Office of the Historian

Eisenhower Library, CD. Jackson records, 1953–56

The Secretary of State to the Presidents Special Assistant (Jackson)

top secret
Washington, July 1, 1953.

Dear C. D.: I agree with you that the forthcoming revision of the United Nations Charter provides a great opportunity. I have for [Page 175] some time been giving thought as to how best to use it. Before I left the Carnegie Endowment, I got them to start a series of studies in different countries with a view to forming some idea as to what amendments member states of significance were thinking about.

Lack of law is a serious defect. At the San Francisco Conference of 1945, when the Charter was drawn up, I was responsible for getting in the clause requiring the Assembly to develop international law. However, very little has been done, because in fact most of the member states are not willing to subject themselves to law as developed and applied by an international body.

Law in the sense we use the word is a codification of moral principles. In the Soviet world, there is no such concept, because they deny the existence of moral law.

I believe that any organization which made and changed laws could not be universal, and there is at least a grave question as to whether and when Mr. Taft’s idea1 were actually expressed in a treaty, it would get Senate approval. The first of my books “War, Peace and Change”, written in 1937, deals basically with this whole problem and the fact that, unless international law provides methods of peaceful change, then there will be violent change, because change is the one thing that can never be stopped.

I believe this whole subject deserves the consideration you suggest. I will try from my standpoint to provide it.

Sincerely yours,

John Foster Dulles

The Secretary of State to the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (Wiley)1

[Washington,] August 12, 1953.

Dear Senator Wiley: In reply to your letter of July 29, 1953,2 I have noted with satisfaction that you will be chairman of the subcommittee authorized by S. Res. 126 to study the subject of United Nations Charter review, and that you are deeply interested in making the study helpful to the United States.

[Page 176]

I myself feel that the forthcoming revision of the United Nations Charter provides a great opportunity. I have for some time been giving thought as to how best to use it.

I continue to believe that final United States policies on this question must await full public discussion of the issues as well as consultations with members of Congress. However, I think it may be timely to state that the Department will favor the calling of the review conference when the question is put to the 1955 session of the United Nations General Assembly. I hope this information will facilitate the work of your Committee.

Sincerely yours,

John Foster Dulles
  1. The reference is to Senator Robert A. Taft and his book entitled A Foreign Policy for Americans. In the book Taft said of the UN Charter: “The fundamental difficulty is that it is not based primarily on an underlying law and an administration of justice under that law. I believe that in the long run the only way to establish peace is to write a law, agreed to by each of the nations, to govern the relations of such nations with each other and to obtain the covenant of all such nations that they will abide by that law and by decisions made thereunder.” Subsequently in a speech to the American Bar Association, Dulles called attention to this passage in the Taft book and quoted it; for the Dulles speech, see editorial note, p. 176.↩
  2. Reprinted from the Department of State Bulletin, Sept. 7, 1953.↩
  3. Senator Wiley’s letter is printed ibid., p. 310.↩