have not seen them, but sight unseen will affirm that they vastly underestimate both the production and the demand.

Perhaps the most remarkable instance of underestimate was that of the steel industry as we emerged from World War II. You will recall that the government had built steel plants for war purposes; the problem was whether these should be dismantled, sold or otherwise put out of action. A variety of government agencies got into the discussion and eventually a number of estimates as to the need for steel in the United States were produced. One would have thought that the most sophisticated estimate would have been that of the steel industry; they, remembering the years of idle capacity in the decade 1930-1940, estimated the needs of the country at slightly higher than the highest pre-war year, 1939. On this basis, they concluded that a capacity of 90 million tons would be ample. Higher estimates were turned in by various economists; the Twentieth Century Fund estimated that we should need about 100 million tons of capacity in the ensuing few years; the estimate which came nearest was that of Louis Bean, formerly of the Department of Agriculture; he thought that by 1950 we should need 115 million tons capacity.

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Actually the steel industry has under construction now plants which will
bring American Steel capacity up to approximately 134 million tons by the end
of 1957, and no one in the steel industry thinks that this will be too much.

These are merely random illustrations but they, and almost any others
you care to attack, drive to a single conclusion. Whatever estimate we make
of 1976 will be far outstripped by the fact--bar, of course, some cosmic
catastrophe or--more important--some major change in the direction of world
thinking. But we have agreed not to work on the hypothesis of a cosmic catas-
trophe; and we have even less right to expect a change in the direction of world
thinking. Surveying the world scene, there are no minds powerful enough to
change men's ideas of the "good life" in the immediate future. The minds are
all working along the somewhat easier and more limited line of scientific
development.

# #

In terms of social philosophy, our estimates really were not much
better though I think they had more validity because we were thinking about
people; and after all, people are the most stable factor in any situation.

In my own youth the slogan of the British Labor movement was "Eight
hours to work, Eight hours to play, Eight hours to sleep, Eight shillings a
day," a heaven which they hoped to attain in a generation or so. American
labor hopes were less concrete and more pragmatic and varied widely from
industry to industry. But in general the eight hour day with Sunday off was

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something to be struggled for; unemployment was, like disease, a misfortune that simply had to be accepted from time to time; the wage sought was thought of as something to assure a frugal living--and there it stopped. Mr. Henry Ford in 1917 was regarded as a wild idealist because he considered--and put into effect in his plants--a program of $5.00 per day per man--it would be perhaps $15.00 a day in current money. This was in the relatively skilled and highly profitable automobile industry. In modern currency and modern working time this would work out $75.00 a week without vacation pay, fringe benefits and retirement funds, and so forth. The social thinking of twenty years ago was aimed towards giving the two-thirds of the population which did not have it, modest jobs with reasonable pay and predictable employment. Today, of course, the thinking is towards making labor a partner in prosperity. National income has increased from 1929 to 1949 by 48% (it is rising somewhat more rapidly now; there is annually somewhat 2% more in the pot to divide each year); the result of social thinking and its results in terms of minimum wage, labor organization and so on, has been to see that the increase is divided instead of accruing merely to one class of the population.

If we look forward from these figures (again I am taking Woytinsky's "Employment and Wages in the United States, p. 39), we should have a right to assume *per capita* income will increase each year by 2% or better-although the increase may be curtailed by lower working hours. This last merely means that instead of taking it in cash, individuals take it in free time for

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amusement. Twenty years from now the *per capita* income will be roughly
half again what it is now--that is, a man making $5,000 per year now will
make $7,500 per year (at present value of the dollar) unless (it is a real
unless) he decides not to work so hard.

But we had few such estimates twenty years ago. The thinking then
was along the line of getting to a respectable level and staying there.

We underestimated both the size of probably income and the ability
of the social system to manhandle thinking to the point where it would be
distributed.

In retrospect there is a reason for this. During most of recorded
history there has never been quite enough to go around. In that situation
the first instinct of everyone is to struggle to assure to himself a solid pos-
ition. But there is no criterion as to who is entitled to a solid position,
leaving the rest to sink or swim if they can. For that matter, there is no
such criterion now. In feudal times, it was assumed that the titled gentry
were entitled to be supported. In statist countries (say the empire of Louis
Quartorze, or the Soviet Union of today) the favorites of bureaucracy are
always selected. In the nineteenth century, strength, resource, daring and
cunning in the business world settled the question.

But in our own time we have come to a point where there is enough
to go around and to support our own population in comfort--including therein
and without particular hardship to the huge majority, a stratum of wealth.

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Division of wealth would make virtually no impression on the present
economic situation of most people in the United States. I do not recall that
this situation has ever occurred in history.

This fact accounts for some of our worries. Enlightened men
thirty years ago went to work to try to provide for the bare necessities of
sectors of misery, bringing production into existence for that purpose. We
do not have to do that save in relatively small sectors which need to be
mopped up. Instead, our concern (aside from the mopping up process) is
first to assure that the distribution of the steadily rising national income
shall continue through the couple of decades we are here examining--and
second, that the spiritual, esthetic and intellectual tools shall be at hand
so that the growing comfort shall be more meaningful than that of well-
fed cattle in a vast pasture.

In fact one can forecast that in 1976 the problem of "Socialism"
and its companion concept "the class war" will have ceased to have any
current interest. If the economic organization really runs, and the div-
ision of its product is even reasonably fair, no one will particularly care
who "owns" an instrumentality or any part of it. They will care mightly
whether the organization runs well: that will be an essential fighting
issue. They will be actively sensitive in case any part of it is used for
oppression or constraint. They will probably be as touchy about individual
justice in the economic system as we have been sensitive to personal

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injustice or oppression committed by the political system. But the property end of the matter will, be of minor concern. Men who like to accumulate will accumulate. Men who don't will enjoy life as they go along. They will even be reasonably certain that their children, without benefit of family accumulation, can be assured of at least reasonably secure jobs at reasonably satisfactory pay. Accumulating a modest -- or perhaps even an appreciable fortune -- to our grandchildren may well be merely a matter of taste. Some like the sport of doing it, and enjoy the tasks of trying to extract enjoyment from it or use it well. But it may well be that there will be no pressing necessity on every head of a family to leave a greater or less pot of savings to his children.

This crosses a trail which you and I have discussed in another connection. We considered capital--about which surprisingly little is known considering we claim to be a "capitalist" system. I came to the conclusion then that capital as we understand it did not arise from private savings, but from undistributed accumulation by business. From 1919 to 1947, as you recall, 34% of the national capital formation were such undistributed profits, chiefly those of large corporations; and another 40% was bank credit to those same business concerns largely on the basis of their accumulation. The individual did and still does save money but he was not as important as he had been (or at least was thought to have been in the nineteenth century). On present figures, we could probably get along without him altogether--that

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is, if no individual saved anything we should still be continuing our capital
formation.

After we got to that subject, I went on studying about it, and consid-
ering economics, history, current politics and so forth, arriving at some
conclusions which at least surprise me. Briefly they were that most capital
is not "saved". It is "conscripted." Some institution, with power to do so,
takes away from a population part of its product. If the institution is well
run, this excess is promptly devoted to capital purposes--building more plants,
developing new territories, and so forth. The Soviet Union and Communist
countries do this by broad imposition now. The American corporation does it
by maintaining a price structure which permits a steady withholding of part of
the current profits for future expansion. Since the scratch figures which I
made for you, we have Woytinsky's "Employment and Wages in the United States"
(p. 43). He made up the figures from 1929 through 1950; they are distorted
because they include the losses between 1929 and 1939. For those twenty years,
undistributed corporate profits, after deducting slightly over 20 billions of losses
in the depression decade, amounted to almost 70 billions. The year series ends
in 1950; the amount had, increased since. Again we are in danger of underestim-
ating. As of now undistributed corporate profits--withheld for capital purposes--
amount to between 6% and 7% of the entire national income. If we leave out a
bad decade and merely take the decade 1940-1950 so that we take a current pro-
perty saving without filling up past holes, the corporate savings amounted to

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about 88 billions. Let us not talk of an "average" of 8 billions a year.

Actually corporate savings are running now much closer to 16 or 17 billions--
I should guess more.

This is not, of course, all of the national capital formation. It is
merely the chunk that winds up year by year in the hands of American enter-
prise--chiefly the 300 or 400 largest.

But this, of course, is looking backward. Looking forward, we have
to assume some bad times as well as good; but there is no reason for assum-
ing that in a twenty year period the rate of corporate accumulation of capital
will diminish. More likely it will increase beyond anything you or I would
care to set down as a sound figure. Let us try an insane one: in 1976 we can
smile at rises. It is quite likely, by then, that the accumulation of the American
organisms would be running at the rate of 50 billions per year, and that this will
be perhaps 8% of a national income of 600 billions annually--taking our money
at present value.

Whatever the problem will be in 1976, it will not be (in the United States)
a lack of capital. The bottle neck is more likely to be either lack of ideas, or
lack of will and vision to do the things which should be done.

That is, if the target area is limited to the United States. Most of the
rest of the world has a huge distance to go. The danger to the American system
is much more likely to lie in the fact that other areas are unable to find their
ability to produce and to conscript the capital they need. On our lonely plateau,

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we become increasingly isolated.

# #

So, in the shadow of the past couple of decades, at least three areas of concern seem to be more or less heavily shaded in the unchartered ground ahead.

The American population will be reasonably well taken care of. Capital, or the ability to get it, will not be wanting.

But the problems (a) of finding and training the administrators of the instrumentality; (b) of assuring that they are administrators, not masters; (c) of inducing development of substantial parts of the rest of the world lest our own structure become unreal--these have emerged already from the surface of American prosperity, and seem likely to continue unreduced.

# #

In point of fact, the problem of finding and training economic administrators and assuring that they are administrators and not masters, is at bottom the chief conflict in the current world. Viewed objectively, the present state of the controversy is cause for gargantuan laughter. Economic administration went hand in hand with property ownership in the nineteenth century. This led Karl Marx to advocate discarding ownership (he meant, replacing it by State ownership) and to proclaim the doctrine of the "class war" ending in dictatorship of the proletariat. The specific objective, of course, was to replace owners of enterprise by State administrators as in fact the Soviet

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revolution did that after 1917.

The theory was that "owners" were, by hypothesis, grasping, greedy, cruel, incapable of evolution save into figure still more grasping, greedy and cruel. Now, forty years later, the principal subject for discussion in the principal Communist State, the Soviet Union, is the fact that administration of economic enterprise wound up in the hands of a murdering madman named Stalin. But in the leading capitalist State (the United States) the principal subject of discussion is the fact that the administration of enterprise--chiefly corporate--is not in the hands of its owners; indeed when someone claiming part ownership like, say, a Silverstein or a Wolfson, turns up and demands power of administration, well thought of persons ask unpleasant questions. Are they "responsible?" Do they have the public interest at heart? Will they loyally fulfill the duties of an enterprise manager, and so forth? The Communist politicians have come to behave very much like Marxian "owners." But the American managers of "monopoly capitalism" are gradually beginning to behave very much like socialist "politicians."

This is a subject we shall need to consider.

No less humorous--though more dangerous from the American diplomatic standpoint--is the controversy over productivity of foreign areas, though there it may be that the laugh is on the Russian side. We, with a record of developing economic resources beyond equal, are challenged in

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most of the world by the Communist Soviet Government which says it is able
to organize and develop the productivity of underdeveloped countries--and
know how to do it--whereas the United States and its technicians cannot and
do not. Well, even as late as twenty years ago it was a standard hypothesis
that wars were made to obtain and organize new sources of supply and
dominate new markets. The Communist claim was that, not being capital-
istic, they, of course, would never do this--yet here they are, with their
bankers, engineers, technical crew and offers of capital peddling their wares
all the way from China to Chile. The United States, on the other hand, with
the biggest block of capital in the world's history is having a frightful time
to try to persuade its capital and its administrators to tackle any foreign
situation whatever--with some notable exceptions, of which the oil industry
is outstanding.

The roles seem reversed. One would like to call up the ghost of
Karl Marx as Saul called up the ghost of Samuel in the cave of Endor, and ask
what he thought about it. For Marx, who was, I think, with the late Professor
Schumpeter, an honest man revolted by the horrors of mid-nineteenth century
capitalism, proposed a system which after forty years' experiment seems to
be doing precisely the things he wanted to end. Contrariwise, advanced
capitalist countries have come fairly close to ending the abuses and realizing
many of the dreams he had--as a result of which, The Marxian Communist
world pledges eternal enmity. One remembers Bernard Shaw's savage comment

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that no revolution ever did more than to shift the fetter from one ankle to
the other.

Next, realistic modern technique for dealing with the world economic
situation has yet to be evolved. We can call this by any name which seems
agreeable at the moment. To a businessman, we can say that there must
be expanding markets and expanding source of supply. To our many foreign
friends we can say that it is an American responsibility to assist in their
development. To the idealist in politics we can say that foreign aid is a
moral duty.

But to ourselves we can say something quite different. We know
that national boundaries and national development is the result of history,
often accidental; and that the resulting nationalist structure has nothing what-
ever to do with economic development. Discussing it with others, always
begin with some example in Europe--the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, for
example, tossed up by the revolution of 1831 and bounded by slices of feudal
histories. Anyone will admit that this has nothing to do with the fabric of
European and international economics on which it lives. Then it is almost
safe to talk truthfully about the United States.

Fortune gave us a big and balanced piece of national real estate, which
looks tolerably logical. (Men forget that we have the Louisiana Territory, a
central third of the United States, because of a hasty, almost accidental
decision of Napoleon, and Alaska largely because of a minor but complicated

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Civil War and post-Civil War diplomacy of no possible relevance now.)

Being bigger, it is not quite as obvious that the United States is no more
an economic unit than is Luxembourg, though that happens to be the fact.
Succinctly, twentieth century economics has burst the breeches of every
sovereign State with the possible exceptions, of a few still in the primitive
or near-primitive stage.

So you and I think of developing an economic system that works,
knowing quite well that much of it goes on outside the United States, and
that its geography has nothing whatever in common with the tiny real-
estate borders envisaged by the feudal system or the nineteenth century.
So, our problem is a double one. We have, first, to find (or else create)
institutions which rightly embody it and permit it to work. Second, we
have to recognize that it has to be in something like balance.

If, for instance, Colorado or Idaho were sovereign States, the
Federal budget would be full of items of "foreign aid" which today are
naturally taken into the national budget as regular expense. Sophisticated
New Yorkers know quite well that New York must pay through the Federal
budget some of the expense of Colorado development, -for instance,
reclamation service, care of State forests and so forth. Boston or New
Jersey companies like Anaconda Copper do not consider that they are indul-
ging in "give away" when they invest money in Montana. We do have a
national economic complex that works. Now we have to have an international
economic complex that works.

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Making the complex work is neither "aid" nor "give-away." It is part of our investment, or part of our overhead, or both, if it works, we get it back in one form or another though the return may not have the same kind of destination-tag provided when Anaconda lays down some millions for building aluminum plants outside of Helena, and brings the bacon back to its corporate treasury.

This is a problem that is up now. There is no likelihood that it will diminish in the immediate future as to certain discernible parts of the world. Even its solution in terms of application of capital and organization of productivity will still leave the institutional problem: what kind of an international animal have we got? At present, it has not even a name. How can we keep it useful? Empires have been destroyed though they performed this function, largely because statesmen mixed national politics with economic organization. The solution reached thus far--detaching endless new nationalisms and breaking up the complex--seems not to be working. This will give us a pretty problem of social invention--of which more later in these pages.

# #

Let us look back on something else. A grey, overcast look, I am afraid. Look at the ideals and values which consciously or unconsciously directed the choice and steered the American ship to its present latitude and longitude. A brief look, I am afraid because something clearly is fading. It is not all gone, by any means. But a good deal of it has become greasy

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and blurred and appears to be losing its guiding power.

America is a child of the Reformation. Up to twenty years ago that force was still dominant. Man's chief end was to glorify God. Men were responsible for performing His will as best they could interpret it. All men were equal in the sight of God, and therefore entitled to equal opportunity on this earth. Kindliness was a duty and a privilege. To perform the duties imposed upon human beings men must develop their minds and hearts; hence, education was essential. Obviously plenty of people did not live up to any of this, and many disbelieved outright. But this was the dominant philosophy and it set up standards and criteria by which economics, politics, the law and behavior were constantly judged, and judged again. I am not so sure that this is general now, though for a number of reasons which belong in a conversation rather than an essay. The more important point is that not much has arisen to replace it.

There are few moral leaders steadily and justly judging according to the criteria of their faith. The greatness of true educators has been drowned or over-shadowed by the applause of educational organizers; a quite different breed. The civilization rolls right along, as powerful men make great choices and less powerful men make smaller choices and the aggregate of them settles what we do. But these choices are not at present generally informed by reference to a standard of values. For one thing, fear has arisen of any value systems. They may get mixed up with our government, or our economic

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machinery so that value systems will be imposed by force or pressure.

America still retains recollection of the fact that she came into being and much of her population got here, precisely for the purpose of erecting a civilization where value systems were *not* imposed by force or pressure.

Nevertheless they did exist in America and they were imposed.

Jefferson, primary proponent of a free system in which the politician did not try to play the part of priest and the priest was not allowed to become the policeman, spent much of his time in considering just those matters.

The beautiful reprint of his "Synoptic Gospel", put out by the Government of the United States, would be evidence, enough if his letters and biography did not supply much more.

Does the disintegration or blurring of our value systems have to
continue? We have a right to be concerned about this, because, if there
ensues a twenty years of greater deterioration, we can dimly foresee a
most surprising state of affairs. Resources and the ability to use them are,
as we have noted, increasing beyond the estimates of the most optimistic.
In 1976 we could have a surprising collection of the most powerful economic
locomotives headed hell or heaven-bent for the twenty-first century-with no
tracks. We can have a population aggregating 200 million, each one of whom
has had more choice available to him than ever offered anyone--and no
particular reason for choosing one thing instead of another; - no active ideal
of the "good life" to steer him towards an automobile, a warehouse or a pig
sty. (I think none of these things will happen, but) some matrix of redefini-

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tion and reemphasis seems to be needed. Ex-President Truman makes a religion of the Democratic Party, Secretary of Defense Wilson makes a religion out of General Motors, Federal Reserve Governor Allan Sproul makes a religion out of sound currency. Communists make a religion out of materialist economics. And so forth. Clearly there is a big waste space in this territory we are spying out ahead, and nothing that we can see suggests that there is a St. Augustine or a St. Francis of Assisi, a Martin Luther or a John Fox, a Charles W. Eliot, or an Abraham Flexner waiting ahead to flash us some signal lights.

The pathetic thing about it, standing where we are now, is the poignant desire of the world in general and America in particular for just such lights. Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, both of whom are having the customary rough ride in history, did talk the language of philosophy and morals in the most general terms; and all America and the whole world listened--at least for a time. Odd, sincere, though shallow books that attempt a statement are avidly read by the American public. Not only is there a void, but great masses of our people sense that there is such a void, and want it filled.

In consequence, one of the matters we shall have to consider is whether there is any way of seeking, finding and assisting those men or crowds of men from whom, occasionally, a great teacher or conceivably even saint may come.

# #

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Our last look backward may be in the field of esthetics. A twenty year span is a curious one and the backward view difficult. Not, on the whole, inspiring. Let us begin from where we happen to be--say, Broadway and 42nd Street in New York or Main Street and Washington Place in any other town in the United States; or in a settled region from any main travelled road from anywhere to anywhere else--say Georgia enroute to Florida.

The present view is not inspiring. There is some excellent architecture, generally obscured by a huddle of hotels, restaurants, shops, some little and some big. The dominant strong notes are advertising signs--pillars of paint by day and pillars of multicolored neon lights by night. They can be picturesque from an airplane at 7,000 feet. But nobody living and moving in the area would call the result beautiful. There is a positive cacophony of color, light, shadow, barking sounds and mixed up bleats. The pathetic dominant desire is for some sort of attention: commercial, personal or the like.

Now, if we remember back to 1936, we recall an almost exactly similar situation, but less intense. There were twenty million fewer people in the country: groupings were less frequent. The ribbons of cacophony have extended immensely, north to south, east to west, of the towns along the main roads. Main Street and Washington Place was considerably less built up and the esthetic din less intense. Essentially, however, the

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esthetic work-a-day life of individuals is the same now as it was twenty
years ago, save that it is more crowded and the din a little more intense.

You and I know of the struggles to make headway against this. We
think of Wallace Harrison's brilliant United Nations building flung against
the sky--majestic even to those who do not like it. We have appreciated
the enormous care used by some great companies--for example, Johnson
& Johnson in building its buildings outside New Brunswick, New Jersey.
You yourself spent an inordinate amount of time making the plaza of
Rockefeller Centre something of gaiety and flowers in a Le Courbusier
forest of great buildings. There are brains enough and resources enough
in the American economic complex to make our esthetic corned-beef hash
into something civilized--The question is whether we have will enough to
do it.

This literal sidewalk view reflects something deeper. The life
of an artist, architecht, musician is almost literally the life of a vaga-
bond, unless he happens to have a powerful patron who will stay by him.
(Well, perhaps he always was. We have Haydn's music chiefly because
Prince Esterhazy, in the old Austrian Empire, gave him a lifetime job
to entertain his friends with music.) Our twentieth century has developed
few princes of any kind and still fewer who will take the long risks involv-
ed in backing musicians and artists. Their instinct is for organization.
I really think that if a modern millionaire had a yearning to develop good

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poetry he would round up a vice president of General Motors and tell him to organize a poetry department. The recognition and rewards would go to the organizer rather than the poet. This is not a just picture, of course. One thinks at once of the endless work done by William M. Burden, and of yourself, and Mrs. Whitney and Roland Redmond and many friends backing year in and year out the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of the Metropolitan, of Amory Houghton in devoting endless amounts of time and money to rehabilitating the Parsons School of Design, and of numerous other unsung heroes in stimulating painting and other forms of art. I think at once of the Museum in Des Moines, Iowa; there are many like it. But these are islands. Their influence has not yet extended or been extended, to the grubby business of making real estate developments that look better than clumps of cigar boxes, or making Main Street look more like an avenue of dignity than a Coney Island Midway.

Well, we were in the same place in 1936. Then, of course, President Roosevelt was making a desperate attempt to use artists for the public welfare by every device he could think of. But he did not hit the combination. Maybe artistic thinking had not developed to the point where it was willing to connect with everyday life. Unquestionably there has been a solid resurgence in the whole field of esthetics--painting, music, design and, to some extent, literature. To make this a positive force in civilization appears to be the nature of the forward problem.

# #

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Let us extract from the landscape and horizon behind us the salient points. (Horizons exist behind us as well as before, though rhetoricians rarely mention that fact.) At least three big gashes appear in the harmony. We can see that they were there twenty years ago; we see them right and left of us now; they apparently continue into our next two decades. In the main, the backward scene, even considering the ruin and defacement of World War II, offers on the whole an exhilarating though rugged picture, through which these gashes tear their way. On the exhilarating side, there is the steady advance in technical development and productivity. There is, partly as a result, the increasing capacity to accumulate capital, using the production of today to take care of the needs of tomorrow. There is the accompanying conviction that all problems arising out of economics are capable of solution (which is not, of course, to say have been solved. There is the capacity to accumulate, and to disseminate a higher content of information than has ever been known. But the three ugly blur marks remain.

First. How is all this to be organized so that the material mechanism is the servant of life and not its master?

Second. The materialist economic machine is at least international and more probably supra-national. Yet we are talking about it and dealing with it in terms of nation-States, national markets, national currencies, and so forth. This is as childish as though we tried to manage the United States on the basis of incomplete and shifting bargains between the sovereign State of

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Massachusetts and a temporary treaty organization composed of Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois, while Ohio cautiously estimated her position, sometimes playing with the Illinois bloc, and periodically organizing a counter-block by treaty arrangement with Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Finding a viable international (or using the horrid word, supra-national) institution for modern economic life, and that by a means other than war, has yet to be done.

Third. Some agreement on some sort of value system is necessary to solve either the first or the second problem. We have a vast intellectual history left us by philosophers and saints, both Western and oriental. But we have no effective acceptance of enough of it to give direction to efforts ahead. Without some such guide our technical organization can be self-destructive; our supra-national institutions either will never come into existence, or may take the form of a madman's dictates issued from some launching center for hydrogen headed ballastic missiles.