Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference), 1945, Volume I

Davies Papers

No. 221
Memorandum by the Chairman of the President’s War Relief Control Board (Davies)¹

[Washington,] July 3, 1945.

Memorandum on Foreign Policy

The foreign policy of any country is nothing more or less than setting rules to govern its relations with nations and peoples outside of its own borders. The purpose of these rules, whether the country be great or small, is to protect its people from the outside, and then to promote the general welfare of the world and the administration of justice, consistent with its own well-being.

The primary concern is to prevent physical invasion, attack, or enslavement—Freedom from Fear. The next purpose is to preserve the standard of living and the way of life of its own people—Freedom from Want, and other freedoms.

To implement the foregoing general concepts of our basic foreign policy, the following is suggested:

1. For the immediate future, the world threatens to be in a condition of ferment and instability. No nation, probably, will be willing to give up those protections which are required for its security against outside attack, until it is clearly established that the International Peace Organization and its Police Force will function to justly preserve the peace, and not be diverted to the destructive use of aggressors.

Our military and naval people know what the minimum requirements for such protections to our borders are. We should state clearly that [what?] our foreign policy is[.]

2. We should also clearly declare that the western hemisphere, and the nations thereof, are our natural friends and immediate neighbors, and that we will protect the inviolability of this continent.

3. We should declare that the fundamental spirit of our people is based upon the concepts of justice and liberty, and the Four Freedoms.² These personal liberties are limited only by the principle that such individual rights shall not encroach upon the safety or the rights of the community. The principle of our people and country is to live and let live. It desires friendly relations with all its neighbors.

4. We should declare that we desire no territory other than that which we have, and that we covet nothing of other nations.

5. We should declare that the foreign policy of this country is based upon the principle that agreements between nations on essential matters should be clearly and specifically defined; that once these agreements are made, the United States will scrupulously fulfill every obligation, and will expect others to do the same.

6. We should declare that the United States will not attempt to impose its political, religious, or social ideologies upon other peoples or nations. It concedes to each people the right to determine for themselves, under what conditions they wish to live, as determined by themselves, or “through whatever organ it thinks proper, whether King, Convention, Assembly, Committee, President, or anything else it may choose” (Thomas Jefferson).³ [It however demands that no aggressor shall impose by internal or external aggression—its ideologies upon other nations.⁴]

7. It is the policy of our government and our people to do all that we can, consistent with preserving our way of life, to afford others the abundance of life, which an intelligent administration of the world should provide.

1. In an interview with a Department of State historian on June 17, 1954, Davies identified this memorandum as one which probably accompanied copies of documents Nos. 33, 34, and 181 when those papers were transmitted to Byrnes on July 3, 1945.
2. Four “essential human freedoms” were enumerated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in an address to the Congress on January 6, 1941. For the text of his remarks on this subject, see Congressional Record, vol. 87, pt. 1, pp. 46–47.
3. The quotation is from an instruction of March 12, 1793, from the Secretary of State to the American Minister at Paris. Full text in Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1892–1899), vol. vi, p. 199.
4. The sentence in brackets is a manuscript addition.