99. Editorial Note

Beginning on January 25, 1956, and continuing through August 1, 1958, the Subcommittee on Disarmament of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held numerous hearings, including several public hearings in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Minneapolis, and St. Louis as well as Washington. This subcommittee, created with the adoption of Senate Resolution 93, 84th Congress, 1st session, on July 25, 1955 (subsequently extended by Senate Resolutions 185 and 286, 84th Congress, and Senate Resolutions 61, 151, 192, and 241, 85th Congress), was authorized to make a thorough study of the disarmament problem and of proposals aiming at arms control. Senate Resolution 93 provided that the subcommittee of twelve members should be chosen on a bipartisan basis: three from each party by the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, two from each party from the Senate [Page 280] Committee on Armed Services, and one each from the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy by the President of the Senate (Vice President of the United States). The chairman of the subcommittee was Senator Hubert H. Humphrey. The title given to the hearings was Control and Reduction of Armaments.

The subcommittee presented four reports: Interim Report of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Disarmament, 84th Congress, 2d session, Report No. 1397; Second Interim Report of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Disarmament, 84th Congress, 2d session, Report No. 2829; Report of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Disarmament, 85th Congress, 1st session, Report No. 1167; and Final Report of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Disarmament, 85th Congress, 2d session, Report No. 2501.

The subcommittee also published a volume entitled Disarmament and Security: A Collection of Documents, 1919–55, 84th Congress, 2d session, and ten staff studies on various aspects of the disarmament problem, which were prepared under the direction of the subcommittee staff with the cooperation of the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress. The staff studies were published in the final report cited above.

The public hearings were published in 1958 in 17 parts under the title Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.