Letter to President Harry S. Truman from James Drury

# Cable Address: "ENEMU," N. Y. R National Maritime Union of America DEPARTMENT SEA-INLAND Affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations C.1.0. NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS "N.M.U.OFF 346 WEST 17th STREET New York, N. Y. SAN FRANCISCO BRANCH 91 DRUMM STREET - GA. 3807 San Francisco, California June 7, 1945 The President White House Washington, D. C. Honorable Sir: We applaud your recent appointments to your Cabinet, particularly that of Judge Shwellenback to the post of Secretary of Labor. For this, for your advoaacy for increased unemployment benefits to war workers; the extension of social security benefits to include merchant seamon; your determined fight to enact the principles of the Fair Employment Practices Committee into legislation; your ex- pressed determination to secure full employment in the present and post-war periods, we, the members of the San Francisco Branch of the National Maritime Union, commend you. At the same time, we view with disquiet and unease the apparent surrender of the leadership of the American delegation to the United Nations Conference to Senator Vandenberg, whose past record is one of consistent opposition to the policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the interests of the nation. We are frankly alarmed at the dispaly of power politics indulged in by the U. S. delegation in behalf of fasoist Argentina. We are distrubed by the invitation to Herbert Hoover, advocate of a soft peace with a defeated fascism, to consult with you on the feeding of the European peoples. The drift of United States policy away from that worked out by the Big Three at Teheran and Yalta, away from the program of the late great Franklin D. Roosevelt, architect of the United Nations Conference, fills us with apprehension. We want world peace, peace with honor and, the firm, unswerving and quick punishment of war criminals. We want fascism, wherever it may be uprooted and utterly destroyed. We want full employment and full provisions for workers during reconversion. We want independence of colonial peoples. It is our considered opinion that you, Mr. President, are qualified to lead the nation, drifting dangerously from the policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, back to the path of peace, prosperity and good will, at home as well as abroad. 101 "WE KEEP 'EM SAILING"