[Peace-discuss] RE: [Peace] FW: SPAM: Rice, Not Bombs!

[Kranich, Kimberlie]

Hey, all.

Thanks for that information, Jim. I see now that "we" cannot prove that the
rice sent to the President in the 1950s made a difference as claimed in the
email encouraging people to send rice to the President Bush.  

However, I will still be sending my rice. I like the idea and its a good
complement to the numerous other nonviolent actions for peace that I have
been engaging in for the past several months. I know of others locally who
have already sent their rice with no problems.  And I have added "please
hand cancel" on my envelope.

By the way, Janet Chisholm from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which
initiated the rice campaign of the 1950s, will appear on "Focus 580" on
WILL-AM at 11am on February 20. The show that day will focus on the power of
active nonviolence.

People might want to call up and ask her questions, generally, and about the
rice campaigns then and now specifically.

Kimberlie


-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Buell [mailto:jbuell at prairienet.org]
Sent: Friday, February 14, 2003 2:30 PM
To: Kranich, Kimberlie
Cc: peace-discuss at lists.groogroo.com
Subject: Re: [Peace] FW: SPAM: Rice, Not Bombs!


At 02:12 PM 2/14/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>All,
>
>If you ask people to send rice, you might want to ask them to write "Please
>hand stamp" on the outside of the envelope to avoid the problem described
>below.
>
>Kimberlie

>...


Hi Kim & all. Thought you might want to know the following regarding the 
rice protest. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, just that the history ain't 
as advertised. This is from the definitive hoax-debunking website, Snopes - 
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/rice.asp .

BTW, at least one rice letter attracted some attention from campus cops in 
Montana - spotted this linked from Tom Tomorrow's weblog at 
www.thismodernworld.com (a highly recommended site, by the way). See: 
http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2003/02/05/news/bushletterbzbigs.t
xt 
("MSU student's letter to Bush causes ruckus on campus")

peace,
Jim

>Claim: Bags of rice sent to President Eisenhower helped dissuade him from 
>launching an attack against China.
>
>Status: False.
>
>Examples: [Collected on the Internet, 2003]
....
>Although the current "Rice for Peace" campaign is a sincere effort aimed 
>at heading off a war between the USA and Iraq, the premise on which it is 
>based is false. The anecdote reproduced above, about the Fellowship of 
>Reconciliation's (FOR) waging a similar campaign in the 1950's which 
>supposedly influenced President Eisenhower's decision not to wage 
>(nuclear) war against China during the political crises over the islands 
>of Quemoy and Matsu in 1954-55 and 1958-59, is taken from David H. 
>Albert's 1985 book, People Power: Applying Nonviolence Theory. However, 
>Albert's book includes no annotations or footnotes to indicate from where 
>he obtained the information that the 'Feed Thine Enemy' campaign 
>influenced Eisenhower's thinking and to explain how peace activists 
>"learned a decade later that the campaign played a significant, perhaps 
>even determining role in preventing nuclear war." Presumably, Albert's 
>source was a 1974 interview with Alfred Hassler, the general secretary of 
>the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, as published in the FOR's 
>house magazine, Fellowship:
>
>Do you remember FOR's campaign in '54 and '55? There's a story we haven't 
>told very often because it was told to us in great confidence -- but that 
>was nearly twenty years ago.
>
>There was a famine in China, extremely grave. We urged people to send 
>President Eisenhower small sacks of grain with the message, 'If thine 
>enemy hunger, feed him. Send surplus food to China.' The surplus food, in 
>fact, was never sent. On the surface, the project was an utter failure.
>
>But then - quite by accident - we learned from someone on Eisenhower's 
>press staff that our campaign was discussed at three separate cabinet 
>meetings. Also discussed at each of these meetings was a recommendation 
>from the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the United States bomb mainland China 
>in response to the Quemoy-Matsu crisis.
>
>At the third meeting the president turned to a cabinet member responsible 
>for the Food for Peace program and asked, 'How many of those grain bags 
>have come in?' The answer was 45,000, plus tens of thousands of letters.
>
>Eisenhower's response was that if that many Americans were trying to find 
>a conciliatory solution with China, it wasn't the time to bomb China. The 
>proposal was vetoed
>While this interview does provide an identifiable source for the 
>information, it is also a single, unverifiable, third-hand account 
>obtained from an anonymous source and not disclosed until twenty years 
>after the fact, and as such its probative value is quite marginal. The 
>anecdote as given appears to be a garbled account of a 1954 effort 
>undertaken by the Fellowship of Reconciliation to have small bags of wheat 
>(not rice) sent to the White House for the purpose of prompting the 
>Eisenhower administration to undertake relief efforts on behalf of China, 
>where a catastrophic flood on the Yangtze River had left thousands 
>homeless and hungry. Nothing in contemporary news accounts of the 1955 
>'Feed Thine Enemy' effort mentions the campaign's being tied to an 
>anti-war cause -- the issue was that since China had declined aid from 
>international relief organizations (such as the Red Cross) and would not 
>allow private voluntary organizations from the "free world" into the 
>country to supervise the distribution of food and other supplies, the 
>Fellowship of Reconciliation's director felt that the U.S. government 
>should extend a "no strings attached" offer of assistance to the Chinese 
>government.
>
>As The New York Times reported in March 1955:
>
>The Administration has another wheat problem.
>
>This time it is hundreds of bags of wheat. They are tiny bags, weighing 
>about two ounces, and are addressed to President Eisenhower at the White 
>House.
>
>The bags carry the inscription: "If Thine Enemy Hunger, Feed Him." In 
>smaller letters are the words: "Send Surplus Food to China."
>
>The bags are being mailed to the White House from all over the country. 
>They come from citizens who have responded to the appeal of the Fellowship 
>of Reconciliation, 21 Audubon Avenue, Manhattan.
>
>This organization started its drive for the Administration to heed St. 
>Paul's injunction and send surplus foodstuffs to Red China after the 
>Yangtze River flood of last summer. The flood left thousands homeless and 
>in need.
...
>The Fellowship['s director, Alfred Hassler] stated that an offer "with no 
>political strings attached" would be hard for the Peiping Government to 
>refuse.
>
>The organization also said that distribution should be left to the Chinese 
>Government "even though we might feel that we could do it better, and even 
>though we fear that some food might be diverted to other ends."
>
>"Part of the world problem America faces is the suspicion on the part of 
>Asians and others that we think we can do everything better than they," 
>the fellowship said.
>
>That the Red Chinese Government had not asked for aid is "hardly 
>significant," Mr. Hassler wrote.
>
>"On the other hand," he said, "the fact that the United States has offered 
>help freely to 'friendly' nations stricken by similar disasters but not to 
>China, is significant."
>Herbert L. Pankratz, a helpful archivist at the US National Archives and 
>Records Administration (NARA), provided additional corroborating 
>information via e-mail:
>Report re the Fellowship of Reconciliation Food for China Campaign and the 
>Formosa Straits Crises of 1954-55 and 1958
>
>The Fellowship of Reconciliation was an organization of religious 
>pacifists whose leaders and members contacted the White House on numerous 
>occasions advocating giving food to the USSR, opposing military aid to 
>Pakistan, favoring clemency for the Rosenbergs, opposing the rearming of 
>West Germany, urging clemency for Communists convicted under the Smith 
>Act, opposing nuclear tests in the Pacific, favoring clemency for Japanese 
>war criminals, and opposing the sending of spy planes over Russia. This 
>organization had also supported efforts of the U.S. Government to send 
>food aid to East Germany and Hungary.
>
>In 1954 China suffered major flooding along the Yangtze River in some of 
>its key rice-growing areas. Life magazine (8-23-54) even ran an editorial 
>favoring the concept of food aid to Communist China. In late 1954 the 
>Fellowship of Reconciliation began a campaign to get people to send small 
>bags of wheat (not rice) to the President in order to get our government 
>interested in giving food to the Chinese. People started sending bags to 
>the President in late 1954 and continued during early 1955. The New York 
>Times (3-6-55) reported that hundreds of bags of wheat kernels, each 
>weighing about 2 ounces, had been sent to the White House. The bags were 
>inscribed with a Bible verse, "If Thine Enemy Hunger, Feed Him" and the 
>statement, "Send Surplus Food to China." The Times article indicates that 
>the White House sent the bags to the Foreign Operations Administration for 
>a response. F.O.A. Administrator Harold Stassen noted that they had sent 
>out over 4,500 such responses. The letters to individuals who had sent in 
>a bag of wheat reminded them of some Cold War realities. The International 
>Red Cross had offered assistance to China but had been turned down. In 
>addition, the Chinese government was continuing to export food to the 
>Soviet Union and other countries to fulfill trade agreements while their 
>own people suffered.
>
>There is no indication in our files or in the New York Times article that 
>this food for China campaign was intended as a protest against the 
>possibility of the U.S. going to war with Communist China. It appears that 
>it was strictly a humanitarian effort.
>
>There is a small note in the file on the Fellowship of Reconciliation 
>which indicates that it was considered a "subversive" organization. A lot 
>of the correspondence from its leaders to the President was referred to 
>the Protective Research Section of the Secret Service. With this 
>classification, justified or not, there is virtually no likelihood that 
>the President would have paid any attention to any bags of wheat or 
>letters sent in by this organization or its members.
>
>Communist Chinese forces threatened the Nationalist-held island of Quemoy 
>and Matsu on two occasions, September 1954-March 1955 and August-September 
>1958. During both of these crises various military and civilian advisers 
>advocated the use of atomic weapons if war broke out and the U.S. had to 
>intervene. President Eisenhower, while acknowledging the fact that the 
>U.S. would need to use the ultimate weapon if full-scale war with China 
>occurred, indicated that Congress and our allies would have to be 
>consulted first. He continued to work for peaceful solutions which would 
>avoid U.S. involvlement in an Asian war.
>
>We have checked summaries of discussion and memoranda of conversation for 
>various meetings Eisenhower had with military advisers and the National 
>Security Council and have found no references to the bags of wheat or food 
>for China campaign. There is no documentation in our files to support the 
>story that the bags of wheat influenced Eisenhower's decisions during the 
>Formosa Straits crisis. The documents reveal that Eisenhower made his 
>decisions based on his understanding of the strategic and diplomatic 
>considerations as well as on intelligence reports and military options. An 
>account of Eisenhower's handling of the Formosa Straits crises can be 
>found in the book, Eisenhower: The President by Stephen E. Ambrose (Simon 
>and Schuster, 1984).
>The account of the Formosa Strait crises provided in the aforementioned 
>book (by historian Stephen Ambrose) makes it clear that Eisenhower never 
>had any intention of "bombing mainland China" or launching a pre-emptive 
>nuclear strike against the Communist Chinese; no "Food for China" campaign 
>could possibly have been instrumental in dissuading him against choosing 
>options he was never considering in the first place. Moreover, it's simply 
>wrong to assert that a "Food for China" campaign prompted Eisenhower to 
>decide that "he certainly wasn't going to consider using nuclear weapons 
>against [the Chinese]," as he had already publicly stated that he most 
>definitely would use them if the Communist Chinese invaded Quemoy and
Matsu:
>
>At Eisenhower's March 16 [1955] news conference, Charles von Fremd of CBS 
>asked him to comment on [Secretary of State] Dulles' assertion that in the 
>event of war in the Far East, "we would probably want to make use of some 
>tactical nuclear weapons." Eisenhower was unusually direct in his answer: 
>"Yes, of course they would be used." He explained, "In any combat where 
>these things can be used on strictly military targets and for strictly 
>military purposes, I see no reason why they shouldn't be used just exactly 
>as you would use a bullet or anything else."
>Even if Eisenhower were aware of the "Food for China" campaign, and even 
>if he made the comment attributed to him (which might have been offered in 
>jest, for all we know), it would be a very large stretch of the truth to 
>claim that his decision-making was influenced by mailed-in bags of wheat, 
>because the situation never developed to the point where he had to make 
>decisions. His strategy throughout the Formosa Strait crises was to hold 
>back until circumstances forced him to act, and they never did:
>
>Eisenhower's handling of the Quemoy-Matsu crisis was a tour de force, one 
>of the great triumphs of his long career. The key to his success was his 
>deliberate ambiguity and deception. As Robert Devine writes, "The beauty 
>of Eisenhower's policy is that to this day no one can be sure whether or 
>not he would have responded militarily to an invasion of the offshore 
>islands, and whether he would have used nuclear weapons." The full truth 
>is that Eisenhower himself did not know. In retrospect, what stands out 
>about Eisenhower's crisis management is that at every stage he kept his 
>options open. Flexibility was one of his chief characteristics as Supreme 
>Commander in World War II; as President, he insisted on retaining that 
>flexibility. He never knew himself just how he would respond to an 
>invasion of Quemoy and Matsu, because he insisted on waiting to see the 
>precise nature of the attack before deciding to react. What he did know 
>was that when the moment of decision came, he would have the maximum 
>number of options to choose from.