The seventh session of the General Assembly is meeting in an international situation which confronts the United Nations with particularly important and responsible tasks. These are questions which touch upon the vital interests of nations, the vital interests of people all over the world. The Czechoslovak delegation is fully conscious of the significance of these problems and of its responsibility and, in the spirit of the peaceful principles of its Government’s policy will ever keep it in mind in the course of its work here.
2. The General Assembly .is meeting at a time of international tension. This tension is a result of the policy of the ruling circles of me United States of America, Which, after the end of the Second World War, have chosen, instead of peaceful co-operation among nations, the path of preparations for a new world war.
3. The aggressive policy of the United States has its roots and fundamental causes, in an endeavour to forestall a general crisis and the general degeneration Of world capitalism, of which the ruling circles of the United States are today the foremost representatives, It is the American monopolies which dominate and direct the policy of the United States and also, through ruthless pressure, the policy of other capitalist countries, in particular those countries which have been driven into the aggressive North Atlantic Treaty, In the endeavour to save and increase the profits of the capitalist monopolies, the ruling circles of the United States are waging war against the people of Korea and preparing another world war. It is the ruling circles of the United States which, for capitalist profits and to the detriment of the living standards of the working people, are feverishly arming, and which, through their war preparations against the countries of the camp of peace, constitute a threat to world security.
4, The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the People’s Republic of China and the other countries which have a people’s democracy, through their peaceful economic development and their consistently peaceful policy, are strengthening world peace and reinforcing international security. The ruling circles of the United States of America and also, under their dictate, the ruling circles bf other capitalist countries, are threatening world peace by their preparations for a war of aggression and are undermining international security. It is, however, in vain that American imperialism is trying to hamper and obstruct the great peaceful economic construction which is being effected in the interests and for the benefit of their peoples in the countries of the camp of peace.
5, The militarization of the economies of the United States and the other capitalist countries today determines their entire economic, social and cultural life,. There has been a further tremendous intensification of the armaments of the United States. The economic, report of President Truman to Congress for the first half of 1952 states that the deliveries of military objects and military constructions in the first half of 1952 have reached a value of $15 thousand million — that is, $9 thousand million more than in the same period of 1951 and $12 thousand million more than m the second half of 1950. The report also notes that armaments expenses, together with the expenditures arising of past wars, come to 85 per Cent of all budget appropriations for the current budget year. An additional $6,700 million is allocated to so-called foreign assistance; that is, to the armaments expenditures of the participants in the aggressive North Atlantic bloc.
6, The Government of the United States is utilizing all possible means of pressure on its allies so that they continually intensify their armaments programme without regard for any economic and social consequences that this may cause. On 13 February 1952, in Congress, President Truman declared that the “total value of Western European production of military hard-goods during 1952 will be approximately four times the 1949 value.
7. The militarization of the economies of the capitalist countries, and in particular of the United States, has a pernicious influence on one of the most important problems of the present international situation — the economic development of the under-developed countries. The overwhelming majority of the economically under-developed territories are countries with great riches in material resources. Yet hundreds of millions of their population lack the most elementary needs and live on the verge of starvation. The ruling circles of the United States, in the guise of the most varied plans and programmes, pretend to be giving assistance to the under-developed territories. These programmes and plans cannot bring any solution to the problems of economic development and, in particular, to those involved in the industrialization of the under-developed territories, because they are not prompted by a real desire to assist these countries. They are dictated by strategic considerations and the profit-seeking interests of the American and other monopolies. The programmes, and plans of so-called assistance of the capitalist countries to the economically under-developed countries are nothing but a means to increase the profits of the capitalist monopolies and to help the extension of their influence.
8. The United States war economy, of course, not only prevents the realization of plans and programmes for the development of the economically under-developed countries, but the war economy dictated by the United States also brings to the so-called economically advanced countries a disruption of their economies, inflation, unemployment, the increasing of the fiscal burden and the pauperization of the broadest masses of the population. American imperialism, which exploits and enslaves the peoples of the under-developed territories and in the same way the peoples of the so-called allies of the United States, disorganizes the economies of the other capitalist countries. It disrupts normal economic contacts and traditional economic relations among nations. The first and second world wars arose out of the conflicts between coalitions of the capitalist countries. Twice, in the recent past, the imperialist monopolies have attempted to seek a way out of their crises and their decadence in the adventure of war. Today, the danger of a new world, conflict has its roots in the same causes.
9. The ruling circles of the United States are not interested in the relaxation and elimination of international tension. By their aggressive acts they are, on the contrary, constantly aggravating the international situation. The internal and foreign policy of the United States stands for war preparations and threatens the world with a new world war. The people of the world, however, desire peace. But even this mere wish arouses the displeasure and the anger of the war-mongers. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, General Bradley, made the following complaint in April of this year in Macon, Georgia: “Many of our people muse about the good old days, days of peace, prosperity and personal indulgence. They speak longingly of the days of low taxes and complain bitterly about today's tax load. This reactionary attitude is no progress. It is retrograde. We live in a world of tension, tension of the present, tension in the forecast."
10. Hundreds of millions of simple people all over the world are fighting for peace ever more actively. The fomenters of a new war are well aware of this and that is why they attempt to cloak their war plans and aggressive actions with phrases about defence and peace. In the New York Journal American, Bruce Barton expressed this when he said: “One of the finest words in the English language is being so twisted that good people are becoming almost afraid to speak it. The word is 'peace’. Officially, of course, everybody is for peace. The President is for peace. The Secretary of State is for peace. The Pentagon is for peace. From time to time they go through the motions of saying so. But what really monopolizes all their thinking and planning and spending is war. Instead of figuring out how we can live successfully with Russia, our officials do nothing but bluster and threaten.”
11. The war-mongers are attempting to divert the attention of the peoples from the true cause of the threat to peace, That is why they are using the “big lie" about the so-called menace on the part of the Soviet Union. In the footsteps of the Hitlerite aggressors and their sadly renowned propaganda, they also speak about the danger of communism. The peoples, however, are ever more conscious that their independence, security and peace are being threatened exclusively by the ruthless expansionism of American imperialism and its endeavour for world domination. They do not believe in any menace from the Soviet Union. They know full well that the policy of the USSR Government is, and has been, from the very beginning of the Soviet State, a policy of peace and peaceful co-operation among peoples. They know that this policy fully corresponds to their aspiration for peace and freedom.
12. The representative of Australia, in his address this morning [384th meeting], spoke as an enthusiastic defender of the old and new colonial policy. In his opinion, a number of former colonial countries acquired their freedom thanks to the goodwill of the colonial Powers, without consideration as to whether this was appropriate or not, the representative did not fail to launch an attack, in this connexion, against Czechoslovakia and the other people’s democracies. The opinions of the representative of Australia, defender of colonial policies which are today condemned by the entire world, are an insult to the nations of colonial peoples and, at the same time, an instance of underestimation of the discernment of the members of the General Assembly. The entire world knows the so-called generosity of the colonial Powers which, on the one hand, means economic and political discrimination, pauperization, murder of peaceful populations and famine for millions and millions of people of these countries and, on the other hand, shameless exploitation for profits for the colonial Powers.
13. The representative of Australia is right in that the peoples of the colonial countries have the shining example of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China and the happy experiences of Czechoslovakia and the other people’s democracies before them. These shining examples encourage and strengthen the nations under colonial oppression in their struggle for independence and in their fight against the colonial exploiters. The people of Czechoslovakia, like honest people all over the world, are with all their heart on the side of the oppressed and exploited peoples of the colonial countries and wish them every success in their great fight for national liberation and for a happy future. The fomenters of a new war are competing in desperate digressions and futile plans to contain and roll back history. In this they are doomed to failure. There is no force which can stop development, which, in accordance with an immutable law, goes forward from imperialist enslavement to national independence and freedom. The attempts of the imperialists to disguise their aggressive policy are futile. Facts convict them.
14. At the sixth session of the General Assembly, the United States, together with the United Kingdom and France, were putting through proposals under false peace slogans, which were to serve, their war aims and hamper the effective measures proposed by the Soviet Union for the elimination of the danger of a new war. The delegations of the Soviet Union and the peoples’ democracies established quite clearly that those proposals had no relation to the maintenance of peace and that, on the contrary, they were only one of the planned steps in the preparation? for a new war. The few months which separate us from the closing of the sixth session of the General Assembly have amply proved this fact.
15. The past period has fully proved the hypocrisy and the duplicity of the so-called disarmament proposals of the United States, the United Kingdom and France. It became apparent that the proposals had one aim — to legalize and intensify armaments and to increase war preparations. The Disarmament Commission and its committees held many meetings, and the records and other documents of the Commission make up quite a respectable volume. The substance of the entire activity of the representatives of the United States and their supporters may, however, be characterized very briefly: general non-committal declarations lacking in concreteness, proposals carrying no commitment, suggestions, initiatives, working documents, and so on, which all carefully avoid any consideration of the peace proposals of the Soviet Union and, the solution of principal and fundamental questions such as the prohibition of atomic weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, the prohibition of bacterial warfare and the reduction of armaments and armed forces.
16. Hardly had the sixth session of the General Assembly concluded, than the participants of the aggressive North Atlantic Treaty met in Lisbon. The United States, at that meeting, dictated to its partners an increase of military appropriations and of the number of their armed forces, the extension of war bases, and intensified political, economic and military control. It imposed a decision on the creation of the so-called European Army, of which the renewed nazi Wehrmacht, led by Hitlerite generals, was to form the aggressive kernel. The Lisbon meeting showed clearly, even then, how, United States imperialism intends to solve the question of Germany, a question whose just settlement has a fundamental significance for the maintenance of a lasting peace in Europe and in the entire world. The United States solution of the German question is the rebirth of German militarism and nazism and the utilization of a rearmed Western Germany as the principal basis of imperialist aggression in Europe. The United States has ruthlessly suppressed the objections and reservations of its Western European partners, justly fearing the anger of a people who fully realize the danger of a renewed aggression of German militarism, whose victim they have themselves been in the recent past.
17. The United States imposed the conclusion of the so-called general agreement and the setting up of the so-called European Defence Community. The principal aim of these war treaties is the integration of a remilitarized Western Germany into the system of the aggressive Atlantic bloc. Both of these plans are based on the concept of United States imperialism, whose war plans rest upon the utilization of foreign territories and foreign troops. The so-called “General Agreement” — but which is in fact a separatist and war agreement — is an attempt to legalize the constant violation of the obligations arising out of the Potsdam Agreement and other agreements among the great Powers, an attempt to divide Germany permanently and to proclaim the military occupation and colonial rule in Western Germany a permanent institution.
18. The so-called General Agreement, which revives German militarism and vengeance, is a direct threat to peace in Europe. Through the promise to annul the Allied proclamations on the dissolution of the Nazi Party and the disbandment of the units of the SS, the SA and the Gestapo, the so-called General Agreement is the final step in the process of rehabilitating the nazi formations, the principal agents of hitlerite aggression. The revival of the nazi army, which had already for a long time been prepared by the United States, aroused the protests and anger of the nations of Europe. That is why it was to be re-established in accordance with the so-called Pleven plan — another United States plan named after a French minister— under the cloak of the so-called European Army, in which there were to be no independent German units. The agreement on the so-called European Defence Community threw off this mask also, and the Western European countries were obliged, on worthless guarantees, to take note of the full revival and privileged position of the nazi army. Thus, on the frontiers of France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and on their territories, will be stationed fully armed units of the revived German fascist army which, according to the plans of United Staley imperialism, would not only serve for aggression against peace-loving countries, but would also be commandeered in order to suppress the democratic rights and constitutional freedoms of the peoples of Western Europe. After their economic and political subjection to a foreign Power, formerly great, independent, countries are being — simultaneously with the revival of the nazi army — bereft of their national armies, which are to disappear in an artificial, non-national, amorphous formation under the command of United States imperialists. They are also to give up their inalienable right as sovereign States, the right to the defence of their countries.
19. It is remarkable, I think, that these humiliating war agreements bear the signature of the French Foreign Minister, Mr. Schuman, who Still in 1949 declared in the French National Assembly: “I demand that those who are thinking of an active military participation of Germany in the system of European defence, consider the consequences of such a policy. It will lead to immediate international tension and to the danger of conflicts for which France is in no position to take the risk or the responsibility.” The French government later took this dangerous risk, and the same minister has recommended to the same National Assembly that France should renounce its national army, “which in the past has so often been the pride and the salvation of France and formed a part of its most precious traditions”.
20, The peoples of the world have by no means forgotten the consequences of the past war agreements. The war agreements which the representatives of the United Kingdom and France concluded once before, with the agreement of the United States and with the representatives of German militarism and imperialism, led to the unleashing of the Second World War. Czechoslovakia was not the only victim of the shameful Munich agreements. Under the slogan of the fight against communism, under the pretext of the defence of Western civilization, Munich became a prelude to the boundless suffering of the nations of Europe.
21, Today these slogans are being replaced by slogans about the defence of the free world and the American" way of life. The peoples, however, no longer believe in false promises of peace which, after the examples of their Munich predecessors, are being proclaimed by the authors of the new war agreements. Ever more powerful and broader is the movement of patriotic forces in the countries of Western Europe, which are now enjoining their parliaments not to renounce their sovereign rights and to refuse to ratify the agreements by which independent countries are to be degraded to the Status of American colonies.
22, Behind the backs, and against the will of the overwhelming majority of the people of Western Germany, the Bonn politicians acceded to the so-called European Defence Community. They did so quite openly in order to achieve their plans of revenge. Mr. Kaiser, a minister of the so-called Bonn Government, had the following to say on this subject: “A real Europe can be established only if the German bloc is re-established. I would remind you that this bloc includes, besides Germany, also Austria, a part of Switzerland, the Saar and, of course, Alsace and Lorraine.” The Chancellor of the so-called Bonn Government, Mr. Adenauer, declared quite plainly: “The return of the lost regions behind the Oder-Neisse border, which will, I believe, take place earlier than we think, is the principal reason which leads the German Government to take a positive attitude towards the integration of the Bund into the European system and into North Atlantic Treaty Organization.”
23, The Bonn and Paris war agreements — further links in the aggressive Atlantic system — only emphasize all the more the aggressive character of this war bloc, which had already been unmasked a long time before.
24, The people of Czechoslovakia follow the developments in Germany with great attention. They are well aware of the significance which a just solution of the German question has for their own security as well as for world peace in general. My people have a supreme interest in having a good neighbour and friend not only in the German Democratic Republic, with which it maintains, sincere and friendly relations, but in Germany as a whole. The entire border of Czechoslovakia and Germany must become a border of peace. Today provocations are still being plotted by the war-mongers, the “revanchists” and traitors behind our Republic’s frontier with Western Germany. In pursuance of the United States law on so-called mutual security, spies and terrorists are being sent across this frontier into Czechoslovakia.
25. The Czechoslovak people and their Government fully support the proposals for the solution of the German question which the Soviet Union has tirelessly submitted. In them it sees an answer to all aspects of this problem. For the German people, their realization would mean the fulfilment of justified demands: an end to the enforced division of the country and the possibilities for the full development of a unified, independent, peace-loving and democratic State. For the neighbours of Germany, the realization of the Soviet Union proposals would ensure the complete elimination of the threat of aggression, and it would ensure all the prerequisites for peaceful co-operation.
26. The results of the Lisbon Conference have in the past been evaluated as the great success of United States policy. In a speech on 29 February 1952, which was broadcast over the entire American radio and television network, Secretary of State Dean Acheson even labelled the Lisbon achievements as “historic decisions”.
27. After a mere six months, however, it has become apparent how unstable the successes of American imperialist policy are, and how decisions imposed by the United States in Lisbon have only intensified the differences between the United States and its Western European allies in the Atlantic bloc. Developments have once more shown that the policy of the United States towards its partners is not a policy of democratic cooperation but a policy of imperialist dictation. The facts fully confirm what the Soviet Union Government established in its declaration concerning the North Atlantic Treaty on 29 January 1949, namely, that it is impossible “by the mere signing of pacts to eliminate the antagonisms of interests between the big countries and the small countries comprised in these groups, when one of the partners or one group of States is determined to miss no opportunity to enrich itself at the expense of another partner or group of States and resorts for this purpose to every possible means of pressure and economic influence”.
28. This sharpening of differences is the result of the conflict of interest of imperialist partners and, in the first place, of the resistance of the people against the policy of war preparations. In July of this year, the Secretary of the Treasury of the United Kingdom, Mr. Butler, as well as the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, declared quite openly that the stipulated armaments programme was beyond the strength of the United Kingdom,
29. On 1 August, the New York Herald Tribune reported a slowing down of the fulfilment of the plans of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It said that depressing news had been received from American officials, that they had given up hope that NATO would fulfil the targets established in Lisbon.
30. There immediately followed the French-American disputes when the American monopolies refused to, contract arms orders in France, These differences have, as we have read recently, even taken on such forms that the Pinay Government was obliged to reject the memorandum of the Government of the United States when the latter’s interference in the internal affairs of France exceeded even the normal bounds in the unequal relations existing between the United States and its satellites. The question of the duration of military service in -the countries of the so-called European Defence Community has pointed up further serious difficulties.
31. In spite of United States pressure and the sharp interventions of General Ridgway, a conference of experts from six member countries refused to introduce a; uniform period of military service and to prolong it, when the struggle of the Belgian soldiers and workers against the prolongation of military service had become the expression of the powerful protest of the peoples of Western Europe against the United States war plans.
32. The French bourgeois newspaper Combat gives the following appreciation of the situation: “The manifestations against the two-year military service in Belgium, the official slowing down of the tempo of armaments in Great Britain, the unofficial but in fact strong opposition in France and in Italy against the remilitarization of Germany — these are significant of the deep chaos which prevails in the countries of the member States of the Atlantic bloc.” This chaos is, of course, an expression of the internal weakness of the Atlantic bloc. There has been a particular sharpening of the differences between the United States and the United Kingdom. In the same way as in the Near East, United States policy is also directed against the British positions in the Pacific area and in Southeast Asia. The American imperialists recently even barred the United Kingdom from participating in the Honolulu Conference, which was discussing war preparations in the Pacific.
33. The difficulties of the participants of the aggressive pacts are so apparent that even the United States Press cannot conceal them, Walter Lippman writes the following about them in the New York Herald Tribune dated 5 August 1952: “A policy of alliances is notoriously difficult to conduct, and we have had only a very short experience ... It is only five years since we committed ourselves in the Truman doctrine to the formation of a global coalition to ‘contain’ the expansion of the Soviet orbit. But though our experiences with alliances is short, it has already been wide and varied.” Mr. Lippman further comments that the United States loses prestige by offering, and indeed peddling, alliances and that at the same time these alliances deteriorate, for they include weak and unwilling States, He said: “An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency… and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department.”
34. Whether these are multilateral pacts, such as the North Atlantic Treaty with Western Germany or the Pacific pact, which includes the remilitarization of Japan, or bilateral arrangements, such as the arrangements between the United States and Yugoslavia, which serve the purposes of American imperialism in the Balkans, their nature is quite evident.
35. The true nature of all these relations has been very well characterized by the French newspaper Le Monde, which says in its issue of 11 June 1952: “Military, units in Western Germany cannot be formed rapidly without a large participation of the former nazi cadres or officers devoted to the defeated regime. The United States, the champion of democratic freedoms, is enrolling Syngman Rhee, Chiang Kai-shek and Bao Dai under its banners in Asia. In Europe it is the Nazis, Fascists and Falangists, who are very pleased at the fact that, in the name of authentic anti-bolshevism, they will tomorrow be the most secure support of the West,”
36. While the American imperialists are thus making every effort to transform western Germany into the focal point of a new war, three years ago in the Far East they passed from war preparations to open aggression and are waging a ruthless and cruel war against the heroic people of Korea. Twenty-eight months of war have brought the United States interventionists defeat upon defeat. It is a great lesson of this terrible war and a warning to all war-mongers that even the most brutal methods of the aggressor cannot break the resistance of a people who are fighting for a just cause and who are defending their freedom and independence. Not even the ruthless razing to the ground of cities and villages by barbaric air raids, napalm bombs, the terrible devastation of economic and cultural values, the unprecedented brutalities and cruelties, the torture and murder of the civilian population, women, children and old people, the killing of defenceless prisoners of war, the use of poison gases on the battlefield and in the rear, or the criminal use of bacterial warfare — no means and no methods have been able to break the heroic resistance of the Korean people who, together with the Chinese volunteers, are unswervingly defending the freedom and independence of their country,
37. The Czechoslovak delegation, whose policy rests upon respect for the freedom and independence of every people, at the fifth session of the General Assembly submitted, together with the delegation of the Soviet Union and the delegations of the Byelorussian SSR, the Ukrainian SSR and Poland, a proposal [A/1426] for the immediate cessation of the war in Korea, the withdrawal of foreign troops, a peaceful settlement of the Korean question and the assuring of Korea’s independence. The Czechoslovak people and its Government have welcomed the many endeavours of the Soviet Union to re-establish peace in Korea, endeavours which the Soviet Union has been tirelessly pursuing.
38. The course of the negotiations for a truce, which have already lasted for fifteen months, is an unbroken chain of evidence that the ruling circles of the United States are systematically obstructing the negotiations. They wanted to, make use of the negotiations in order to obtain at the conference table what they were unable to obtain on the battlefield. They used various means to this end: the violation of the neutral zone by provocative acts, the rejection of the 38th parallel as a demarcation line, the rejection of countries nominated by the Korean and Chinese delegation on its behalf to the neutral commission which was to check the fulfilment of the truce conditions.
39. When, thanks to the unceasing endeavours of the Korean and Chinese delegation for a rapid cessation of the war, the truce conditions had been agreed upon, the United States refused — and it is still refusing — the repatriation of prisoners of war in accordance with generally recognized norms of international law. In opposition to the explicit stipulations of the Geneva Convention relative to the treatment of Prisoners of War, they intend to detain and drag into the enslavement of Syngman Rhee and Chiang Kai-shek a large number of Korean and Chinese prisoners of war. They have therefore fabricated the unlawful and senseless demands for the so-called screening of the prisoners of war and a so-called voluntary repatriation. Simultaneously, the United States Command has organized, with the use of the most horrible methods of torture and mass terror, an “action” whose purpose is to force the prisoners of war to refuse to return to their homelands. The United States has been repeatedly proved to be guilty of barbaric treatment of prisoners of war and of unprecedented violations of international law and of a number of provisions of the Geneva Convention. The massacre of prisoners on the Island of Koje and elsewhere, the Operation “Break Up”, for which General Boatner was promoted to the rank of Major General, will remain forever one of the most shameful pages in the history of the United States Army, which is equal in horror only to the hitlerite concentration camps at Majdanek and Auschwitz.
40. The ruling circles of the United States are afraid of peace. They are afraid that peace in Korea would thwart their plans for the extension of war and threaten their war profits. That is why they refuse in every possible way to cease the aggression, and that is why they obstruct the conclusion of a truce. On 8 October 1952, they refused to discuss the proposals of the Korean and Chinese delegation, which contained conditions whose rejection signifies an open admission that they are against the conclusion of a truce and the cessation of war in Korea.
41. Peace-loving people all over the world, however, are calling for a peaceful solution in Korea, and expect that the seventh session of the General Assembly will at long last take decisive steps in order to stop the terrible bloodshed and horror of the Korean war. The re-establishment of peace in Korea requires the immediate cessation of hostilities on land, sea and in the air, the return of all prisoners of war to their homelands in agreement with the principles and practices of international law, and the withdrawal of all foreign troops, as the Polish delegation has proposed to this Assembly [A/2229], The Czechoslovak delegation gives its sincere and full support to these important proposals.
42. The criminal bacterial warfare waged by the United States aggressors in Korea and against the People’s Republic of China makes the question of the prohibition of the utilization of bacterial weapons and the question of the ratification of or accession to the “Protocol for the prohibition of the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of bacteriological methods of warfare”, that is, of the well-known Geneva Protocol of 1925, particularly urgent. The utilization of bacterial methods of warfare, their production and every preparation for such warfare is contrary to the principles of international law and to the laws and usages of war, and it insults the honour and conscience of the peoples and has, for a long time, been condemned by all civilized nations. Bacterial means of warfare are aggressive weapons directed against the whole of mankind, and their utilization constitutes an international crime against humanity, the crime of genocide,
43. Up to the present, the Geneva Protocol has been ratified by forty-two States. In the same way as Japan, which used poison gases during the invasion of China and which, during the Second World War, was preparing for the extensive utilization of bacterial weapons, the United States has signed the Protocol but has not ratified it. The principal opponents of the ratification of the Geneva Protocol have not changed. Now, as in 1926 and 1927, it is the big corporations of the chemical industry which see in the prohibition of chemical and bacterial warfare a threat to their tremendous profits. As can be seen from the Congressional Records of that time, Congressman Burton who, as the head of the United States delegation, signed the Protocol at the Geneva Conference on behalf of his country, divulged later in Congress that behind the American Legion, which was one of the most active opponents of the ratification of the Protocol, stood a powerful organization of industrialists of the chemical industry. Even then, American military “experts” opposed the prohibition of chemical and bacterial weapons with the argument that they were cheaper and more effective than any other weapon. Not even the argument that the Protocol could not be ratified because it was not possible to trust the other nations was missing.
44. The Soviet Union, in the spirit of its consistently peaceful policy, was one of the first to accede to the Geneva Protocol, and ratified it and made certain proposals with a view to perfecting it. On its proposal, the Preparatory Commission for the Disarmament Conference adopted a resolution 23 April 1929 calling upon all the signatories of the Protocol to ratify it with the shortest possible delay. The United States did not need that appeal either, and at the Disarmament Conference opposed the prohibition of chemical and bacterial warfare and the prohibition of the production of chemical and bacterial weapons with the “motivation” that its legislation did not permit the acceptance of such an obligation. For this, I quote from document C.195. M. 74. 1929. IX. of the League of Nations, page 78.
45. After the Second World War, at the Geneva Diplomatic Conference in 1949, the USSR again insisted on expediting the ratification of the Geneva Protocol. The United States, however, when President Truman had already definitely withdrawn the Geneva Protocol as “obsolete” from the agenda of Congress, obstructed the adoption of the Soviet Union draft resolution on the pretext that the Conference was not competent and that only the United Nations could discuss this matter. When later, at the proposal of the USSR, the organs of the United Nations were to discuss the question of the prohibition of bacterial weapons, the violation of this prohibition and the calling to account of the violators, as well as the question-of an appeal to States to ratify or to accede to the Geneva Protocol, every time the United States delegation declared incompetent the very organ which was to consider the question. The United States utilized an undignified procedure of unlawful procedural manoeuvres in order to avoid having to take a position on this important question and in order not to be obliged to admit that it is against the prohibition of these inhuman weapons.
46. The Government of the United States not only continues to refuse to ratify the Geneva Protocol, but also refuses to condemn the utilization of bacterial weapons — this most horrible crime against mankind. The Government of the United States has not renounced, and is not renouncing, bacterial warfare. On the contrary, the facts demonstrate that it is carrying out extensive preparations for this barbarous method of waging war and that it considers bacterial weapons, which had their dress rehearsal in Korea, as an important part of its armaments.
47. During the Second World War, the United States was already carrying out research work and preparations in the field of bacterial warfare. On 3 January 1946, the War Department issued the report of George W. Merck, special adviser and head of the United States Biological Warfare Committee. From Merck's report, it is apparent that the commission for the study of biological warfare, established in 1941 and known as the WBS Committee, had arrived at the conclusion that biological warfare was possible and practicable. On the basis of the recommendations of the Commission, a special body was established under the name of the War Research Service — WRS — which had at its disposal, as its advisors, a group of scientific workers under the pseudonym of the ABC Committee, and later the DEF Committee. At the proposal of WRS, the Chemical Warfare Service started preparations on a broader basis, and in this way the notorious Camp Detrick in Maryland came into being. Later, further plants were set up for research work and for the production of bacterial weapons in the states of Mississippi, Indiana and Utah, and became a direct component of the military administration.
48. After the end of the Second World War, the preparations of the United States for bacterial warfare continued on a larger scale. Thus, soon after the publication of Merck's report, Henry M. Black, the commander of Camp Detrick, declared that that plant would become a permanent army installation and that it would continue its work in utmost secrecy. Japanese and German “experts”, manifestly war criminals, were also put in the services of the preparations of bacterial warfare. Thus for instance, the nazi Generalarzt Schreiber, former head of the biological department of the hitlerite Wehrmacht, who admitted before the Nürnberg Military Tribunal that Hitler had been preparing bacterial warfare, is today working in the Service of the United States.
49. One of the decisive considerations of the military officials of the United States is that bacterial weapons are cheaper and more effective than other weapons, and also that they do not destroy property, which thus falls into the hands of the victorious aggressor without having suffered any great damage. The military “science” of the Western imperialists also praises the “advantages” of bacterial weapons. For instance, we read on page 109 of the book, War in Three Dimensions, by E. J. Kingston-McCloughry: “. . . in one respect do gas warfare and bacteriological warfare appear to hold out advantages over atomic warfare. The destruction which they bring about is destruction only of human life.”
50. On 15 June 1946, A. H. Waitt, Chief of the United States Chemical Warfare Service, wrote in Colliers that it was neither logical nor intelligent to speak of the horrors of toxic gas and bacterial war and then accept atomic war, and that he had no sympathy for speeches on the humanity or inhumanity of weapons.
51. The United States Secretary of Defense, Mr. Johnson, admitted publicly in 1950 that the United States was carrying out preparations and research on bacterial weapons on a large scale. He said that the effectiveness of weapons and means of bacterial warfare could not be known without their actual utilization, but that, if all factors were considered, and among them also the psychological factor, it might be presumed that attacks by biological means could be very effective.
52. The United States views bacterial means as an effective weapon for all kinds of aggression. Major General McAuliffe, in a speech in Louisville published on 31 October 1951, declared: “Bacterial warfare represents an ideal diversionary weapon, because it can be used unnoticed. Even a small amount of active material can cause considerable damage. The illnesses caused by means of bacterial warfare do not show up immediately. In view of the gradual way in which these substances act due to the incubation period and the difficulties of identifying them, it will not be easy to check up and decide the moment when such diversionary action will take place. In other words, one can give the impression that death or illness arise from natural causes.”
53. The utilization of criminal bacterial weapons by the United States aggressors in Korea and the United States preparations tor bacterial warfare on a large scale once more accentuate the urgency of the need for the ratification of the Geneva Protocol — that important act of international law. Many millions of peace-loving people all over the world are calling, with ever greater insistence, for the prohibition of bacterial warfare and the ratification of the Geneva Protocol. Their call has found expression in the appeal of the World Peace Council, representing the world-wide peace movement, of 1 April 1952: “Bacteriological warfare is not only an abominable crime which must be put down; it is a menace to the whole of humanity.
54. The proposal of the Polish delegation [A/2229] that the General Assembly should call upon States to ratify or accede to the Geneva Protocol meets the wishes of hundreds of millions of people. The Czechoslovak delegation welcomes this initiative and extends it its warmest support.
55. On the proposal of the Czechoslovak delegation, an item called “Interference of the United States of America in the internal affairs of other States as manifested by the organization on the part of the United States Government of subversive and espionage activities against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the People's Republic of China, the Czechoslovak Republic and other peoples’ democracies” was included in the agenda of our Assembly [item 71], I should now like to speak very briefly about certain facts which induced my delegation to make this proposal.
56. My delegation requested that this item should be included in the agenda in view of the fact that Czechoslovakia is to an ever increasing and intensifying measure becoming the target of hostile acts unprecedented in international relations, organized and directed by the Government of the United States.
57. Even in the days of the liberation of Czechoslovakia by the heroic Soviet Army, the Government of the United States manifested an unfriendly attitude towards the Czechoslovak people. Contrary to international agreements, according to which liberated Czechoslovakia is considered to be a victorious allied country, the United States Military Administration introduced a regime of occupation in the districts of Western Bohemia hostile to the Czech population. Immediately upon the liberation of Czechoslovakia and the end of the war, the Government of the United States strove to hamper the reconstruction of my country’s economy and its peaceful construction. With the help of reactionary politicians, it endeavoured to overthrow the people’s democratic regime installed by the will of the people, and to this end it does not hesitate to interfere in the internal affairs of Czechoslovakia. Since the victory of the Czechoslovak people in February 1948 over the forces of reaction — forces which the Government of the United States had hoped to use as its mainstay in Czechoslovakia — the American zones of occupation in Western Germany and Austria are as the principal bases for the hostile activities of the United States against Czechoslovakia. The Government of the United States misuses its position as an occupying Power to pursue an ever more intensive and more ruthless, hostile and aggressive activity against Czechoslovakia. It misuses the presence of its troops of occupation on the Czechoslovak border for Constant violations of Czechoslovak territorial integrity and air space, and attempts to foment unrest in Czechoslovakia.
58. The duty of every State not to support or to tolerate on its territory any terroristic activity directed against another State is a generally recognized principle of international law. In opposition to this principle, the Government of the United States is dispatching and directing agents, terrorists and murderers from its own territory or from territories subject to its sovereignty as an occupation power, The United States is dispatching and directing these agents, terrorists and murderers to Czechoslovakia for the purpose of espionage and subversive activities. Organs of the United States intelligence service accompany these agents up to the borders of Czechoslovakia, and during their criminal activities on Czechoslovak territory they instruct them and maintain contact with them through United States broadcasting services, among other moans. The Government of the United States has at the same time ordered the authorities of Western Germany, which were installed by the United States, to facilitate by all possible methods the movement of these agents across the border. All these activities of the United States Government are aimed, on the one hand, at military, political and economic espionage, and, on the other, at the setting up in Czechoslovakia of terroristic and subversive groups to obstruct the peaceful construction of my country. The sending out of spies, terrorists and murderers to Czechoslovakia is an expression of the open hostility of the United States Government towards my country and its people, and a further proof of United States aggressive policy.
59. This hostile activity is only part of the United States general policy of aggression, a policy whose main objective is the achievement of world domination and the subjection of all other countries at the cost of a new aggressive war against the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China and the peoples’ Democracies.
60. By the Mutual Security Act of 10 October 1951, together with the sadly reputed Kersten Amendment, the Government of the United States has raised terror and violence, subversion and espionage to the status of official policy. In this Act, the Government of the United States openly proclaims that hostile activity against the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, Czechoslovakia and other peace-loving countries is a component of its foreign policy, and thus embodies in its legislation the determination not only to continue this activity, but to intensify it. This determination is further illustrated by the fact that Congress has again appropriated considerable sums for these criminal objectives in the year 1952,
61. The spies, saboteurs and murderers of whom the American authorities have made use against the peaceful Czechoslovak people are at the service of the same policy as that followed by the nazi generals and other war criminals who are being released from prison in order to carry out, in the pay of the United States, the. remilitarization of Western Germany. They are in the service of the aggressive policy of the Government of the United States, which has as its chief instrument the North Atlantic war pact and as its principal objective the unleashing of a new world war. The policy of the United States is a source of plots against the freedom and independence of the Czechoslovak Republic and a source of espionage, subversive activity and war preparations against my people and all peace-loving people. It is hostile to the peaceful co-existence of nations and States, and constitutes a threat to world peace and security. This policy meets the ever-increasing resistance also of the people in those countries whose governments are dependent on the United States.
62. The people of Czechoslovakia, as is the case with the peoples of other democratic and peace-loving States, are working at the construction of their country in the firm Conviction that that is the best Contribution they can make to the maintenance of world peace. At the same time, they are determined to unmask and defeat anyone who would disturb this peaceful reconstruction and threaten it, whether by open attack or by espionage and terrorism. The Government of the Czechoslovak Republic, faithful to its duty as the representative of the will of the Czechoslovak people, with the help of its security organs unmasks those who pursue their criminal activity on the territory of Czechoslovakia and hands them over to the courts for just punishment, The same duty induces it to rise in the name of its people in the defence of its interests against those who utilize the services of criminals for their aggressive aims.
63. These are the facts in view of which the Czechoslovak delegation requested the inclusion of this important and urgent item on the agenda, and we shall return to these facts in committee.
64. We said at the beginning that this General Assembly was confronted by many significant tasks. In the first place it must, we believe, put an end to a state of affairs in which the United Nations is being misused as an instrument of the aggressive policy of American imperialism. It must do everything to bring about the cessation of the war in Korea which is being passed off falsely as an action of the United Nations. It must put a stop to a shameful situation in which the great Chinese people, who constitute an important factor of world peace, are not represented in the Organization by their lawful representatives. The General Assembly must put an end to a situation in which, under the guise of “collective measures”, the Organization is to be degraded to the level of an association of aggressive blocs and used for the preparation of a new war. The seventh session of the General Assembly must do all within its power to ensure that the organs of the United Nations fulfil the important tasks entrusted to them by the Charter — the maintenance of world peace and security and the development of friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equally and the self-determination of nations. It is also one of the primary tasks of this session to adopt effective measures for the immediate and unconditional prohibition of atomic weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, for the introduction of effective international control over the observance of this prohibition, and for a real reduction of armaments and armed forces.
65. The Czechoslovak delegation therefore welcomes the proposals of the delegation of Poland [A/2229] for the elimination of the threat of a new world war and for the strengthening of peace and friendly co-operation among nations. These proposals express the wishes of the Czechoslovak people and are in complete harmony with the peaceful policy of their Government. The Czechoslovak delegation therefore gives them its entire support in the hope that the delegations present here, mindful of the wishes and desires of their peoples will do the same, so that this seventh session of the General Assembly may make an important contribution to world peace.