Editorial Note
A Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held hearings, July 5–7, 1950, on Senate Resolution 243, introduced in the Senate on March 22, 1950, by Senator William Benton of Connecticut and 12 other Senators. The resolution called for a greatly expanded program of information and education among all the peoples of the world with a view to resisting successfully Communist propaganda in the “contest for the minds and loyalties of men.” The resolution called for the “international propagation of the democratic creed” by the development of a “Marshall plan in the field of ideas.” Secretary of State Acheson was the first of a distinguished list of witnesses who testified before the Subcommittee on behalf of the resolution. For the text of Resolution 243 and of the Secretary of State’s statement of July 5 in which he reviewed Communist propaganda methods and objectives and indicated briefly the steps being taken in the “Campaign of Truth” called for by the President, see Department of State Bulletin, July 17, 1950, pages 100–102. Other persons testifying on behalf of the resolution were: General George C. Marshall, former Secretary of State and former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army; General Dwight D. Eisenhower, wartime Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, and President of Columbia University; former Senator John Foster Dulles, Consultant to the Secretary of State; Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Barrett; Lieutenant General Walter B. Smith, former Ambassador to the Soviet Union; former Presidential adviser Bernard Baruch; RCA Chairman Sarnoff; Senators Benton, Herbert H. Lehman of New York, Robert C. Hendrickson of New Jersey, Karl E. Mundt of South Dakota, and Wayne Morse of Oregon.