CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 161, 10 July 1945, Page 4

CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS

THE NEW WORLD ORDER

To the Editor

There is much in the San Francisco discussions to puzzle the man in the street. In particular, the wrangle as to the extent of the great Powers , right of veto no doubt caused many people to think that, instead of outlawing aggression, the Powers are attempting to legalise it. The following comment from the New English Weekly, written before the conference, is perhaps of some help to us in trying to understand the situation. The objection that the great Powers were trying to legalise their own aggressive actions is, says this journal, "only valid upon a mistaken assumption—albeit a very prevalent one —as to the purpose of the proposals. This assumption is really a 'hang-over' from the yeara following the last war, when 'collective security , was so persuasively advocated and widely believed in. But what is now under discussion proceeds from quite different premises: it does not rest upon the now discredited presupposition that the nations as we know them would assemble and discipline one another by means of majority votes: nor does it postulate a common basis of supernational law. The order now aimed at which San Francisco may or may not succeed in initiating, is fundamentally diplomatic. It would provide a permanent means of giving effect to whatever genuine will to peace and prosperity there may be in the nations and their governments. Terms of meeting—or rather of invitation to meet —must concede to any sovereign Power which feels militarily -self-sufficient the 'right' to be sole judge of its own case in a war crisis. That is common diplomatic form, since every Government when working for war believes or affects to believe that its case is right: and no Government would attend a meeting whose agenda was based upon a proposal to discredit that belief in advance. All that has so far been done is to secure a meeting in the hope of a continuing series of future meetings. No more has been seriously expected by anyone with an informed view of the world we live in, and even to have gained that much is something; for it could only be after much positive co-operation, prolonged and largely successful, that sovereign States could be expected to waive their right to the ultimate autonomy—that of defending or securing interests vital to themselves. In order to proceed on that path it is. not necessary — and it is certainly not possible—to begin with everybody's surrender of the final sanction of national egoism: what is essential is only a basis upon which we can go in faith and hope." A. R. D. FAIRBURN.