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From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 52, 27 December 1948, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
NEW YORK, Dec. 22 – James P. Cannon, National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, sent today a strongly worded telegram to the White House, placing responsibility for the rape of Indonesia by the Dutch squarely upon the shoulders of the Truman Administration.
In his message Cannon protests against continued ECA aid to Holland and reminds Truman that as far back as July 1947, when the Dutch imperialists were using American lend-lease equipment against the Indonesians, the SWP requested the Administration to demand the return of all these planes, tanks and guns. But this was not done.
Cannon’s July 1947 telegram was “processed through” the State Department. Norman Armour, Assistant Secretary of State, acknowledged at the time that the Dutch were actually using lend-lease equipment; that such use was specifically prohibited by the lend-lease agreement and that the State Department could invoke this “recapture” clause, if it so desired.
That it refused to do so became fully disclosed in a lengthy correspondence which then ensued between Cannon and the State Department. Instead; aid to the Dutch was continued and even hugely increased.
Repeating in his December 1948 telegram the demand that the U.S. government stop feeding and financing the Dutch military machine through the Marshall Plan, Cannon dismisses as a face-saving device the recent stoppage of ECA shipments to the Dutch East Indies. (This affects only $14 million out of total ECA allotments to the Dutch of nearly $300 million.)
The full text of Cannon’s telegram is printed below.
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