Advertisement

# Why We Fight for Freedom

By GEORGE M. HARRISON

WE met on a historic day. One hundred and eighty-five years ago to the day of the AFL-CIO Conference on World Affairs, there was fought the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

By modern standards and measures, this battle was short and small. Not so many men were involved in the fight. The casualties were comparatively light.

But the idea behind the fight was very great. It was the idea and ideal of freedom. That is why historians speak of "the shot heard round the world" in telling the story of the

Battle of Lexington and Concord. It has been said—and rightly said—that, on the 19th of April 1775, there died an old order. On that day, many ordinary citizens showed how deeply they believed in freedom and how ready they were to answer the call to defend it.

We of American labor are ordinary citizens. We are devoted to freedom. Our country and the rest of mankind are now going through a very critical period. It is acutely critical because the threat of Communist despotism against freedom is terribly grave. The fight for human freedom continues. The forces of freedom must win, if the moral values and democratic ideals,

GEORGE M. HARRISON is president of the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks and a vice-president of the AFL-CIO.

which we cherish so highly, are to survive and thrive. The first requirement for such victory is clarification and understanding of the issues involved.

Unfortunately, there is too much apathy and complacency in our country at this critical time. Too few Americans are sufficiently aware of the seriousness of the Communist threat to human freedom, to our national security, and to world peace.

They are not alert to the fact that, if freedom is to be protected and promoted in 1960, the ordinary citizen will have to show today as much concern over freedom as our forefathers did when they fought the Revolutionary War for America's independence.

Our job at this conference is to help our country replace apathy with alertness and action, complacency with a sense of urgency, and confusion with clarification, understanding and a sense of purpose and direction.

In this spirit, the AFL-CIO has called this conference and arranged for outstanding leaders in the field to speak. The opinions expressed

by the speakers may or may not be in accord with those of the AFL-CIO. Their conclusions are yours to think about, to modify, accept or reject. They are opinions of outstanding Americans whose patriotism, sincerity and qualifications are unquestioned.

The imperative challenge in the world today is to find means for survival tomorrow. With the United States, Britain, France and Russia possessing nuclear weapons and the probability that Red China may soon attain similar powers of destruction, man has finally produced means for the total destruction of his species.

Our immediate challenge that transcends all other needs is to seek and secure understandings among the nuclear powers and develop the devices which will prevent the use of these weapons to destroy our civilization and to eliminate international subversive mechanisms effectively used to impose objectionable ideologies upon defenseless people. Our best minds must be put to work to find a way to live in peace and freedom; to control nuclear discoveries for peaceful uses; to reduce conventional armaments.

**What does the AFL-CIO believe should be the objectives of American foreign policy?**

The main objectives of sound American foreign policy are: (1) to foster good relations with other nations in order to preserve and promote enduring peace and freedom and (2) to encourage mutually advantageous trade and other relations with other nations—in order to advance their common economic stability and social well-being.

*(First Constitutional Convention of the AFL-CIO, December, 1955)*

## ‘...for an informed public opinion’

THE American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations believes that in a democracy, informed public opinion must participate and lead in the development of foreign policy. Our nation's foreign policy, if it is to have public understanding and support, cannot be created and fashioned behind closed doors.

We believe, quite frankly, that a large part of America's difficulties in world affairs stem from the fact that the American people have too often been kept in the dark about the developing stages of major foreign policy. This is particularly true of a large part of the American press which rarely prints serious news about foreign affairs.

As the world crisis deepens, it becomes more and more imperative that the American people be better informed and more informed on the issues of foreign policy, particularly as it con-

cerns our relations with the Soviet Union. The AFL-CIO and many of its constituent unions have devoted much time and money in an endeavor to keep their memberships abreast of foreign policy developments. That is why the AFL-CIO called its recent Conference on World Affairs. That is why we are publishing this special supplement which includes excerpts from addresses by speakers at the conference so that those who seek information can find it readily.

The AFL-CIO hopes that our contributions to the great debate will alert the American people to the urgency of the world crisis and the necessity of creating a positive program which will prevent further totalitarian encroachment and at the same time aid countries, now emerging from colonial bondage or struggling for existence, to achieve progress and prosperity and to become viable free societies.

To the success of this struggle, to the achievement of human rights, peace and freedom for all mankind, this special supplement is dedicated.

There is a great and growing desire of all peoples for peace. This desire is all the stronger because of the horrible potential for limitless destruction by nuclear weapons and other instruments of mass annihilation. We must, however, be on guard against wishful thinking and self-deception.

Today, there are no shortcuts to world peace, let alone to peace and freedom. We cannot think realistically of what "co-existence" means to Moscow without keeping uppermost in our minds the brutal Soviet suppression of Hungary.

The Khrushchev dictatorship has never hidden from us its unrelenting determination to dominate the world. We dare not hide this Soviet aim from ourselves.

American labor and the American people do not want peace with chains and slavery. We want peace and freedom, not the peace of the prison or the cemetery.

American labor has the most vital stake in the struggle between democracy and dictatorship. No free trade union movement can exist without democracy. Nor can democracy survive anywhere, for any length of time, without a strong free trade union movement. Dictators of every stripe have always understood this. Free labor has been the first target of every dictatorship.

Experience has taught us that the weakening or destruction of freedom anywhere only serves the undermining and overthrow of freedom everywhere. That is why we opposed Bolshevism, Fascism, Nazism, Falangism, and Peronism from the very outset.

Hunger and disease are enemies to be fought on a world scale. There is no room for colonialism in a free world. Modern technology makes possible the conquest of poverty and the attainment of prosperity everywhere. We not only believe in this, but we also believe in doing something about it.

No Peace Without Freedom

This advertising supplement was sponsored and prepared by the AFL-CIO as a service to its membership and the general public.

2