The Press SATURDAY, MAY 27, 1950. UNITED NATIONS

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26123, 27 May 1950, Page 6

The Press SATURDAY, MAY 27, 1950. UNITED NATIONS

Mr Trygve Lie, Secretary-General of the United Nations, has given the best possible answer to criticism of his recent visit to Moscow; and it is a very strong answer indeed. The United Nations, he said, offers the only way by which the division between East and West can be bridged and, in the long run, peace maintained. Because the machinery of the United Nations has broken down, it was not only Mr Lie’s right, but his positive duty, to do everything in his power to repair it and so restore the only forum in which the Eastern and Western Powers may be brought together to discuss their differences. There has been a good deal of open criticism of his actions from various sources, a good deal of veiled hostility, and very much more apathy; and the criticism, hostility, and apathy are alike to be deplored. The most regrettable thing about the present situation is not that East and West are drifting further and further apart, but that nobody seems to care. Each is going on building up strength, which is tantamount to preparing for war. No one can doubt that the Western Powers are amply justified in doing so—or that they would be imprudent not to do so—but many are losing sight of the fact that these defensive preparations are in fact no more than an insurance against the failure of international efforts to ensure peace by negotiation and conciliation. When rearmament becomes an end in itself the battle for peace will have been lost. Threat to U.N. Perhaps it is a little unfortunate that Mr Lie’s mission has been represented as an attempt to secure a “ 20-year peace pact ”. Such a pact may have been one of many possibilities canvassed by Mr Lie in the four capitals; but it is extremely unlikely that he cherished any hope of returning to Lake Success with the signatures. This and other proposals were probably discussed more as objectives to be aimed at in the future—when the nations have been persuaded to meet one another again. Mr Lie is not only the man best qualified to try to bring them together, he is perhaps the only person in the world who can stand impartially between the two sides and act as go-between or arbitrator. The hysterical attack upon him by a member of the Australian Federal Parliament (reported in the cable news this morning) is symptomatic of a not uncommon and very dangerous attitude—that there is no place for impartiality in intertional relations or for neutrality in the cold war, that “ those who are “ not for us must be against us ”. But if there is no room for impartiality or neutrality, there is no purpose in the United Nations. The “ Manchester Guardian ”, discussing Mr Lie’s mission to Moscow, pointed to the logical outcome of this attitude: I The situation which Mr Lie wants ;to tackle is at once absurd and tragic, iTo put it at its simplest, the United I States, thanks largely to the attitude ■of the Republican Party, will not yet ' accept the Chinese Communist Govern- : ment in the United Nations; the Russians will not attend United Nations

i meetings so long as that is so. In } other words, for motives which are . all too like those of jealous children, the essential parts of the United Nations machinery have been brought to a standstill; such vital subjects as i atomic energy are in cold storage; East and West are no longer forced, 1 however ineffectively, to talk together; . and the virtual stoppage of the system itself tends to add to the tension. In September the General xAssembly will meet, and if it meets without the j Russians there are few countries that will not think that its usefulness in I its present form is finished. The Last Door Only those who think that East and West are utterly irreconcilable and that war sooner or later is in- : evitable will not rebel against this . outcome. No one should delude him- | self into thinking that any alternative body can offer a better hope of peace than the United Nations—certainly not the “ Western United I Nations ” based on “ moral, spirit- !*’ ual, and defence foundations ” I which Mr Hoover proposed, or the extension of the North Atlantic ! Pact organisation which others have advocated (forgetting that the North Atlantic Pact has always been represented by the West as an instrument for strengthening the United Nations and promoting its purposes). Mr Lie has returned from his mission more firmly convinced than ever that the peoples of the world do

not want war. He has been encouraged to find that “no doors

“ have been closed ” to the possibility of constructive negotiation. That opinion is at least a faint ray of light in the darkness. But whatever else it may have achieved, Mr Lie's mission has served one invaluable purpose. It has brought to the attention of the world the very real threat to the future of the United Nations as an organ of international discussion and negotiation. That is the last “ door ” between East and West and the only one that really matters. If it shuts, there will be nothing left but the certainty of increasing tension, of a few years of “ peace ” hag-ridden by frenzied efforts to arm, and then the final conflict.