WORLD SECURITY

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 65, Issue 269, 24 August 1945, Page 3

WORLD SECURITY

RECENT EVENTS. COMMENT BY NEWSPAPERS. LESSON OF EXPERIENCE. (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright.) LONDON, August 22. The resolution moved by Mr C. R. Attlee in the House of Commons that the United Nations Charter be ratified by Britain forms the subject of most of the leading articles in the London newspapers. The comment takes the form of an appreciation of the world position' in the light of recent events and discoveries. “The Times” says: “The ne_\v developments of warfare, culminating in the new distribution of world power and in the coming of the atomic bomb, have given the new organisation a universality to which the old League aspired but never really attained. The supreme test; of its efficacy is as likely to come in Asia as in Europe, in the Pacific as in the Atlantic. The same cogent reason deprives the smaller nations of the right of veto which the unanimity rule of the covenant conferred on them. “The irrefutable lesson of experience proves that, save for altogether exceptional circumstances, they are inextricably involved in the fortunes of their larger neighbours and must within the limit of their resources play an active co-operative part in the business of security. “The new Charter makes no attempt 1o define aggression or lay down rules by which the action of member States may be adjudged legitimate or illegitimate. The weight of responsibility for decisions rests on the more or less unfettered discretion of the Security Council, in which the authority of the principal nations will necessarily >emain predominant, since they alone possess the power of enforcement — a fact which explains and justified the veto on such action accorded to them in the Charter. The mandate of the Security Council is no longer to sit in judgment, but to take action in any situation which appears to U to threaten the maintenance of peace and security throughout the world.” The “Daily Telegraph 5 says: “Whether it will altogether prevent war no one, as Viscount Cranborne said in the House of Lords, can be certain, but it certainly does provide the means by which war can be prevented, if the nations of the world are willing to prevent it. “All nations, even the strongest, had been taught in these grim six years that none can stand secure alone. Territorial and political security are unobtainable without economic security, and no nation, however great its resources, can now be prosperous apart from the rest of the world. We are all members one of another. Through the spirit and principles which form the United Nations Charter the world may hasten its approach to that general welfare, which alone can ensure the victory won by men who fought and died for it.”