necessary. You would probably have Germany suing for peace without military invasion. I may be quite wrong. I do not know. Mr. JONKMAN. The question I am driving at is whether or not that would be a matter of retaliation against Germany, German cities and civilians. Mr. BULLITT. I believe the bombing that has been done by Great Britain in Germany has been, insofar as it has been possible to do so, directed against military objectives. I do not believe for one moment when people are bombing at night they will hit only military objectives. Mr. JONKMAN. In that case, if your only interest was planes, and necessary munitions of course for planes, would that only be a question of production on our part? Mr. BULLITT. It is a question of production, and there is also the question of getting it to the British. I suppose there are several more questions that come in there. There is the question of cargo boats. There are vast numbers of cargo boats being sunk by the submarines. We have to provide an enormous number of merchant ships in order to carry the supplies. Mr. JONKMAN. But it is your belief that they should be delivered to England? Mr. BULLITT. Emphatically. Mr. JONKMAN. So the question of distribution would not be a material question, would it? Mr. BULLITT. I don't understand what you mean by distribution. Mr. JONKMAN. Various parts of Europe or the world. In other words, that is where the blow must be struck. Mr. BULLITT. It is perfectly obvious that the most vital spot is Great Britain. The most vital interest for us is the continued existence of the British Navy holding the Atlantic, but there is a further element of importance in the whole situation which is the resistance that the Chinese have been putting up against the Japanese which has, to a very considerable extent, bogged down the Japanese in China. It reduces, certainly, any inclination they may have had to go fight us. Mr. JONKMAN. That is not an important part of the crisis or emergency, is it? The crisis is right on the English Channel? Mr. BULLITT. If you are talking about the crisis certain people believe is going to take place this spring, obviously China doesn't affect that, but it is extremely important China further maintain resistance against Japan. That is extremely important. Mr. JONKMAN. That may be true, that if a decisive blow can be struck at Germany that may settle the question, or do you mean our aims are far beyond those of Churchill? Mr. BULLITT. I agree with your previous statement. Mr. JONKMAN. Then it comes back to the matter of production? Mr. JONKMAN. Has not the President those powers right now? Mr. JONKMAN. That does not answer my question. The CHAIRMAN. Let the witness answer. Answer it, Mr. Bullitt, in your own way. Mr. JONKMAN. Has not the President all those powers right now? Mr. BULLITT. No. If I am required to answer in one word I will say "No." The CHAIRMAN. Take all the words you want. answer. Continue your Mr. BULLITT. I do not believe any man can say at this moment what measures may be necessary to bring about production or instrumentation of this defense to the highest peak. I do not know what measures may be necessary to submit to the Congress. I do not know what measures may be necessary to pass. This particular bill, I believe, will facilitate this production for the simple reason all production will be in reality for the Government of the United States and it will be for the Government of the United States to decide whether we can best use in our own defense the instruments produced by keeping them in our own country or having them used immediately by some other country. Mr. JONKMAN. If we are to get these planes to England, that is the thing to do and that requires production and that is all it does require. Is that not true? Mr. BULLITT. How are you going to get them there if there is no way for the British to pay? And I will say, if the bill is passed, there will be means in the hands of the President to get them there, but as you well know, the resources in dollars, I believe it has been stated. very exactly by the Secretary of the Treasury, the British resources in dollars and assets transformable into dollars have already been pledged to the fullest extent, for orders already placed, which will have to be paid for in the future. Therefore, no new orders, or only new orders of the smallest possible variety, can be placed unless this bill is passed. The CHAIRMAN. The Chair wishes to state that he can allow no further questioning of Mr. Bullitt. Other witnesses are here that are supposed to appear, and this has dragged on longer than we had expected, and I trust it will be satisfactory if we excuse Mr. Bullitt and call Major General O'Ryan, and I call to the stand General O'Ryan. Mr. Green and Miss Dorothy Thompson will have until 5 o'clock, and the Chair will divide the time equally, and if there are questions that are pertinent to the matter and can be answered that way we will be able to have everyone ask some questions, but these people must leave this afternoon. They were promised early attention when they got here and they must leave to go to New York. Thank you very much, Ambassador Bullitt. We appreciate the opportunity of hearing from you. [Applause.] I I wager that is more applause than you have received on any of your birthdays. Mr. BULLITT. I desire, Mr. Chairman, to thank you and all the gentlemen of the committee for the very courteous hearing that you have given me and I would like to just say this that I do feel that this is terribly, terribly urgent. The skipper has set the course. You gentlemen are the officers. Those of us who are not in office are the crew. Our cargo is America. [Applause.] The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very, very much. STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. JOHN F. O'RYAN, NEW YORK CITY The CHAIRMAN. General O'Ryan, thank you very much for coming here. Have you any prepared statement you wish to read? General O'RYAN. A short statement. The CHAIRMAN. You may read it either standing or sitting as you choose. The committee will be very glad to hear you. Proceed, General. General O'RYAN. Gentlemen, I believe The CHAIRMAN. General, for the purpose of the record, would you kindly give your full name and title and when you read would you kindly keep your voice up because that is not a loud speaker before you. General O'RYAN. My name is Maj. Gen. John F. O'Ryan. 120 Broadway, New York City, lawyer. I believe that our vital interest in the outcome in the present war has been obscured by some queer thinking and as well by propaganda. As an example, for 20 years our people have been deceived by propaganda against war as an institution with the result that they view war as they do sin, that is to say, they are against it. Many Americans regard war as something that we may elect to stay out of or on the other hand engage in like a gambling game which some may view as a pleasant pastime while others reject participation on the ground that it would be iniquitous. People seem to believe that it takes two to make a war while others, seemingly more astute, correct this, and say no, it requires two or more, but the fact is that it requires only one to make war, namely, the aggressor. The potential victim has no recourse but to succumb on demand or to take it lying down. Then, too, I believe that the general public, in estimating the war situation, places infinitely more value upon what we may call gadgets than do military men. When it is rumored, for example, that Hitler possesses some devastating secret weapon, the tendency of the public is to concentrate their interest and speculation upon such topics and thus become distracted from what is more essential. Wars are not won by gadgets. They are won by men. Even those who decry war as if it were a sin in itself rather than a means for good as well as evil, permit themselves to become unduly impressed by the aura of respectability with which the aggressors usually veil themselves. Many persons who are shocked by the commission of a single homicide when committed by a felon in time of peace loudly acclaim the prompt use of force for the purpose of hunting down and causing the execution of such aggressor upon conviction of guilt, react with strange inconsistency when the homicide is committed on a wholesale scale by an aggressor who claims to act in the interest of a muchheralded cause or reform. Almost automatically such people then lose understanding of the enormity of such criminal acts. In fact, they no longer regard them as criminal. They regard them as war and therefore something with which they should not concern themselves, at least in any effective way. In their discussions they even debate with criticism and with interest the methods and the skill employed by the aggressors in effecting their killings and assassinations. Their senses seem to become dizzied; their moral responsibility less acute and less logical; and if to wholesale homicide is added unlawful trespass upon the property of neighbors and a policy of highway robbery in the form of seizure of property by force, of the destruction of homes, churches, hospitals, or kidnaping, the subject passes to the realm of statistics. If this picture is correct, I believe it may be traced to the circumstance that the word "war" when applied to aggression succeeds in covering up a multitude of sins. It is accepted with a presumption of legality and becomes vested with an ominous sort of respectability. Then, too, the term "government," even when reference is made to an aggressor government, carries with it the implication of lawfully constituted authority. People are impressed by the pronunciamentos of self-righteousness issued by "the government" of an aggressor nation. They are impressed by the titles which these ministers give to each other; by their generals and admirals, and their uniforms and decorations. And when the aims and results of ruthless aggressions are under discussion, the consciences of people become dulled by the substitution of technological military terms for the language of the criminal law. Wanton aggression becomes "defense of the fatherland." Conspiracies against the lives and property of neighboring peoples become "important conferences," while individual assassinations are referred to as "liquidations.' When Hitler threatened the invasion of Poland, Britain and France by their declarations of war in effect assumed the volunteer role of civilization's policemen. I believe that this manner of viewing what has taken place in Europe as the outcome of this so-called war will serve to clarify a visualization of its import, and I would emphasize this. The French policeman, as we know, was shot down, but not killed. Gangster fashion, Hitler holds the French policeman as a hostage. The British cop fights on. The United States, like a spectator, has thus far refused to join the hard-pressed officer of the law in a fight which, if lost, will constitute a disaster of appalling consequences to us. What are we waiting for? Hitler's tour de force can only be stopped by force, either from within or from without, but, in any event, by force alone. A compromise with such a man would amount to the compounding of a felony and would serve only to rekindle at a later date the flames of world disaster. The implications of a world order of this character are more than disconcerting for us to contemplate. To understand the gravity of what the world is facing-and this includes the American peoplewe have only to review the felonious activities of the long list of fuehrers who in the past have led their hosts against the uncoordinated defenses of their selected victims, conquering and plundering them piecemeal, while en route to some mythical place in the sun, calling upon their dupes for their support in the establishment of some "new order." The fact that before the place in the sun was reached these fuehrers of history usually succeeded in destroying themselves and pauperizing their own peoples, offered no consolation to those who survived the tragedies and ruin that littered their routes. Looking ahead, it is conceivable that in our own interest we should enter the war now in order to prevent a stalemate, and it seems to me that such action now in support of Great Britain would have the following effects: 1. It would carry, perhaps to a state of exhaltation, the confidence and morale of the British people. It must be remembered in this connection that the casualties among the British population have been greater than the casualties borne by nearly four millions of British troops in Great Britain. Seasoned troops can undergo unbelievable hardships and suffer great losses when they know that their mothers, sisters, wives, and children are safe in the homeland. This satisfactory state of mind cannot at present exist for the British Army in Britain. 288128-41-41 2. Our entry into the war would progressively impair the morale of the German population. Hitler, you will remember, assured them of complete freedom from enemy bombing, and they are being bombed, inadvertently perhaps, but nevertheless bombed. In the last war the German population was assured, and for a time believed, that America could raise no efficient army; that in any event its retention in the United States would be required by reason of the large so-called German population, and, further, that the U-boats would prevent the arrival of an American army in Europe. The Germans know that no American army is now required in Europe, but they dread the employment of American bombing and pursuit units over Germany and, as well, the employment of our lighter cruisers and destroyers to keep open the sea routes to British ports. The effect upon the German people of our entry into this war would make for progressive demoralization. They also now know that Americans of German blood are not Germans but forthright Ameri I would estimate that 30 to 40 percent of the men in the Twenty-seventh Division were of German blood on one side or the other, and as officers or trigger pullers they left nothing to be desired in combat with the Germans. 3. Everywhere in the conquered countries there would spring up a renewal of confidence on the part of the conquered and plundered peoples of Europe. Everywhere sabotage would light up and daring extremists would be impelled to violent action. 4. In my opinion our participation would mean that Italy would be definitely out of the war. In Italy, the war is Mussolini's war, not the war of the Italian people, and this largely accounts for Italian defeats in North Africa and in Albania. 5. I believe our entry into the war would assure the neutrality of Spain. It would have its effects in the Balkans, in Russia, in Greece, in Turkey, and in the European colonies in Asia and Africa. In connection with these favorable repercussions which would result from forthright aid to Britain, there is one circumstance that largely has been overlooked, and which has few precedents. Itis this: If we should adopt the decision to go to the aid of the battling British policeman and support him with bombing operations against Germany and with air attacks upon the German air force, and help keep open the supply routes to Great Britain, there is nothing in the way of counter offensive against the United States that Hitler can wage while the British Grand Fleet remains under British control. Gentlemen, in war morale is three-fourths of victory, and lack of morale is three-fourths of defeat. This is particularly true when great populations engage in war, because their huge armies are a cross-section of the people and cannot long retain their morale once the morale of their people is lost. Orthodox military thinking may hold that a people cannot be conquered from the air. How do they know? It has never been tried. How long can any people preserve morale once they believe that there is no light ahead to justify the sacrifice-nothing but increased losses and sacrifices? It would seem that we have been living in a fog which has blinded us to the effectiveness of those virtues of boldness and of resolute action displayed by Americans in the past. The so-called isolationists have forgotten that neither oceans nor great deserts nor distant |