Evening star., 1954-10-24
Peace and the u. N.


cation OF the United Nations Charter, the
world continues to live under conditions
that can be described at best only as a
state Of uneasy and jittery peace Men and
their governments-the free and the unfree
are lined up in opposing blocs. Interna-
tional tensions remain acute. Although there
is no full-scale, organized shooting war
anywhere on the face of the globe, the
danger of a total armed explosion has been
reduced very little, If at all, since 1945.
And there is therefore widespread ten
dency to write of the United Nations as a
futility that is hardly worth keeping alive.
But such defeatist viewpoint adds up
to something much less than fair or real
istic appraisal. True, the high hopes orig
inally repoSed In the United Nations have
gone unfulhlled, but the Charter itself has
never justified those hopes, and the dis
nluSionment expressed by so many people
stems largely from their having expected
far more from the United Nations than the
United Nations could possibly have pro-
duced in the circumstances that have ex-
listed during the past nine years. This can
be better understood when the basic point
is kept In mind that the world organization
was founded in 1945 on the assumption that
the great powers particularly Britain, Rus
STA and the United States) would stick to-
gether after the war, promptly settle vital
issues like that Of Germany and disarma-
ment, and thus establish the essential con-
ditions Of peace which the Security Council
and the General Assembly would thereafter
maintain.
Accordingly, since this assumption
quickly proved to be false, the United Ma
tions is not in itself to blame for the present
state of affairs Both the Council and the
Assembly, of course, obviously have many
serious shortcomings, but that is not the
primary source Of their weakness. The pri
mary source is the Kremlin Certainly, If
the Soviet Union were cooperating In good
faith to put the charters principles to work,
If 1t were not persistent nay-Sayer and
obstructionist on every question of impor-
tance, the United Nations today would be
well on its way toward achieving the great
objectives set out for it at the time Of its
founding in San Francisco. Moreover, even
in spite Of the heavy handicaps imposed on
it, it still has been able to score number of
significant hments-notably its
effective action on the Russian threat to
Iran, its conciliating work in Palestine, its
contribution toward ending the Berlin block
ade and its initial measures against Com
munist aggression in Korea.
These are some of the points that need
to be weighed in evaluating the United Ma
tions-these plus the fact that such an in
ternational forum, even though it can en-
force nothing, undoubtedly helps to restrain
war-breeding forces and thus acts as posi-
tive influence for good. Admittedly, because
the great powers-again largely as result
of Soviet policy-have been ignoring it more
and more in outside conferences, it seems
to have grown perceptibly weaker in the past
year, and possibly it may yet fade away.
STILL assuming that there will eventually be
an East-West agreement to check the drift
toward an atomic-hydrogen catastrophe,
some organization very much like it will
be indispensable to the world as a center
of continuing reconciliation and co-opera-
ton for decent and enduring peace.