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Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 77, Issue 6974, 6 October 1948, Page 4

UNITED NATIONS AT WORK (Continued From: Page 3) “Town Meeting of the World” Now, the second cousin has no intention of letting you sit too long in the General Assembly, even if it has been called “The Town Meeting of the World”. After a while you both slip out, have lunch, and for most of the way to Lake Success, go bowling along a beautifully kept parkway. “There’s the lake” says the cousin, and behind trees you glimpse the small, round sheet of water which gives the United Nations an address for its temporary headquarters. Lake Success (anglicised from an Indian name) is by the way, of legendary depth, due apparently to its origin as a glacial pot hole. Half a mile downhill is a vast building, (mostly one-storeyed, with glass skylights, as you expect, the interim headquarters of the United Nations. Going in the main entrance, beneath the sky-blue flag, you pass an information desk where three or four girl clerks can cope between them with about ten languages. The impression of a friendly, easy atmosphere, which you half formed at Flushing Meadows, is confirmed as you talk briefly with the security guards—lately on duty in Palestine with most, of their colleagues. A glance into the huge documents production office indicates the tremendous work involved in turning out each day thousands upon thousands of pages of documents —resolutions, amendments, reports, press releases and so on—obviously one of the key services of the secretariat. Then you stroll a little while to watch the mingling nationalities in the big public corridor, and finally take your seats in the Security Council Chamber. Again the public, the press and the usual glassed-in booths for radio and films. At last, they are in their places at the horseshoe table, eleven men (representatives of the Big Five permanent members and of six other states, elected by the Assembly) the Secretary General, and the Assistant-Sec-retary General in charge of Security Council Affairs. The president raps two or three times with an ebony gavel, and says: “The 215th meeting of the Security Council is called to order”. Immediately, a consecutive interpreter repeats this in French. Next, the provisional agenda is adopted, usually without discussion, and the president invites to the table the representatives of, say, Arcadia and Illyria, the two countries whose dispute is being examined. A smouldering feud about Arcadia’s right of access to the sea-coast of- Illyria had been fanned into flames, and the Government of Arcadia has laid a complaint before the Security Council (which is in permanent session to deal with all possible threats to peace). What you hear is a careful drafting of the Security Council’s instructions to the Committee of Inquiry which it proposes to send out. The threat to the peace must be removed, yet there must be no interference in the internal affairs of either State. At last, the instructions are approved, and, with a rap of the gavel, the meeting is adjourned. Over a cup of tea, the cousin and you discuss it. What struck you most? The commonsense which has provided this machinery for the peaceful settlement of disputes, or else the sharpness of a few exchanges of views (an inevitable reflection of the tensions which at present strain relations between some of the powers in their (business outside the United Nations). Or perhaps you were most impressed by the general determination to sit round the horseshoe table until agreement was hammered out. Peaceful Handling of Disputes Of one thing you can be certain. If the negotiations for a settlement of the dispute go well, you will hear very little about them. If new difficulties arise, each one will—in many parts of the world—be fully reported, if not headlined. The primary function of the Security Council is to encourage the peaceful handling of disputes. Three months ago, the Secre-tary-General pointed out that in this task the Council has had more successes than failures. Eyebrows are now rising in some quarters, but that is a fact: 1946, troops withdrawn according to plan from Syria, Lebanon and Iran; 1947, a civil war in Indonesia halted and arbitrated; 1948, prolonged debates on the Kashmir question which, so far, have shown how the Council functions as a moderator, or stabiliser, and after all the cease-fire orders in Palestine which have been largely obeyed—those are solid achievements. At the same time Mr Trygve Lie recalled the facts about the “veto” or rule of the required unanimity of the Big Five, stressing that it operates, only in certain cases arising in the work of only one United Nations organ, the Security Council. There is nothing of the kind in the General Assembly or any other organ. Certain member States attack the “veto” privilege—others defend it. In essence it can be considered as one of the limitations imposed upon the authors of the Charter by this fact: the socalled Big Five powers, joining the new organisation with exceptionally heavy responsibilities, desired to safeguard their position by an arrangement whereby certain measures, including the most serious step, that of ordering armed intervention to halt hostilities, could be taken only with their unanimous agreement. When the second cousin says: ‘You know, the Economic and Social Council is doing some first-rate work—you reply, “I’m sure it is, but to-day I honestly can’t take in any more”. And so the excellent cousin drives you back along the parkway, past the trim green banks and autumn trees to the soaring buildings of Manhattan. Well, what does it all add up to? That there exists in the United Nations machinery far more comprehensive than ever before for keeping the peace and helping all peoples, to work and trade and travel together as neighbours and equals. But why does this machinery not function still faster? Partly because its operations are often complex, and being new it must run itself in; but in large part I suppose because of ourselves, in that we have not yet given it that driving force which can come only from the peoples, in whose name it was set up. In so far as we don’t try to understand the organisation and determine, for our part, that it shall 'succeed; in so far as we are intolerThe United Nations is a young organisation, but it exists, it is there all the time working in many parts of the world as the agent and servant of all peoples, Try to follow its

work, not only in the headlines; write to it; badger those of us who work there for more information; give it your support with kindred spirits in the United Nations Association, and don’t be slow to speak up for it, (as much as you honestly can) when some habitual Jeremiah is running it down. If you and countless others do that, year by year (back now with your family and the farm and the office) you will have every reasonable hope of seeing the authority and the influence of the United Nations grow. By then, the organisation will have clearly demonstrated that conflicts no longer have to result in war; and it will have helped to create conditions in which every child, born in any country, will have the chance to grow up with a sound body, a free and lively mind, and a quiet spirit. ant in principle of other peoples and their customs, just so far are you and I and the next man delaying the drive towards better times. Importance of Mental Attitudes If we are adults who try to keep our own consciences and look into them now and again, we will not be deceived by the old tale of some universal scapegoat which is supposed to bear all the guilt for man’s political sorrows, nor shall we, for a minute, heed expressions of prejudice and pessimism any the more because they sometimes fall from exalted lips up and down the world—as does this mischievous and stupid talk about the so-called “inevitability” of a third World, War. (The grandfathers of the persons who say that were busy proclaiming that men would never fly). As the preamble to the Constitution of Unesco so well phrases it: “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed”. That is where we must first seek, not only peace, but the things that make for peace.