UN General Assembly
1949

101. But all those issues really belonged to the periphery of the contemporary world situation. The heart of the matter was the great ideological conflict. A world that had amazingly shrunk was endeavouring to house at the same time two radically contradictory conceptions of reality. There was no agreement whatsoever, not even a distant hope of agreement, with regard to the ultimate categories. Man, matter, the individual, the soul, government, democracy, history, truth, God — all those ultimate things had utterly different meanings as between the East and the West. There were only three possibilities. The radical conflict would persist; or a reconciliation would be effected; or the difference of ideologies would break out into armed conflict. It was the function of the United Nations to promote the second possibility or at least to prevent the third.