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U.N. Is Not Dead

The following appeared as an editorial in the August 1948 Electrical Workers’ Journal.

So much pessimism has been expressed of late over the inability of the United Nations to come to a common understanding on vital issues that many citizens are inclined to write off the U.N. and lay it in the dust bin which contains the old League of Nations and many other high but dead hopes of mankind. This widely held feeling that the U.N. is doomed to a short life finds expression in the talk of men-in-the-street everywhere.

When a speaker comes forward, then, and talks calmly, temperately and optimistically about the U.N., all men give him an attentive ear. Despite their fears, they wish him well and want to believe him, knowing that the destruction of the U.N. might well result in the destruction of civilization. Such a speaker recently addressed the International Labor Conference in San Francisco. David G.K. Owen, assistant secretary-general of the U.N., told his audience:

“It [the United Nations] is at the present time grappling simultaneously with many grave political problems as did the League of Nations over the whole period of its history-and no one who has any conception of the obstinacy and complexity of these issues would not agree that a surprising measure of success is, in many cases, being achieved.” He added that it was not surprising that many of the high hopes expressed in San Francisco three years before, when the United Nations Charter was signed, had given place to “less optimistic expectations.” But he suggested that the change in mood was “healthy, for it is based on a more realistic assessment of our tasks.”

Mr. Owen’s statement is well taken and, alter listening to the prophets of doom, more than a grain of comfort can be taken from it. While the picture he presented was in no sense rosy, it did serve to remind his audience that the world was more than a little naive in expecting, three years ago, that the U.N. would immediately become a magic wand for settling all international problems.

There are many “ifs” that have to be realized before the U.N. can become the international body that the whole world hopes it will become, and perhaps the biggest of these “ifs” is contained in the following sentence. The U.N. will become a successful body for the settlement of international problems if the nations which comprise it will sacrifice part of their sovereignty, and permit the U.N. to become a policy-making group instead of a mere sounding board for nationalistic propaganda.