Message to the President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, U.S.S.R., Transmitting a Resolution Expressing American Friendship.

I HAVE the honor of transmitting to you a resolution adopted by the Congress of the United States with a request that its contents be made known by your government to the people of the Soviet Union.

This resolution expresses the friendship and goodwill of the American people for all the peoples of the earth and it also re-emphasizes the profound desire of the American Government to do everything in its power to bring about a just and lasting peace.

As Chief Executive of the United States, I give this resolution my sincere approval. I add to it a message of my own to the Soviet people in the earnest hope that these expressions may help form a better understanding of the aims and purposes of the United States.

The unhappy results of the last few years demonstrate that formal diplomatic negotiations among nations will be largely barren while barriers exist to the friendly exchange of ideas and information among peoples. The best hope for a peaceful world lies in the yearning for peace and brotherhood which lies deep in the heart of every human being. But peoples who are denied the normal means of communication will not be able to attain that mutual understanding which must form the basis for trust and friendship. We shall never be able to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war until communication is permitted to flow, free and open, across international boundaries.

The peoples of both our countries know from personal experience the horror and misery of war. They abhor the thought of future conflict which they know would be waged by means of the most hideous weapons in the history of mankind. As leaders of their respective governments, it is our sacred duty to pursue every honorable means which will bring to fruition their common longing for peace. Peace is safest in the hands of the people and we can best achieve the goal by doing all we can to place it there.

I believe that if we can acquaint the Soviet people with the peace aims of the American people and government, there will be no war.

I feel sure that you will wish to have carried to the Soviet people the text of this resolution adopted by the American Congress.

HARRY S. TRUMAN

[His Excellency Nikolai Mikhailovich Shvernik, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics]