The Wilmington morning star., 1945-04-02
Today And Tomorrow
International Voting
BY WALTER LIPPMANN


The arguments about who is to vote and
how the votes are to be counted has now
spread from the security council to the gen.
eral assembly, It is beginning to resemble the
row between the two old boys on the park
bench which broke out because the one said
he would buy a yacht and the other said
damned nonsense, he would buy a brewery,
if he found million dollars lying loose in
the street. The argument aboute voting would
in fact be important if among the nations
great and binding decisions could be made
that way. In an international society of SOW
ereign states there can be no such thing as
majority rule on the issue of war and peace
The action of sovereign states has to be
by voluntary agreement in which the nations
called upon to act are unanimous.
This is plain enough when we consider
the criticism made by or on behalf of the
smaller powers. There is complaint that a
great power may not only veto international
action against itself but that another great
power, not party to the dispute, may also
veto international action. 1t is an astonishing
complaint. For how can any one have sup
posed that the United States or Great Britain
would let majority composed of seven or
eight small nations vote them into a great
war, say with China or with the Soviet
Union. What makes the complaint altogether
absurd is that it is being voiced by men who
do not wish to give the President the power
to engage the armed forces of the United
States, yet somehow or other they wish to
give seven other governments the power to
do it.
There Is another complaint, a much more
real one, made by the so-called middle powers,
Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium,
Brazil and Mexico. It is that, as outlined at
Dumbarton Oaks, it would seem as if they could
be committed to fight by the five great powers,
plus two smaller ones which happened to be
temporary members of the council. Now these
middle powers have almost all of them done
real fighting in this war, quite as much in
proportion to their resources and man power
as any one else. They know that if there is
going to be another great conflict they will
surely be in the thick of it as full combatants.
So they are asking quite rightly if majority
made up Of other governments is to have the
power to order their sons into battle.
The inevitable answer to this question is no.
only the Canadian government can order Cana
dian troops into battle just as only the United
States government can order American troops.
It does not matter what is the voting pro-
cedure, who is supposed to be a permanent
or temporary member or who in fact hap
cision is to be made which requires Canadian
troops to carry it out, only the voluntary con-
sent Of the Canadian government can make
that decision effective. Even if a treaty were
drafted under which governments agreed to
abide by majority rule in matters of this
sort, the agreement would be worthless. Men
just will not risk their lives in cause which
their own government has disapproved. That
lis why in serious matters there can be no
such thing among nations as voting and be-
ing outvoted.
For this reason the best voting system would
have been to have no voting system, and thus
to have recognized clearly at the outset, that
except on procedural questions and issues that
do not involve force vital interest, the idea
of majority rule is an illusion.
It rests on deeper illusion, which the
authors of the American Constitution exposed
clearly, namely that in league of sovereign
states, the strong members can coerce one
another. Here, unfortunately, we are repeat
ing and not correcting the error of the Geneva
league, at least the general public has been
taught to understand Dumbarton Oaks. For
it is generally believed that we are forming
an organization in which all the members
watch each other, and stand ready to band
together to coerce one another. But it will be
as true at San Francisco in 1915 as it was
in Philadelphia in 1887 when George Mason of
Virginia said it, that punishment could not
in the nature of things be executed on the
states collectively or when Hamilton said
that "a failure of compliance will never be
confined to single state" and would mean,
therefore, not a police action but general
war.
The Dumbarton Oaks plan rightly under
stood, is not another version of league to en-
force peace. 1t is a proposal, immense in its
promise, to preserve in time of peace the
unity of the United Nations which has been
achieved in war It would create institutions
by means of which the wartime alliance can
gradually be transformed into confederation,
and so be perpetuated. In fact the world or
ganization will become, if it evolves in accord
ance with its inner principles, confederation
of regional considerations, of which the inter-
American security system will be another.
| In a confederation, since it is not a state,
voting can never be decisive. What matters is
the continuity of consultation through regular
and accetAed organs of conference and through
good and direct channels of communication
Thus the heart of the thing is not the technique
of enforcing the peace, which will have to be
worked out in specific conventions, nor voting,
which can never be important, but the agree
ment to consult in order to agree. That is the
principle which it is the business of San Fran
cisco to embody in charter.
Copyright, 1915, New York Tribune Inc.
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