George Catlett Marshall speaks to the colonial nature of the Zionist entity (1950)

George Catlett Marshall: this twin anniversary of the birthday of your great leader, Dr. Weissman, and the anniversary of the decision of the United Nations some three years ago. I believe all the friendly people of the world were deeply touched by the drama of the return of the children of Israel to their promised land, and a return which was made great courage and determination, and a powerful purpose and will to succeed. It carried with it pioneers who entered into the problem of development and settlement of very desolate lands in a most remarkable manner. I find that automatically I always turn in my own mind to events in the history of in order to measure an appreciation of somewhat similar events that are occurring. And in thinking of the three short years of existence, the sovereign state of Israel, I look back to refresh my mind as to the first three years of our country under its present constitution, which began in 1789. They were years beset with difficult, baffling problems literally every kind. And at the end of the three-year period, this being the end of the three-year period of the life of the sovereign state of Israel, in this country, in 1792, there were frontier difficulties of tremendous importance. Along the Great Lakes, there were military ports that had not yet been evacuated by our recent opponent in the Revolutionary War. The Treaty of Peace was still two years distant. three years after we started in business, as it were. In the South, Spain was contesting for frontiers, and was also contesting with us the right to the navigation of the Mississippi River. This is the end of the first three years of our struggle into our present position in the world. There were areas greatly disturbed by Indian uprising, and there were every conceivable problem of currency and Taxes, tariffs, pensions, a world of other difficulties. So against that background, when I try to measure in my mind what has occurred in the State of Israel, I think truly remarkable progress has been made. You have had great problems of political, economical, and sociological nature. and many others that remain to be overcome before you approach the ideal of those who have built up this great prospect. Dr. Wiseman, in whose honor this dinner is occurring tonight, I first came to know in Washington in the very depressing, dangerous year of 1942. And as I recall, I was introduced to him by a gentleman who just introduced me tonight, the then Secretary of the Treasury. Dr. Wiseman had come to this country to add his voice to the urgent request of the British Parliament, the British leaders, for assistance in materiel to meet the threat to the Middle East, Cairo in particular, of rum in Africa. We had very little to offer then. We were in dire, dire necessity of materiel for our army that we were attempting to build up. However, we managed to scrape together some important materiel and dispatch it with all possible speed to the Middle East. The fact that a victory was won was an ample, powerful reward for whatever we were able to do at the time. I might interject here this comment, or this additional comment that I've made a number of times recently. This seems to be in the present situation just where I came in before. And when I'm talking about materiel, the same pressures, the same necessities, urgent, now exist again. And I am on the recipient end of the request. very little change in many respects. However, I think many have forgotten the very honorable and courageous part that was taken by Ulysses, the Jews, and Palestine in the fighting that occurred at that time. And how much was done from Palestine by the Jews of that region to assist and contribute to the general effort to suppress the Nazis. And further than that, the numerous acts of really greatest gallantry of the members of the race who parachute in the rear of the Nazi lines to carry out the most dangerous possible mission. All of that is a part of history. You have to be forgotten in the present struggles. But it all goes into the makeup and towards the future development of a nation which will build up in strength, I feel certain, to resist communist aggressors to maintain its peace in that region and to make a very genuine contribution in the world towards peace and security generally, I hope, in conquering the remaining preliminary difficulties of national life that the State of Israel will early arrive, that degree of independence where it can sustain itself out of itself and where its prosperity will enable it to raise the standard of living of its people to the point that it would desire And along with that prosperity will come benevolence and attitude, which will enable them to forget the scars of the strife and tribulations leading up to the organization of the state and would lead to the contribution of their great developments to the other regions nearby who are in so much need of the same general developments. In the main, to produce productive lands where now it is arid That brings me to the main purpose, I understand, of this dinner tonight, this gathering, which is for your three higher schools, and in one of which I have particular interest. It lies in the Institute of Science, where I understand very special efforts are being made to develop a technique for understanding or the ability to convert our districts into bountiful black. I know you are all intensely, I'd say desperately, interested in the events in I am restrained from making very general comments because of the fact that the issues are now under immediate consideration here in your neighborhood at Lake Success. It would be most inappropriate for me to be commenting at any length as to the details of the various points of view. The situation is critical. We must do everything we can to get it in hand. I'm sure everything will be done. intense interest to the consideration and decision, action, standing of the United Nations. The force in Korea consists of representatives of a great many countries. Our own United States troops naturally are the larger part, along with these recently organized Korean units. And they've all suffered throughout the campaign very heavily in casualties, both battle casualties and other casualties, incidents. particular characteristics of that campaign, both as to its movements and as to terrain. All of this, the tension that has been created in the world by the incidents that have developed there, by the actual fact of the invasion of South Korea, has produced a very critical issue for us here and for all the world. Our Congress has just come into session. It will be necessary for them to consider immediately certain measures. to enable us in this country to carry out the measures that seem urgently required at this particular time. We are very much in need of an intelligent understanding on the part of the public as to just what the situation is as to ourselves and as to our abilities, our capabilities, I should say, at this time and what is needed from the Congress of the United States and the administration. I'm going to take a moment of your time to try to make several points that I regard of great importance clear to you, if I can. In the first place, we're in a situation which is different, I believe, from any in which we've ever been situated here before. And it imposes something for which we were not prepared. I'm talking about what we call a partial mobilization. Out of the average person, it would seem a very simple proposition that if you've been on the basis of either peace on the one side or total mobilization for war on the other, a simple proposition to scale down the ladder to a temporary mobilization point. This is not at all so. It is an intensely complicated and difficult proceeding and requires the action in a great many particulars of the Congress of the United States. Our laws... The regulations going out of those laws pertaining to what is the largest part of any defensive force that we have, civilian components, are based on a peacetime setting or a full war mobilization. Never anticipated those laws. We would have a long period of tension in which we tear men away from their homes, their families, their business, and go along. We do not know how long. It's quite evident. It's quite evident that at the very best, we're faced By a long period of tension, all the agreements in the world that we seek to get, that we're trying most earnestly to get, we could not accept them all in the moment and then abandon our defensive posture. We have to wait until good faith is demonstrated. So I say at the very best, we have to face a long period of tension. That is something the American public has never been called upon to do. We had a tension, a tension in 1900. and 39, and 40, and 41. But it is a tension during which there was a world war, and all of Europe was swamped, as you know, so tragically, pertaining to the Jewish race in particular. And yet in the midst of that attention, in the midst of the measures we took, which actually were a full mobilization, both as to men and as to materiel, we only saved those forces by a single vote in August of 1941. Now we're facing a tension which we hope and pray will not involve any great destructive war such as was going on at that time. Now, how does our public respond to that? That is, now we're involved in procedure of a partial mobilization, a setting which must lend itself automatically and almost instantly to full mobilization if that become necessary, but which at the moment, I would think, would be ill-advised. Now, how do we go about How do we set up such a procedure that the American public will continue to accept and to support? I have used the word enduring. We've got to have something that is enduring that the public will continue to support, even though they're not the great excitements, the great tragedies that bring about an emotional rise for the moment. We mustn't create mountains and then slough off into valleys again. Everybody is unanimous. I think there's complete unanimity. in the feeling that we must immediately build up our strength, that we must immediately build up our strength, and we must be very careful not to set up a mountain which we will inevitably just slough off into a valley of weeds. We must find an enduring method that pertains to the material properties. Putting it briefly, we must have a setting that is rapidly expandable. That means the assembly lines of a nature and the tools and the dyes and the jigs and everything of that sort that will enable us quickly to increase production as it is needed, and not just set about building up great piles of things, you might say, in the numbers, and then having them grow obsolescent or productive facilities, becoming items because everything has been passed down. Now the same applies to Maine. Great standing forces in this country? We've never had them, except in the state of full mobilization in 1941. And then we almost lost them, right in the middle of the great crisis. We almost lost the Maine. We have to have some system that will endure as to the support of the American public. We must know what is required in such a system. And it must be of such a nature that it provides the reserves that you need almost instantly to prepare to act, and yet is of such a nature that it doesn't beggar us connection. I can illustrate that a little bit by what happened in Korea. I can talk rather frankly about that because I was not a part of it. I didn't come into the government until the effort of the Northern Koreans had collapsed because of the landing near Seoul. In fact, I came in, I think, about 10 days, two weeks, three weeks after that. So I was not a party to this. What actually happened was a dilemma that approached the catastrophic because we did not have available trained reserves. I'm not talking about numerous divisions. I'm talking about men, individuals. We only had four divisions in Japan, and of course those were the first moved into Korea. And it was quite a time after that before any other troops came to their assistance, other than the South Koreans themselves. Those four divisions were at about half strength. But if they had been at full strength, it would have been about 72,000 men. And as a fact, the General McAuliffe had to put into their ranks of those American units 30,000 South Koreans. We took 17 weeks during the war to train replacements, individuals. And that was about a 12-hour day In fact, I received many complaints from individuals, from parents, and from leaders in the political life. But this was two strangers in a matter of 17 weeks, and it was thought to be too little. They had to put 30,000 Koreans into a 72,000 organization with three weeks training. They had to create South Korean divisions in four weeks. Some of our divisions were two years in government shape to send to Europe. Our Selective Service Act, which is, in effect, a compulsory service act, produces the authority, but is afflicted with the number of deferreds under the law, under the regulations, which limit very decidedly the number of men that can be called. Certain changes in that, I think, will have to be made, and I don't anticipate much difficulty in their being made. But I was rather interested, perhaps brought to my attention, in relation to this gathering tonight, that apparently, historically, Moses... was the architect of compulsory service. However, this amused me a little bit as I'll explain later why. He had deferments that would not be at all acceptable today. In the first place, he deferred, he let out all those weak in spirit, quite evidently feeling that there were not too many of them and they wouldn't be worth much anyway. He deferred the builder of the house if he had not yet dedicated. He deferred even The young man who was patrolled to the young lady but had not yet taken her over. And I was thinking then, and this was brought to my attention, of the immediate problem of the new Assistant Secretary of Defense, your protege, Anna Rosenberg. When I left her today, she was in the middle of the struggle of deferment since she was disagreed completely with Moses. We were suffering from the affliction of the firmament. I might say in regard to her that she's already done very fine work and is on the way to do a very splendid work. I have known her and been aware of her ability, personality, her courage, her necessary toughness, and the fact that quite evidently she was the leading individual in this country in relation to manpower. There's some surprise when her name was put forward. There's less surprise now around the penny. I've been sorry to learn that there have been various rumors and allegations as to the influences and all that put Anna Rosenberg in office. Now the truth is that I selected her because she quite evidently to me was the leading The individual I knew of to do what I found was a very impressive and very difficult job. Because I found on my back five, at least, different sections of the Pentagon coming at me in relation to manpower. Manpower for the military forces. Manpower through the munitions borders to industry. Manpower in relation to the various personnels that we had outside of the fighting force. Manpower in relation to the scientists, to the engineers, to the doctors, all of these various things. And in relation to the National Guard, in relation to the Reserve Corps. It was a phantasmagoria of various influences and connections with manpower. She seemed to be the person. I didn't consult anybody. So she came into office in the Defense Department in a very critical operation and at a very critical time to her own ability, pure and simple.