[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 41 (Thursday, March 13, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3710-S3711]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE WORDS OF ALISTAIR COOKE
Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, I am glad to see an Alaskan in the
chair as I make this statement. This morning, as it usually happens,
when I turned on my computer, I found a series of e-mails from friends
at home. I do not always have time to read them then, but I saw one
from a very close friend, who has been a friend now for over 50 years--
Frank Reed, a former neighbor, a person who has helped me in many ways
in my life. He asked me to read this article he attached to his e-mail.
I get a little disturbed when I see that the testament is a little
longer than the e-mail. But I found that he had sent me a verbatim
transcript of an article by Alistair Cooke entitled ``Peace For Our
Time,'' that was on the BBC News on Monday, February 3 of this year. I
want to read that tonight because I think it reflects what I have been
trying to say on the floor of the Senate these past several weeks.
The following was written and spoken by Alistair Cooke. He said this:
. . . I promised to lay off topic A--Iraq--until the
Security Council makes a judgment on the inspectors' report
and I shall keep that promise.
But I must tell you that throughout the past fortnight I've
listened to everybody involved in or looking on to a
monotonous din of words, like a tide crashing and receding on
a beach--making a great noise and saying the same thing over
and over. And this ordeal triggered a nightmare--a day-mare,
if you like.
Through the ceaseless tide I heard a voice, a very English
voice of an old man--Prime Minister Chamberlain saying: ``I
believe it is peace for our time''--a sentence that prompted
a huge cheer, first from a listening street crowd and then
from the House of Commons and next day from every newspaper
in the land.
There was a move to urge that Mr. Chamberlain should
receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In Parliament there was one
unfamiliar old grumbler to growl out: ``I believe we have
suffered a total and unmitigated defeat.'' He was, in view of
the general sentiment, very properly booed down.
This scene concluded in the autumn of 1938 with the British
prime minister's effectual signing away of most of
Czechoslovakia to Hitler. The rest of it, within months,
Hitler walked in and conquered. ``Oh dear,'' said Mr.
Chamberlain, thunderstruck. ``He has betrayed my trust.''
During the last fortnight a simple but startling thought
occurred to me--every single official, diplomat, president,
prime minister involved in the Iraq debate was in 1938 a
toddler, most of them unborn. So the dreadful scene I've just
drawn will not have been remembered by most listeners.
Hitler had started betraying our trust not 12 years but
only two years before, when he broke the First World War
peace treaty by occupying the demilitarized zone of the
Rhineland. Only half his troops carried one reload of
ammunition because Hitler knew that French morale was too low
to confront any war just then and 10 million of 11 million
British voters had signed a so-called peace ballot.
It stated no conditions, elaborated no terms, it simply
counted the numbers of Britons who were ``for peace.''
The slogan of this movement was ``Against war and
fascism''--chanted at the time by every Labour man and
Liberal and many moderate Conservatives--a slogan that now
sounds as imbecilic as ``against hospitals and disease.'' In
blunter words a majority of Britons would do anything,
absolutely anything, to get rid of Hitler except fight him.
At that time the word pre-emptive had not been invented,
though today it's a catchword. After all the Rhineland was
what it said it was--part of Germany. So to march in and
throw Hitler out would have been pre-emptive--wouldn't it?
Nobody did anything and Hitler looked forward with
confidence to gobbling up the rest of Western Europe country
by country--``course by course'', as growler Churchill put
it.
I bring up Munich and the mid-30s because I was fully
grown, on the verge of 30, and knew we were indeed living in
the age of anxiety. And so many of the arguments mounted
against each other today, in the last fortnight, are exactly
what we heard in the House of Commons debates and read in the
French press.
The French especially urged, after every Hitler invasion,
``negotiation, negotiation''. They negotiated so successfully
as to have their whole country defeated and occupied. But as
one famous French leftist said:
``We did anyway manage to make them declare Paris an open
city--no bombs on us!''
In Britain the general response to every Hitler advance was
disarmament and collective security. Collective security
meant to leave every crisis to the League of Nations. it
would put down aggressors, even though, like the United
Nations, it had no army, navy or air force.
The League of Nations had its chance to prove itself when
Mussolini invaded and conquered Ethiopia (Abyssinia). The
League didn't have any shot to fire. But still the cry was
chanted in the House of Commons--the League and collective
security is the only true guarantee of peace.
But after the Rhineland the maverick Churchill decided
there was no collectivity in collective security and started
a highly unpopular campaign for rearmament by Britain,
warning against the general belief that Hitler had already
built an enormous mechanized army and superior air force.
But he's not used them, he's not used them--people
protested.
Still for two years before the outbreak of the Second War
you could read the debates in the House of Commons and now
shiver at the famous Labour men--Major Attlee was one of
them--who voted against rearmament and still went on pointing
to the League of Nations as the savior.
Now, this memory of mine may be totally irrelevant to the
present crisis. It haunts me. I have to say I have written
elsewhere with much conviction that most historical analogies
are false because, however strikingly similar a new situation
may be to an old one, there's usually one element that is
different and it turns out to be the crucial one. It may well
be so here.
All I know is that all the voices of the 30s are echoing
through 2003 . . .
Madam President, I was but 14, not 30. I remember the tension we all
felt at that time, as country after country became destroyed by Hitler.
Previously on the floor of the Senate, I mentioned Hitler and compared
Saddam Hussein to Hitler. I was criticized even by the papers at home
in Alaska.
I was delighted to read Alistair Cooke's article that Frank Reed sent
to me this morning, and I commend it to the rest of the Senate.
This haunts me. It haunts those of us who lived through the thirties
to know
[[Page S3711]]
we might go through the thirties again because too many people refuse
to listen to the truth, refuse to listen to what some of us see in
Saddam Hussein, as being another Hitler.
(The remarks of Mr. Stevens pertaining to the introduction of S. 628
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills
and Joint Resolutions.'')
Mr. STEVENS. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DASCHLE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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