NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 417 



Furthemiore little assistance can be expected from the rest of the nations of 

 the world. Only Russia and the United States have adequate scientific, tech- 

 nological, and economic resources with which to mount a meaninsful attack on 

 this new environment. As noted above I do not consider it prudent for the 

 United States to rely upon Russia for these purposes. 



The other factor of the ocean environment that is exceedingly puzzling to 

 landsmen is the common property nature of the ocean and its resources. Most 

 of us are used to owning a piece of property and developing its uses to our 

 satisfaction. Our whole land society, government, and institutions is based 

 predominantly upon the private, or at least the governmental, ownership of area 

 and resources. From this has built the prudent husbanding of property and 

 resources by the individual or government to increase their economic yield or 

 the social satisfaction to be derived from them. 



All of this is changed in the ocean. Under existing international law 70 

 percent of the earth's surface belongs to everybody (or to nobody, whichever way 

 you wish to view it). This applies to the area, to the contained resources, and 

 (as yet) to the bottom. 



There is presently a surge of fervor among mining people particularly for the 

 assurance of ownership of resources before investing money in their extraction. 

 This is reflected in a certain fervor in the Congress that the law of the sea 

 should he changed. 



The trouble is that the Congress can legislate only in respect of what citizens 

 of the United States may do on the high seas, and not with respect to what the 

 ciizens of any other sovereign may do there. The will of the Congress in respect 

 of what others may do on the high seas can be implemented only by force of 

 arms or by persuasion through normal diplomatic channels. The law of the 

 sea, in practice, can be changed only by agreement among all of the 115 sovereign 

 owners of it. Each of these has one vote, exactly as weighty as that of the 

 United States. Experience during the past decade indicates that they have 

 many different concepts as to how the high seas and its resources should be used 

 than does the United States and that all aspects of the law of the sea are inter- 

 acting as is the ocean. A change one place in the law of the sea which is desired 

 by the United States may well bring a change in another part which could be 

 critical to U.S. interest. 



The Congress has not yet hrought itself to face realistically the fundamental 

 bearing of this common property nature of the high seas upon the institutional 

 problems we have before us in the successful occupation and use of the ocean. 

 All of the governing activity respecting the high seas has a heavy international 

 component, and most are entirely international. Our governmental institutions 

 have been built to deal with land-oriented, private-property controlled problems. 

 This has been reflected in our organization of international government in the 

 United Nations family, the OAS, and other regional bodies in which we have 

 an interest. These land-oriented institutions simply will not work successfully 

 in the ocean-oriented common property problems which we now have coming 

 before us. 



It is not possible for us to handle the governmental problems of the high seas 

 except by international institutions. It is not possible for us to create the 

 required international institutions until our own domestic governmental institu- 

 tions are adjusted so that we can approach these ocean-oriented problems 

 rationally within our own government. 



PROTEIN MALNUTRITION 



There is no remaining scourge of humanity so general and having such great 

 social and economic impact in the world as protein malnutrition. Over half of 

 the human population of the world presently gets insufficient daily protein intake 

 in its diet to maintain the human body in normal physical and mental health and 

 vigor. This is the root cause of lassitude, disease, and slowness of development 

 in the nonindustrialized world. It is the largest single killer of preschool chil- 

 dren on a world basis. Shipping all the wheat, corn, and rice from the Great 

 Plains and other cornucopia's to these peoples that they can eat will not solve 

 this problem. What must be had is protein, and a sizable component must be 

 animal protein which has the proper proportions of amino acids required to keep 

 the human body in health. 



The corpmittee can be provided with irrefutable evidence that the ocean is pro- 

 ducing each year more animal protein than a great deal larger than present hu- 

 man population could possibly use but most of it dies and goes to waste back in 



