Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1945-03-20
Oaks Plan Regarded
As Desirable Minimum

HS HOSII OOIC NlI1II1IIQIII
Observer Says COP Chiefs to
Seek Further Safeguard for Peace
By David Laurence
The criticisms heard about the Dunn
barton Oaks plan are by no means suf-
ficient to warrant defeat of ratification
by the United States Senate. Rather,
the Dumbarton Oaks plan is regarded
on Capitol Hill as a desirable minimum
and efforts will be made by Republican
leaders to influence the San Francisco
Conference toward maximum improve
ment-to go further to safeguard peace
The trend is toward more and not less
international collaboration and hence
the fight of the 1905 in the Senate is
not to be paralleled.
But 1t is important to note that what
has been published officially as the text
of the Dumbarton Oaks plan is not
really the charter or constitution at all
but merely set of principles. The
value of the plan will be better judged
when the conference sits down TO put
into statutory or charter language the
various obligations at present enumer-
ated only in the form of hopes and ex-
pressions of desirable detectives.
Thus the Dumbarton Oaks text fire.
quently declares that the security coun-
Gil should be empowered" and members
should do various things but this is
far different from the final language
which must state explicitly that, in
signing the treaty, member states are
obligated to do certain things or agree
to refrain from taking certain steps.
Hope or a Prohibition?
The fact that statutory language has
| not yet been drafted accounts to some
extent for the mlsinterpretation by
| critics or excessive claims of enthusiasts
SO often noted with respect to the Ian
| guage of the Dumbarton Oaks plan in
comparisons with the explicit provisions
of the League of Nations covenant
| The text of Dumbarton Oaks, for In
stance, expresses the belief that the
! members should not resort to force and
should submit their disputes to the Sc
| curity Council, but the statutory Ian
| guage in the old League covenant de-
| fines specifically this obligation of each
| member. All members of the old League
| agreed in the covenant to wait three
| months after League Council report on
dispute before resorting to war and
the Council was gwen at least six months
to investigate.
| The Dumbarton Oaks plan lists as
principle that members shall refrain
| from the threat or use of force" 1t
! will be interesting to see how this Is
| phrased in the final charter, whether
as hope or prohibition.
Likewise, in the old League a ma
| jority of the Council, irrespective of
whether all the big powers concurred,
could decide to publish the report and
recommendations on how to settle q
dispute in the hope, of course, of bring
ing publicity and moral force to bear
on a possible aggressor, and in such
decisions parties to the dispute were not
allowed to vote.
Under the new voting procedure
agreed on at Yalta, the five perma-
nent members of the Security Council
| of II must be unanimous without
counting the parties to the dispute
who are not allowed to vote. Clearly
here is chance for a constructive
amendment so as to give any majority
| of the II members of the council, apart
| from the disputants, an opportunity to
make public the recommendations as
an instrument of moral force in pre-
venting war.
These 'procedural" questions are Of
| paramount importance as any one who
observed the work Of the Geneva League
can testify. Governments seeking terri
torial or economic expansion will use
every procedural loophole not only to
get their own way but to prevent other
governments from interfering.
| Loopholes Deplored.
The threat to world peace in Ethiopia
and Manchuria and the long delays in
getting League action in those contro-
versies illustrate the capacity for mis-
use of even so comprehensive a ma
chinery as the covenant provided. Re-
form, therefore, might well come in
the direction of Tightening up the loop
holes left by the old league practices.
That is why the creation of even more
loopholes, as the vague language of
the Dumbarton Oaks principles GER
tainly permits, will be deplored
The assumption that a big nation
that wants to disregard peace will do
SO anyhow is a truism. But in mo-
bilizing free men to fight an aggressor
state, the making of a record which
clearly outlines wrong behavior and
places the blame squarely on an ag-
gressor for refusal to follow the pub
lished recommendations of an impartial
tribunal helps immeasrably the cause
of the victims of aggression.
1t is important that no procedural
process shall be allowed which can
keep a question affecting peace from
being investigated by the Security
Council, and there should be a re-
quirement too that no nation shall
use force at least until nine months
after the dispute has been submitted
to the Council. This Is in line with
many treaties which the United States
has signed, beginning in 1918. The prin-
ciple of cooling OF" period has been
widely recognized as constructive,
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