home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
/
TIME, Almanac of the 20th Century.ISO
/
1940
/
40un
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1994-02-27
|
10KB
|
216 lines
<text>
<title>
(1940s) United Nations
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1940s Highlights
</history>
<link 09285>
<link 09287>
<link 09288>
<link 00110><article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
United Nations
</hdr>
<body>
<p> [Well before the war's end--starting, in fact, with the
conferences between Churchill and Roosevelt prior to the U.S.
entry into the war--the Allies began to consider the shape of
the post-war world, and how to keep the peace that they had not
yet won. At Dumbarton Oaks in August 1944, delegated from the
Big Three and 36 other nations explored the possibility of
creating a new world organization to replace the defunct and
discredited League of Nations: an organization that would have
the collective authority to preserve peace and security, that
would reflect the realities of world power, yet provide a forum
for smaller states.
</p>
<p> On April 26, 1945, in the pall of gloom cast by President
Roosevelt's death, representatives of 46 countries met in San
Francisco to draw up a charter for the new organization, the
United Nations. It would call for a General Assembly, to which
all "peace-loving" states would be admitted; a Security
Council, with its permanent members and the veto to reflect the
clout of the Big powers; a World Court, to adjudicate
international disputes peacefully; and a Secretariat, Economic
and Social Council and specialized agencies to take care of
other international problems.]
</p>
<p>(June 18, 1945)
</p>
<p> The charter written at San Francisco contains a significant
but at present unenforceable bill of human rights. The equality
of all states is solemnly affirmed, although the whole structure
of the organization denies it.
</p>
<p> Sovereignty, pervading San Francisco, dictated the charter's
principle of "domestic jurisdiction." Under it, the world
organization may reach into a country to get at the causes of
war only when all the Big Powers agree that would peace is
endangered.
</p>
<p> The General Assembly will be the focus of talk and of
hope--but not of power. In it each nation great or small, has
one vote. In this fact lies the Assembly's importance by the
test of equality and its weakness by the test of power reality.
</p>
<p> Yet the Big Powers at the conference yielded on many points
to expand the Assembly's functions. The Assembly can discuss
anything. It can make recommendations for the peaceful
adjustment of situations which might impair peace "regardless
of origin."
</p>
<p> The assembly must rely on its ability to mobilize world
public opinion.
</p>
<p> In the light of the veto arrangement, and of the continued
sanctity of regionalism, the San Francisco charger did not add
up to collective security.
</p>
<p> But the charter represented a little progress. The great
powers, which did not have to yield at all, yielded on point
after point to small nations. The small nations had enough on
their side to move to U.S. with its victorious ships and planes,
the Russians with their 8,000,000 victorious soldiers. The great
powers did not move much, but that they moved at all was the
wonder and the hope of San Francisco.
</p>
<p> [The U.N. soon faced severe problems over the Soviet's
repeated threats to sue the veto. Other nations patched up
compromises that side stepped this contingency. It looked as if
the "collective security" provisions of the U.N. Charter would
be effectively meaningless.
</p>
<p> But truculence at the U.N. was just one symptom of the change
that was taking place in the relationship between the Soviet
Union and the other Allies. Through its conquests of World War
II, the Soviets had acquired a new empire, and had suddenly
become the strongest power in Europe, the second mightiest in
the world. Its ideology of world struggle, coupled with a
traditional Russian expansionist dynamic, impelled it to try for
first place. Communists, home-grown and imported, overt and
clandestine, began to assert themselves in the politics of many
countries struggling to rise from the political rubble of Nazi
subjugation. In the nations under Soviet domination, Communist
ascendancy soon appeared a sure thin. In Canada, in early 1946,
the first Soviet spies seeking the secrets of atomic weaponry
were arrested. Sooner or later Soviet needs, priorities, demands
were bound to come up against those of the other major powers,
and especially against those of the U.S.
</p>
<p> For a first instance, the Soviet Union would not agree with
the other powers occupying Germany on the terms of a peace
treaty for the defeated Reich.]
</p>
<p>(July 29, 1946)
</p>
<p> The easiest way to start solving a jigsaw puzzle is to take
the straight-edged pieces that obviously belong on the outside.
But even when these are in place all the puzzler may have is a
few clouds hanging in a sky. He won't know whether he is working
on a picture of a country wedding or a shipwreck.
</p>
<p> Fourteen months after Germany's collapse the nations are
still fiddling with the relatively easy issues on the periphery.
In the center of the puzzle is a great hole which this Paris
conference is not supposed to touch. The hole might be expressed
as: what to do about Europe? Molotov hinted at the Russian
answer last fortnight--an eventual Russo-German alliance which
would dominate Europe. The West's reaction was a stiffening
attitude and a move to unite the western zones of Germany under
democratic auspices.
</p>
<p> The victors know that an Italian or Balkan settlement makes
little sense until they decide whether there will be one Germany
or two (and, consequently, one Europe or two, one world or two).
So far, an integrated approach to the pace is blocked by
Russia's policy of prolonging the unsettled conditions in which
Communism might flourish. The only course open to the U.S. and
Britain was to insist that the 17 smaller nations be called to
Paris where, beginning July 29, they will work on the edges of
the puzzle--Finland, Italy, Bulgaria, Rumania and Hungary. "It
is a fallacy," said Australia's Dr. Herbert V. Evatt last week,
"to suppose that all knowledge and all wisdom reside at the
center of military power."
</p>
<p> [The biggest problem the U.S. faced in the immediate post-war
period was trying to provide the minimal conditions of life for
many of the world's citizens. Europe was starving, its
agriculture ruined, it supply lines disrupted, its factories and
other means of earning money to buy food destroyed. Millions of
destitute, homeless people clogged Europe's roads, seeking a
haven from Communist rule or displaced by the new partition of
Poland or liberated from concentration camps, but often simply
seeking something to eat.]
</p>
<p>(April 29, 1946)
</p>
<p> The appalling responsibilities of victory had come to be
represented by one word. "Bread," said Herbert Hoover in Cairo
last week, "has a reality as the symbol of life as never before
in history...To reduce the bread ration has become a symbol of
calamity."
</p>
<p> War's disruption was the main cause. Before the war only
about 13,000,000 tons of wheat had to be imported by countries
that could not grow all they needed. But the war and natural
disasters sent import needs skyrocketing. Europe, which imported
less than 4,000,000 tons of wheat a year before the war, needed
15,400,000 tons this crop year from the 1945 harvest to the
1946. All in all, needy countries came begging for 32,000,000
tons of wheat this year instead of the normal 13,000,000 tons
of imports. The surplus counties (mainly the U.S. and Canada)
may be able to provide 24,000,000 tons before the end of the cop
year, but the world would then still be 8,000,000 tons short of
its minimum need.
</p>
<p> To translate the balance sheet of wheat tonnage figures into
terms of human need was not easy. The experts agreed that it was
quite possible that the figures spelled starvation for scores
of millions of people But the starvation could be "controlled"
(spread out into disease-breeding malnutrition) by rationing.
The experts said that a human needed at least 2,200 calories a
day. The average U.S. citizen (still eating more than he had
before the war) consumed more than 3,200 calories a day.
</p>
<p> In the French zone of Germany the ration was 940 calories; in
the British zone about a thousand; in the U.S. zone 1,275; in
the Russian zone 1,300 to 1,500. Germans were not dropping dead
on the streets. The British economist, Sir Arthur Salter, said:
"Ten million...Germans in the British zone are getting an
average of only 1,014 calories daily, which is to much to let
you die quickly and too little to let you live long."
</p>
<p> Britons had seen no onions for five months. Each got one shell
egg a week (wartime powdered eggs have disappeared from the
British diet). A pineapple cost $30. Yet a girl from France
visiting London called it "paradise" because "they have enough
to eat and in France we haven't." The French got 10 oz. of bread
a day, 20 oz. of fat and 18 oz. of sugar a month. This was
supplemented by a little meat, fish and vegetables.
</p>
<p> How Long? Herbert Hoover said last week that this crisis was
unique in history because it had "a definite terminal date...the
arrival of the next harvest." That was probable, but by no means
certain. This present crisis could only be met by reducing the
stocks of the surplus countries. If 1946 harvests were plentiful
or even up to the prewar norm, the world would get through to
the 1947 harvest, although at a lower level of subsistence than
before the war.
</p>
<p>(July 22, 1946)
</p>
<p> In the first year of world famine relief (ending June 30), the
U.S. promised to ship 10,723,860 tons of wheat, and actually
shipped 10,750,670 tons.
</p>
<p> Including wheat, the U.S. shipped 16,500,000 tons of food of
all types to famine areas. Of the nation's supplies for the
year, the shipments took these shares: wheat, 40%; rice, 35%;
cheese, 20%; fats & oils, 10%; meat, 6%.</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>