those promises stands in the way of their accomplishing their aggressive designs.

"If men fight to kill, it is not easy to regulate how they shall kill. Moreover, there is the danger that if we prohibit the use of some weapons, even more hideous weapons may be discovered and used. We want to eliminate, and we have submitted proposals for the elimination of, all weapons which are not expressly permitted as necessary and appropriate to support the limited number of arined forces which may be permitted to states to maintain public order and to meet their Charter obligations.

"In civilized communities the deliberate and unprovoked killing of man by man is murder regardless of the kind of weapon used to kill. In a civilized world, deliberate and unprovoked aggression which causes the killing of masses of men should be regarded as mass murder regardless of the kinds of weapons used. That is the theory of the Charter of the United Nations and that is the rule of law which we here in the Disarmament Commission should seek to implement. That is the way we can best attain the unrealized objective of the Geneva protocol.

"All members of the United Nations have agreed to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations. The United States as a member of the United Nations has committed itself, as have all other members, to refrain from not only the use of poisonous gas and the use of germ warfare but the use of force of any kind contrary to the law of the Charter. And by that commitment the United States intends to abide and has a right to expect other members to abide. The United States condemns not only the use of germ and gas warfare but the use of force of any kind contrary to the law of the Charter.

"Let it not be said that there is no way to determine when force is being used contrary to the law of the Charter. If the Security Council does not act, the sentiments of the civilized world can be recorded in the General Assembly as the Uniting for Peace resolution provides.

"We hope here in this Disarmament Commission to agree upon measures of disarmament to reduce the possibility of aggression and make war inherently, as it is constitutionally under the Charter, impossible as a means of settling disputes between nations. That is why throughout our discussions, as representative of the United States, I have insisted that we must approach the problem of disarmament from the point of view of preventing war and not from the point of view of regulating the armaments to be used in war. . . .

"My Government hopes we are going to work out here measures of disarmament as a means of preventing war. My Government does not believe that we should interrupt this work to inform any would-be aggressor state, which may contemplate using force contrary to its Charter commitments, what kind of force law-abiding states will or will not use to suppress aggression.

1 Res. 377 (V) of the U.N. General Assembly, Nov. 3, 1950; supra, pp. 187-192.

"I hope my remarks will not be misunderstood. We are issuing no ultimatums. We are making no threats. We will support effective proposals to eliminate all weapons adaptable to mass destruction, including atomic, chemical, and biological weapons from national armaments. We believe, as the Soviet delegation maintained in 1932, that paramount importance should be attached, 'not to the prohibition of chemical weapons in war time, but to the prohibition of chemical warfare in peace time' and that 'efforts should be directed not so much to the framing of laws and usages of war as to the prohibition of as many lethal substances and appliances as possible.'

"Certainly there is no assurance that aggressors, which break their Charter obligations not to go to war, will keep their paper promises not to fight with certain weapons if they have them and need them to achieve their evil designs.

"The task of the Disarmament Commission is, as the United States points out in its proposals setting forth the Essential Principles of a Disarmament Program, to devise measures to insure that ‘armed forces and armaments will be reduced to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no state will be in a condition of armed preparedness to start a war' and that 'no state will be in a position to undertake preparations for war without other states having knowledge of such preparations long before the offending state could start a war.' We do not believe that it is the function of the Disarmament Commission to attempt to codify the laws of war. But obviously if it attempted to do so it would have to deal with the whole range of weapons and methods of warfare to be prescribed, the machinery necessary to secure the observance of the rules, and the matter of sanctions, reprisals, and retaliation in case of violation."

It should be emphasized that it was the Soviet Union which in 1928 proposed an additional protocol which would outlaw the methods and appliances utilized to wage poison-gas and bacteriological warfare and the industrial undertakings engaged in the production of the weapons, as well as the use of such weapons. It was the Soviet Union itself which observed, in the Disarmament Conferences in 1932, that mere legal prohibitions are "inadequate and of merely secondary importance." The Soviet delegate said, at that time, "Consequently efforts should be directed not so much to the framing of laws and usages of war as to the prohibition of as many lethal substances and appliances as possible. This is the point of view which the Soviet Union will continue to represent. . .

In the U.S. statement of August 15 we outlined a proposal for the elimination of bacteriological weapons and facilities for their production which could be made effective as part of a comprehensive program, a plan which would not merely prohibit the use of bacteriological weapons but would provide assurance and safeguards that such weapons would not be available for use. On September 4. 1952, the

1 See supra, doc. 6.

United States presented a summary of these proposals as a working paper to the Commission (DC/20, pp. 191-192).

The plan we suggested for the elimination of bacteriological weapons and facilities for their production is inseparably connected with an effective and continuous system of disclosure and verification of all armed forces and armaments such as we have proposed. Such a comprehensive system of disclosure and verification would lay the necessary ground work for the elimination of germ weapons and facilities for their use and production, within the framework of a comprehensive disarmament program. It may be true that there are no theoretically foolproof safeguards which would prevent the concoction of some deadly germs in an apothecary's shop in the dark hours of night. But when the United States proposed the establishment of safeguards to insure the elimination of germ warfare along with the elimination of mass armed forces and all weapons adaptable to mass destruction, we sought what is possible and practical, not the impossible. Bacteriological weapons to be effective in modern warfare would require more than the dropping at random of a few infected spiders, flies, or fleas. They would require industrial establishments, facilities for maintaining agents, transport containers, and disseminating appliances. Such arrangements and facilities will not readily escape detection under an effective, comprehensive, and continuous system of disclosure and verification which the General Assembly has declared to be a necessary prerequisite of any comprehensive disarmament program.

We therefore proposed in our working paper of September 4 that at appropriate stages in an effective system of disclosure and verification agreed measures should become effective providing for the progressive curtailment of production, the progressive dismantling of plants, and the progressive destruction of stockpiles of bacteriological weapons and related appliances. Under this program, with cooperation in good faith by the principal states concerned, all bacteriological weapons and all facilities connected therewith could be eliminated from national armaments and thus not only their use but their very existence prohibited.

If we wish to achieve effective disarmament and to reduce the danger and fear of war we must not be content with paper promises not to use weapons of mass destruction. Such promises would only give to treaty-breaking aggressors their choice of weapons. We must see to

it that prohibited weapons are not available for use.

The "Phantom" Proposals of the Soviet Union

At the seventh session of the General Assembly the Polish delegation reintroduced the proposals which the Soviet delegation presented to the sixth General Assembly and which that Assembly referred to the Disarmament Commission. These same proposals had been submitted by the Soviet Union to previous assemblies, which refused to accept them, and in the Disarmament Commission the Soviet Union. failed to elaborate their proposals or to offer any new arguments in support of them.

The Soviet proposals may be described as "phantom" or "ghost" 1 See supra, doc. 10.

proposals because like ghosts they constantly appear and reappear, but one can never catch hold of them. They are shadowy and elusive, and it is impossible to state precisely just what they are or are intended to be. They call upon the Five Great Powers to reduce their armed forces within 1 year by one-third and to submit full data on their armaments. They call for immediate adoption of a decision on the unconditional prohibition of atomic weapons and other weapons of mass destruction and the establishment of strict international control over the observance of that decision by all states, with the right of the international control organ to conduct inspection on a continuing basis but not to interfere in the domestic affairs of states.

Now inasmuch as no data whatsoever are forthcoming until these decisions are taken, states cannot determine in advance how the reductions which are supposed to be made will leave them in relation to the armed strength of other states. Nor has the Soviet Union ever sought to explain how the simple one-third reduction would be applied to all the complicated components which make up the armed strength of a nation. On their face, the proposals would perpetuate and not remove any imbalance of power which now exists and no machinery is provided for the implementation of even the vague promises called for in the proposals.

Since the proposals call for the prohibition of the atomic weapons and other weapons of mass destruction and only a one-third reduction in conventional armaments, the proposals would in fact enormously increase the relative armed strength of states with large mass armies. The proposals run counter to the basic principles of a balanced reduction in armaments. Certainly the Soviet Union would object if we reversed their proposals and called upon the Soviet Union and all other states to abolish immediately all armed forces and nonatomic armaments, and to reduce existing stocks of atomic weapons by onethird.

While the proposals profess to recognize the necessity of an international control organ having some control over their observance, the Soviet Union has refused not only in the Assembly but in the Disarmament Commission to discuss any concrete measures of international control. While insisting that a U.N. control organ must not interfere in domestic affairs, the Soviet Union has refused to explain what it means by interference in domestic affairs. It has branded any effort on our part to work out a system of disclosure and verification as an intelligence and espionage operation, despite the fact that the General Assembly has declared that such a system is a prerequisite to any program of guaranteed disarmament. It was impossible in the Disarmament Commission to prevail upon the Soviet representative to explain what the Soviet proposals for strict international control

meant.

A few instances from the record of the proceedings in the Disarmament Commission will serve to illustrate the evasiveness of the Soviet representative in giving any explanation of the "phantom" Soviet proposals.

On April 4, the representative of France requested the Soviet repre

sentative to clarify two points. First, the meaning of the proposal that prohibition and establishment of control should come into effect simultaneously-did it mean that prohibition began the day agreements were signed, or when the control organ was actually in a position to operate? And, second, the precise implications of the proposal that the international control organ undertake "continuous inspection" but "without interference in the domestic affairs of States"-in other words, what constitutes continuous control, and how is it to be limited so as not to interfere in domestic affairs?

The Soviet representative replied that the purpose of the questions "is to obscure these concrete proposals, since they are abundantly clear to any objective person who has long been acquainted with them and since there is nothing obscure about them. They can only be obscure to someone who does not wish to understand them, is opposing the reduction of armaments and the prohibition of atomic weapons, and for this purpose is still, as before, finding various pretexts.'

The Soviet representative then stated that noninterference was selfexplanatory-he termed it "a very clear and precise formulation”—and that simultaneous prohibition and control was also self-explanatory, meaning that the two would be introduced simultaneously (DC/C.1/PV.1, pp. 4, 5, 24, 25, 26).

At the meeting on April 9, the representative of the United Kingdom asked if the "decision to announce the prohibition of atomic weapons and the establishment of controls" meant a broad agreement that an organ would be set up, or that a detailed plan for operations, specifying rights and duties of the organ and of states, will have been at that stage accepted by the governments and written into the decision. Regarding the question of interference in domestic affairs, he cited the uniquely restrictive attitude of the U.S.S.R. toward what free societies consider normal practices and asked for a precise understanding of the Soviet proviso. He asked for an unequivocal statement of the Soviet Union's attitude on this point which we could then discuss dispassionately and objectively.

At the same meeting the representative of Canada repeated the questions his delegation had asked the Soviet representative at the sixth General Assembly, in order to secure the clarification of the Soviet proposals which had not been furnished at that time.

In answering these questions, the Soviet representative repeated in substance Mr. Vyshinsky's reply at the sixth Assembly to the same questions. He said the questions showed "some conspiracy among delegations not willing to discuss the question of the prohibition of atomic weapons and the question of control." He went on to say, "The raising of these questions was in itself a device to avoid discussion of the substance of the U.S.S.R. proposals . . . in order to obscure the issue, they bombarded the Soviet Union delegation with questions. That same device is being repeated now. Instead of a definite discussion of the clear-cut U.S.S.R. proposals, artificial questions are being asked. . ." He called it playing at questions and

answers.

And at the same meeting, we ourselves asked the Soviet representa