Evening star., 1948-10-24
We Cannot Do Without 1t

and the world special ceremonies will be
held today, and prayers said in churches
of all faiths, to mark the third anniversary
OF the ratification of the Charter Of the
United Nations. When that event. took
place three years ago, men and their gov
ernments, despite burgeoning signs of seri-
Gus trouble ahead, still derived a large
measure of hope from the bright promise
implicit in the newborn organization.
Since then, however, primarily because of
Soviet policy, the hope has become such q
shadow of its former self that far too many
of us have gone to the extreme of almost
despairing over the seeming failure of the
U. N. to give us decent and lasting peace.
On this United Nations Day. therefore,
there Is good reason for all of us to ask
ourselves whether that failure has really
been as great as it seems or whether we
have not exaggerated it in an over
emotional mood caused by impatience and
disappointment over the fact that the
U. N. up to now has fallen far short of
living up to the high hopes we once placed
in it. To be clear in our own minds on
this matter we must, as first step, en-
phatically remind ourselves that this or
ganization has as yet hardly grown out of
its swaddling clothes and that it was never
intended, in any case, to establish the
peace after the Second World War. It's task,
as conceived by the founding powers and
set forth in the Charter, was to maintain
a system of law, order and collective Sc
curity after the major victors had agreed
on treaties settling the future of the de-
feated.
In other words, it is not the fault of the
United Nations that the world Is still lack
ing an agreement on Germany and Austria
to stabilize Europe or an agreement on
Japan to stabilize Asia. There is little the
U. N. can do about that beyond exerting
whatever moral pressure it can to get the
Soviet Union to cooperate with China,
France, Britain and the United States in
drawing up the kind of treaties that will
put mankind back on the road to normal
and enduring peace. This does not mean,
however, that the U. N is or has been
powerless. Actually, it has achieved much
for which we can be thankful. Thus, to
cite but few examples, its commissions
have done vast amount of work laying
the essential groundwork for eventual
agreements in such fields as trade and
atomic control; it has stayed the hand Of
Soviet aggression in Iran; it has taken over
the enormously difficult and explosive
problem of Palestine with reasonable sue
cess in checking violence there; and in
general-no matter how falteringly or i'm
perfectly-it has managed so far to exer-
else important restraints on forces making
for war. In short, morally and otherwise,
1t has served for the past three years as a
check on passions and a searehlight on
dangerous intrigues. Certainly, If its serv-
ices had not been available, the state of
the world today might be far worse than
1t Is, with Soviet Russia not improbably
much farther advanced with its aggres-
sions
In the circumstances, failure" is not
the word to be used here, for even though
the U. N. hes been considerably less than
a success, it has been by no means totally
ineffective. The truth is-since its own
difficulties prove the current impracticality
of single world government-th men
and nations must continue to repose faith
and hope in it and strive unf1aggingly to
perfect it as time goes on. There is no
alternative to it now but willy-nilly drift
toward war. The prayers being said for 1t
today should be profoundly heartfelt by
all of us.