DELEGATES DO NOT DEBATE IN UNITED NATIONS FOR PLEASURE

Wanganui Chronicle, 29 December 1947, Page 4

DELEGATES DO NOT DEBATE IN UNITED NATIONS FOR PLEASURE

"Believe me, it was not for the pleasure of academic debate that delegates of Yugoslavia fought inch by inch and word by word against the decision of the United Nations to appoint a Commission to watch events on the northern borders of Greece, or that the delegate of Greece, with equal passion but greater self-control, fought for that same decision to be taken,” said Mr. J. V. Wilson, a member of the New Zealand delegation to the second General Assembly of the United Nations, in a talk broadcast in New Zealand last night. "It was not as an Intellectual exercise that the Arab countries fought week by week and month by month against the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine, fought with a degree of skill and earnestness to which a member of a delegation which opposed them may be permitted to pay tribute.

"No state in a matter touching its vital interests will despise a judgment —be it only the expression of opinion —of two-thirds of the members of the United Nations. It will think no effort too great to obtain a favourable decision or to avert an unfavourable decision. Take the Palestine case again. Not a man, not a gun is at the direct disposal of the United Nations to enforce that decision. What the Jews gained, what the Arabs strove to avert, was the recognition by the United Nations of the legal right of the Jews to set up a state in Palestine. This was the prize of the most prolonged and hardfought contest witnessed by either the United Nations or the League of Nations before it.

“Another instance: No one who heard the discussion of the Indian complaint against South Africa's treatment of her population of Indian origin could be insensitive to its significance, I would even say its drama. Now there is racial discrimination in South Africa, as South Africans themselves admit. But there is the question whether the United Nations is entitled to interfere in what may be —it is one of the moot points whether it is—essentially South Africa’s own affair. There is also a question of proportion. While delegates were being invited to disapprove of the segregation of Indians and Europeans in the tramcars of Durban, pictures of the effects of racial riots in India and Pakistan showed that racial discrimination was not confined to any one country. Well, a year ago the Assembly passed a resolution on this subject which some countries thought not strictly constitutional. This year the Assembly failed to pass a resolution following up that first one. This sobering down of the Assembly will almost certainly be of more practical help in improving the lot of nonEuropeans in South Africa than would be the repeated passage of resolutions of doubtful legality. But that is by the way. I mention this question as an example of the tensions which make themselves felt at Lake Success. The Indian-South African debate has been throughout a tense discussion. One selt, as it were, the vibrations of a force, one of the most violent in the world, the force of racial feeling.”