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debated and whose common aims were embodied in an instrument approved and subscribed without reservation by all the delegations which attended.

May I now be allowed, Sir, to present a bird's-eye view of the suggestions of the Republic of Ecuador in connection with the Dumbarton Oaks plan.

In the opinion of my Government the structure of the international organization must rest on three indispensable foundations:

1. Its universality, so that, in any immediate or remote period of time all sovereign states of the world and those which might hereafter attain sovereignty may be admitted;

2. The efficacy of its mechanism to establish a worthy system of collective security; and

3. Its strict adherence to the supreme principles of justice and right without which the organization would degenerate into a mere political alliance carrying in its bosom the germ of its own disintegration.

For, in truth, Sir, we must now admit that the abstract production of writers and experts in international law, plentiful though it be, has been inadequate to preserve peace; libraries are bulging and curricula are saturated with captivating and promising treatises and speculative works. But has such plausible effort produced the improvement of man or raised international life to a moral level in which each one receives what belongs to him and where the ideas of aggression and defense, of conquest and liberation have been banished? Definitely no; because at the core of the problem of war and peace for the fit solution of which millions of men have given their lives, and wealth and prosperity of so many nations have been destroyed, there lies a spirit of insincerity which, disregarding what people are and want, gives way to momentary political expediency-source of all calamities and fruitful root for new and unending conflicts.

Universality, security, and right: This is then what Ecuador demands of an international organization worthy of a world in which our aspirations of peace and justice might become a reality.

Applying these principles to the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals, we maintain that it is necessary to embody in its principles those without which the Charter of the world Organization would be shorn of ideals. Unless the supremacy of moral law is recognized as the guiding rule of conduct of states; unless their juridical equality is proclaimed beyond those practical or political inequalities which stand between them; unless force is prescribed as a method of settling international conflicts; unless internal and external sovereign rights of states are respected within the limits imposed by the obligations arising from the interdependence of members of the international community; unless the principle of nonintervention is upheld as the full expression of that respect, the covenant of the future association of states will have no greater value than as a document maintained in force by a system of political equilibrium exercised by the government subscribing and ratifying it, susceptible of becoming disjointed and falling apart at the first sign of reciprocal incompatibility among the forces supporting it.

On the other hand, if the internal democracy of states aims at transmitting its essence to international existence, it is advisable that the General Assembly of the Organization be established as the organ directly representing all the states composing it and that it be endowed with the authority and powers of which the Dumbarton Oaks plan is so greatly lacking, so that within the framework of its functions it might be enabled to lay down the principles and rules of international law or to amend them progressively, thus becoming in a way an international legislative power.

Ecuador agrees with the requirement that the responsi

bility to maintain peace and international security rest with the Council of the Organization, granting it sufficient authority to accomplish this. But in the realm of ethical values any responsibility must be enforceable. Consequently, it is imperative to confer on the General Assembly the supervision of the fufillment of the obligations pertaining to the Council.

It would be highly plausible to increase the number of members of the Security Council, granting a numerically superior representation to small states in order to strengthen that organ, situating its roots in universal public opinion and with due respect to the system of proportion of representation.

Concerning the voting arrangement in the Council, an earnest analysis leads us to declare it inacceptable that the majority required for decisions concerning questions other than those of procedure, that is the most important ones, should include the vote of all permanent members since this is equivalent to breaking the principle of juridical equality among states, reducing those who have no permanent seats to a deplorable and unjust condition of inferiority and, even more deplorably, to provoke the collapse of the functions of the Council in the not impossible case that any one of its permanent members should wish to interfere with its smooth running.

In such a strange situation, we would have not an association of states, but the almighty will of a single state against the consensus of the others, that is, an undeniable example of anarchy within a seemingly internationally organized world.

Likewise subject to criticism is the right granted to members of the Council to vote on decisions concerning preventive or repressive measures to be undertaken against acts of aggression which they themselves might commit while such right is denied in the case of controversies of lesser significance to which they may be a party.

This break in the unity of the regime whereby the vote is denied in less serious decisions of the Council while it is permitted in the more serious and urgent cases, coupled with the proposed majority requirement, presents a possible case where the collective security system may be powerless to repel or to avoid aggression or the threat of aggression by a member state of the Security Council. Under these circumstances, the seed of aggression would fall on fertile soil to be harvested in future deadly wars which the Organization could neither avoid nor check from its position of mere spectator.

The elimination of these imperfections from the Charter would tend to invigorate it in the light of truth and justice lest in a not too long period of time it lose definitely its efficacy, as was the case with the Covenant of the late League of Nations.

It seems likewise advisable that, if it is not possible to establish compulsory jurisdiction for the international Court of Justice over all international differences, the optional clause which leaves it to the will of the states to accept or to reject the jurisdiction of the Court in their legal disputes be stricken from the statute so that the states will be obliged to submit such disputes to that high tribunal.

In the chapter on peaceful settlement of controversies it would seem indispensable that the San Francisco Conference impart all necessary strength to the method of conciliation, because of the flexibility of its application and its psychological efficacy, and trusting the Assembly with the task of approving a statute of regional or continental commissions which, while depending from the Assembly, might exercise conciliation with ample powers in all international divergences of a political character occurring within the respective region or continent.

Such commissions would have jurisdiction over con

flicts large and small, particularly those arising among the larger powers, whose might and magnitude no peace organization could otherwise resist, given the reality of things and the past experience of history.

Because of the degree of maturity reached by the regional inter-American system, the delegation of Ecuador would hope that in the sub-chapter on regional agreements the Conference should take cognizance of the personality and existence of such a system as a geographical, historical, and political structure ruled by custom and by written law and equipped with its own organs for the achievement of its objectives of peace, security, and international justice coincident with those sought by the world Organization.

Likewise the delegation of Ecuador suggests the creation of a new organ which might be entitled "Educational and Cultural Council" similar to the Economic and Social Council proposed by the Dumbarton Oaks plan, whose essential mission would be to promote understanding and peace among nations within a growing process of universalization of the values of education and human culture tending to bring about in this manner an international association of mind as the root and foreunner of a international association of states.

This then, Sir, is the outline of our high hopes in connection with the International Organization of the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals. But it would not be sufficient to fashion its body with wisdom and skill if we neglect the

question of its soul, of its inner purpose, of its vital sense, or; in other words, of the real aspirations of nations often contrary to the cold substance of text.

With this in mind, I am taking the liberty of expressing that the Republic of Ecuador, as a member of America and a staunch believer in the American system, in its broader or continental sense, would wish that the world Organization be inspired by the spiritual values as well as the positive institutions of the inter-American regional system because we are convinced that through the immutability of destiny such a system meets the requirements of a just and free international community based on the reciprocal respect of its component states and nourished by the vigor of a progressive democracy. If the peace that we seek is to be a just peace and the organization which we are building is to be an efficient organization, let us "Americanize" the world, so to speak, and let us "Americanize" it among other reasons in tribute to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, peerless champion of our supreme ideals, as a spiritual monument to his memory, survivor of time, for while his death has deprived us of his physical presence, burying it in the past, his immortal spirit watches over us from a lofty summit pointing the way as he says: "This time, my friend, you dare not lose the peace."

MR. EDEN: Fellow Delegates, the Fifth Plenary Session of the United Nations Conference on International Organization is hereby closed.

Verbatim Minutes.

...

THE SIXTH PLENARY SESSION

MAY 1 1945, 3:35 P.M.

MR. STETTINIUS: Fellow Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen: The Sixth Plenary Session of the United Nations Conference on International Organization is hereby convened.

Our first business of today is the report from the Committee on Credentials. The Chair recognizes the chairman of the delegation of Luxembourg, chairman of the Committee on Credentials.

MR. JOSEPH BECH: Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: This report dated April 28, 1945, does not take into consideration the countries to which invitations have been extended subsequent to that date. The Committee appointed in accordance with the provisional regulations of the United Nations Conference on International Organization to examine the credentials of its participants met on April 28, 1945, at 10 a.m. The Committee consisted of the representatives of the delegations of Luxembourg, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yugoslavia.

The credentials of the representatives of the following 46 governments to participate in this Conference were examined and found to be in order: Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Liberia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippine Commonwealth, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Union of South Africa, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, United Kingdom, United States of America, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Yugoslavia.

The Committee recommends to the Conference the acceptance of these credentials and the accordance to these representatives of the full right of participation in the Conference.

The Committee has found that full powers for the signature of the final documents of the Conference have now beeen received from the following 30 governments: Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Lebanon, Liberia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United States of America, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Yugoslavia.

The Committee calls the attention of the governments whose full powers have not yet been deposited to the necessity of submitting these powers to the Secretary General as soon as possible.

MR. STETTINIUS: Thank you, Dr. Bech.

Does any delegate wish to comment upon the report which has just been read?

In the absence of objection the Chair rules that the report of the Committee on Credentials is accepted and approved.

I thank you, Sir.

I now call upon Dr. Guillermo Belt, the rapporteur of the Steering Committee, to report on this morning's proceedings of the Steering Committee. Dr. Belt.

DR. BELT: Allocation of commission and committee officerships:

Chairman of the Credentials Committee: Luxembourg

Rapporteur of the Steering Committee: Cuba

[blocks in formation]

Assistant Secretary General: Ethiopia Committees:

Preamble, Purposes, and Principles

Chairman, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
Rapporteur: Syria

Structure and Procedures
Chairman: Turkey

Rapporteur: White Russian Soviet Socialist Re-
public

Structure and Procedures
Chairman: Greece

Rapporteur: El Salvador
International Court
Chairman: Peru
Rapporteur: Iraq
Membership and General

Chairman: Costa Rica

Rapporteurs: Haiti and Saudi Arabia Political and Security Functions Chairman: Bolivia

Rapporteur: Dominican Republic Peaceful Settlement

Chairman: Uruguay

Rapporteur: Soviet Union

Legal Problems

Chairman: Egypt

Rapporteur: Nicaragua

Economic and Social Co-operation
Chairman: India

Rapporteur: Guatemala
Enforcement Arrangements
Chairman: Ecuador
Rapporteur: France
Trusteeeship System

Chairman: New Zealand Rapporteur: Luxembourg Regional Arrangements Chairman: Colombia Rapporteur: China

MR. STETTINIUS: Does any delegate wish to comment on the report Dr. Belt has just read from the Steering Committee this morning? If there is no objection, the report stands approved as read.

Ladies and Gentlemen, our next order of business is to continue with the statements of the chairmen of delegations. In accordance with special action taken at the meeting of the heads of delegations yesterday and announced at the Fifth Plenary Session, the Chair now recognizes the Prime Minister and the chairman of the delegation of the Union of South Africa.

Sixth Plenary Session...

Address by Field Marshal Jan Christian Smuts

CHAIRMAN, THE UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA DELEGATION

FIELD MARSHAL SMUTS: Mr. President, Fellow Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen: Let me follow the example of other leaders of delegations who have spoken before me, and begin by expressing the warm thanks of my South African colleagues and myself for the invitation of the Government of the United States and the other sponsoring governments, to this Conference. It is our most earnest wish that this Conference may be successful, and provide a landmark in the progress of international relations and for co-operation among the nations toward world peace and security. Thus may San Francisco add to its other glories the greater glory of becoming another milestone in the long march of man to a better future.

Also, like other speakers, I recognize that we meet under the shadow of a shattering loss-the loss of that great leader who called us together. But in a very real sense, he is not gone from us. His immense personality and spirit brood over this land and over the human causes for which he worked. His soul goes marching on as an inspiration to us to continue on the road on which he set us. We owe it to his memory and to his immortal service to the world to make the success of this Conference a worthy monument to his name. As one great American President was the brave pioneer of the Covenant, so may the Charter of the new world Organization be successfully launched under the auspices of another. Of both of them it may be truly said that they gave everything, even their lives, for the great human cause around which we are now gathered at this Conference.

For there can be no doubt any more that for us, for the human race, the hour has struck. Mankind has arrived at the crisis of its fate, the fate of its future as a civilized world. Even military victory, measureless victory, now crowning our war effort in Europe, is not enough. It must be only the prelude to the greater peace effort before us, which must complete and finalize the present struggle for a free world.

That is what we are aiming at here. This is the inner significance of this great San Francisco Conference.

For a generation now history has been working up to a veritable climax of war, of destructive violence, which now threatens the very foundations of our human future. Two world wars have been fought with ever-increasing destructiveness, until now the ancient homelands and continent of our Western civilization are a desolation and a ruin unparalleled in history. Science-the inventive genius of our race is putting ever new and greater and more terrible resources at the disposal of war.

A third world war may well prove beyond the limits of what civilized society can endure, perhaps even beyond the limits of our continued existence as a human world. It is for us to prevent this monstrous possibility and to make it a moral impossibility. That is the high purpose for which we are gathered here. We the peace makers, we the peace builders, dare not disappoint the hopes and prayers of a whole suffering world, centered on us here. Both the past and the future appeal to us. We dare not fail after what the valor of our millions of heroes has achieved. Let us see to it that their devotion and sacrifices and those of many more millions of the civilian populations, are not once more in vain.

Let us see to it that so far as in us lies, we shall call a halt to this pilgrimage of death, this march to suicide of our race--a march in which the innocent suffer far more than the guilty.

I speak here today, Mr. President, as one of the few still surviving from the last Peace Conference at Paris 26 years ago. My mind goes even further back, to the poignant memorials of the South African War 46 years ago when, as a young man, I first learnt to know what war means for a small people and all it holds dear. From all this experience sprang my deep interest in the League of Nations and in the Covenant which we made at Paris for keeping the peace in future among the nations great and small.

It was a great and noble effort, much in advance of anything that had been done or even attempted before. Today it is the fashion to belittle or even sneer at the League of Nations. But in its day it registered a real and great advance, and those who either in this country or elsewhere labored in that noble cause have nothing to regret or apologize for.

Alas, the Covenant proved only a milestone. This new Charter of the United Nations may also prove to be no more than a milestone. We pray that it may have a greater significance, but it may be that we shall in due course travel even beyond this milestone and have to erect further beacons on the road toward world peace, until ultimately the distant frontiers are reached of that new, that newer world, where war among the nations will be only a dim far-off memory of the race.

The League did prove a striking success in all its varied humanitarian activities, and much of what it did in that fruitful field of human service is of permanent value and can only be followed up and carried further forward by this new Organization.

It failed, and failed badly only in one respect, but that the most important of all. It did not prevent war; it did not prevent lawless aggression, which has finally reached its climax in this most terrible of world wars. It is therefore here that our new task begins. And it may be useful if from this point of view we compare for a moment the differences in fundamental structure between the Covenant of the League and the Charter prepared at Dumbarton Oaks.

Of course the two documents emerge from two different worlds. A far-reaching revolution has been taking place since 1919, and it is still going on. No one foresaw or could have foreseen, at the last Peace Conference, the great political changes which have come over the world and world affairs in the years since. We planned for the world we knew, and as we saw it, and we planned in a justifiable spirit of optimism. Nobody, for instance, expected that the United States would refuse to enter the League of Nations and allow it to drift on the rocks in the dangerous postwar seas, as in the absence of the United States it was bound to do.

Nobody foresaw the rise of the vast ideologies which have since rocked our world on its foundations. Nobody realized the vast dangers of the future, even of the near future. We lived and thought in a political world and did not foresee the economic and social upheavals which were to change the very basis of our society. There were great men in those days, but they were not great prophets and certainly not demigods. Today we see some of the dangers ahead far more clearly. We now see that measures of conciliation and appeasement are not enough, that war has to be prevented at all costs, even at the cost of war itself, if necessary. The Covenant did not undertake to prevent war at all costs but merely to create measures of delay

and attempts at arbitration and negotiation and conciliation and finally to invoke economic sanctions to frighten off the aggressors.

The Dumbarton Oaks Charter, on the other hand, realistically recognizes that war must be prevented at the start, and that no half measures to that end will suffice. That being so, it also recognizes in the same spirit of realism, that a new responsibility for peace must be placed on the great powers. They have the power, and must in the first place bear the responsibility for using that power to prevent war. No doubt this enhances their importance and functions, vis-a-vis the smaller powers; but this disparity in function follows almost as a logical result from the new burden for peace imposed on them. Yalta has added the further corollary of unanimity among them to this special function for peace imposed on them. There is thus, the further obligation of unity of decision and action placed on them; in action, in enforcement measures for preventing war they must be unanimous and act, or not act, together. This may be only a temporary and passing phase, and it may in time become unnecessary to make such drastic provision for keeping the great powers together. The habit of co-operation among them may be expected to create trust and dispel suspicion between them. But who, with knowledge of the divisions of the last quarter of a century, and their dire results, and with thought of the possibilities of mischief in the years before us, will venture to say that such drastic provision for unity is not necessary today? We know that unanimity is at present insisted on, and moreover, the right of unanimity, now asked may come to operate as a duty to unanimity, and thus tend to keep together the great powers, whose falling out among each other would in any case be the greatest danger and menace to world peace in future. I am not an apologist for Yalta, but knowing what the abstention of the United States has meant for the failure of the League of Nations, and knowing what similar abstention or later disagreements among the great powers may mean in the future failure of the world Organization, I cannot say that the Yalta recommendation is too heavy a price to pay for the new attempt to eliminate international war from our human affairs.

I am not at present discussing the Yalta resolution but merely pointing out its relation to the new setup under the Charter compared with that of the Covenant. The Charter, unlike the Covenant, in prohibiting all international war and thus involving enforcement action to prevent it, creates a special position for the great powers calling also for special voting relations between them, which were not necessary under the Covenant.

This unequivocal prohibition of war, and this recognition of the special position of the great powers resulting therefrom, are the two major departures of the Charter from the League Covenant. There is a third differenceone of omission and not of provision in the Covenant. It is no less far-reaching than the other two, perhaps even more so. It refers to the economic and social setup in the Charter which has nothing corresponding in the Covenant.

I have already referred to the unforeseen economic and social developments of the postwar world since the last peace. They must profoundly influence our views as to the future course of events and its possible repercussions on the peace of the world. The framers of the last peace lived, as I have said, in a political world and were dominated by a political outlook and point of view. They thought political solutions would suffice. No wonder that their plans were upset by the catastrophic economic developments which disrupted national and world economics in the era between the two wars. The chaos of currencies, exchanges, and tariffs, and all the strange and curious devices intended to cope with them, are too well-known to everyone to call for more than mere mention. Their disastrous eco

nomic and social consequences are no less well-known. Together with the new ideologies, resurrected from the past and from the Nazi underworld, they contributed in large measure to the crisis which produced the war. It soon became evident that the economic chaos and the social unrest and suffering resulting from it were no less fruitful sources of war than the ordinary forms of aggression so familiar to the political world. To these were added the new forms of propaganda through radio, infiltration, Fifth Column and secret sabotage, and similar innovations. In some respects aggression was becoming more psychological than physical, more insidious and dangerous, and much more difficult to cope with along the old political lines. The whole technique of aggression and attack was largely transformed, and came to by-pass the accepted procedures known to international law and relations. The confusion was extreme, and the results specially disastrous to the peace-loving peoples. These results have been among the most potent causes of the present war. As a consequence, the new Charter, in dealing with and coping with the prevention of war, will provide means and methods for the control of these new forces which have entered the international field; and the proposed new Economic and Social Council will thus, from this and other points of view, become one of the most important organs of the new world Organization. In close co-operation with the other agencies set up in the economic field, such as the existing I.L.O., the Monetary Fund, the International Bank, the Food and Agricultural Council, and other bodies which are certain to be created, this new Council will enable the United Nations to have a far firmer grip of the new forces and conditions and techniques leading to social and economic unrest and subversion than the League of Nations ever had. The social and economic causes of war may thus come to be controlled at the source, so to say. May I, in conclusion, add one more point in reference to the general aspects of the Charter, as compared with the Covenant. The new Charter should not be a mere legalistic document for the prevention of war. I would suggest that the Charter should contain at its very outset and in its preamble, a declaration of human rights and of the common faith which has sustained the Allied peoples in their bitter and prolonged struggle for the vindication of those rights and that faith. This war has not been an ordinary war of the old type. It has been a war of ideologies, of conflicting philosophies of life and conflicting faiths. In the deepest sense it has been a war of religion perhaps more so than any other war of history. We have fought for justice and decency and for the fundamental freedoms and rights of man, which are basic to all human advancement and progress and peace. Let us, in this new Charter of humanity, give expression to this faith in us, and thus proclaim to the world and to posterity, that this was not a mere brute struggle of force between the nations but that for us, behind the mortal struggle, was the moral struggle, was the vision of the ideal, the faith in justice and the resolve to vindicate the fundamental rights of man, and on that basis to found a better, freer world for the future. Never have all peace-loving peoples been so deeply moved. This is what our men and women feel they are fighting for on the war fronts, and have been laboring and slaving for on the home fronts in these long years of steadfast endurance. Let us put it into the Charter of the United Nations as our confession of faith and our testimony to the future. Our warfare has been for the eternal values which sustain the spirit of man in its upward struggle toward the light. Let us affirm this faith of ours, not only as our high cause and guiding spirit in this war but also as our objective for the future. The peace we are striving for, and are taking such pains to safeguard, is a peace of justice and honor and fair-dealing as between man and man, as between nation and nation.

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