UN General Assembly
1946

This is as it should be, and as far as lies in our power it could not be otherwise. In the past, wars have been waged on a great variety of pretexts and with many different objectives in view; but whether it was territorial conquest, the defence of a religious creed, the maintenance of a status quo or the propagation of a certain political ideology which brought men to the battlefields, it is certain that the last war alone was indisputably a war to ensure world peace, a war in which the democracies were obliged, against their will, to take an active part. But a war to bring about the millenium, the ideal of peace in a new world order, must, of necessity, entail obligations which the previous wars did not impose upon all the nations. This was the reason why, before hostilities had ceased, the San Francisco Conference was convened in order to lay the foundations and proclaim the Charter of the United Nations.