The United Nations To-Day and To-Morrow
-- Published for the United Nations Information Organisation, 1945.CHAPTER TWO: Forerunners of the United Nations
ALTHOUGH the official birthday of the United Nations was January 1, 1942, some of the methods of united action by which they are carrying on the common war effort against the Axis were in operation before that date. Some of the peacetime elements of the United Nations idea go back still further: to the end of the last great war and beyond. And the basic idea of "common action for the common good" is almost as old as the history of organised government itself: it had found expression through centuries in treaties, agreements, and understandings between two or more independent governments.
The oldest example of this idea functioning today is, perhaps, the Swiss Confederation: a union for the common good and for the common defence of many separate cantons, diversified in culture and religion, and speaking four different languages French, German, Italian, and Romansh. This union has continued for 900 years.
Another, more modern example of common action for the common good was the confederation of the 13 North American colonies which later became the United States of America. By the Articles of Confederation of 1781, a number of independent states agreed to pool their efforts to achieve a common aim. The Confederation, however, had still so little power that the states continued to act like independent countries. Consequently a new Constitution was soon adopted, under which each state had to give up some of its individual independence and sovereignty, thereby creating a more perfect union.
A third modern example is the British Commonwealth of Nations, wherein the mother-country and Dominions are now independent equal nations, which, nevertheless, stand together in voluntary common agreement in war and peace on certain fundamental principles and for mutual security and freedom.
Other examples of the United Nations idea are the international conferences of the 19th century, the conventions signed at them, and the machinery set up to carry out their provisions. These, unlike the confederation of the thirteen American colonies, the British Commonwealth or the Swiss Confederation, were international rather than national and devoted to specific problems of common concern. Participation was open on a voluntary basis to all nations and governments, regardless of size or form.
Early International Organisations
Perhaps the earliest and most notable example of international organisations was the Universal Postal Union (1874), whose members agreed on the co operative and uniform handling of mail, parcel post and money orders passing from one country to another. Some instances of international co operation agreed upon at international conventions were the stamping out of the international slave trade (1884 85), the establishment of international standards of weights and measures (1875), and the definition, at the first Hague Conference (1899) for humanitarian purposes, of certain "Laws of War."
Most ambitious of all efforts at international organization before the first world war was the second Hague Peace Conference of 1907, called by Czar Nicholas II of Russia, at the suggestion of President Theodore Roosevelt, to establish international co operative machinery for the prevention of war. Although the conference failed in its main purpose, it did succeed in setting up, at the Hague, a Court of Arbitration to which disputing nations might bring their differences for voluntary arbitration and settlement.
These are examples of international cooperation, open to all nations. Mention should also be made of the development of certain regional associations open to a limited number of nations. One of the most notable was the Pan American Union. Beginning with a Commercial Bureau set up in 1890, this gradually developed into a general agreement between the republics of the Americas to consult and co operate with each other in all matters affecting the interests and security of several or all of them.
Thus far all the various international organizations which had been developed had one thing in common: they were limited either in their objectives, as was the Universal Postal Union, or in their membership, as was the Pan American Union. Thus they were not fully comparable to the present day United Nations, which is, in its ultimate concept, universal in scope both as to membership and objectives. Furthermore, none had tackled the problem of collective security "that is, of forming a permanent organisation which would aim to ensure peace by concerted action against aggressors. This all important matter was left to each nation as best m could, through alliances, treaties and agreements between two or more nations. But the first quarter of the 20th century brought an event that was to give a new impulse to all thought on this subject.
On June 28, 1914, in a small Balkan city named Sarajevo, an Austrian Archduke and his wife were shot by a young Serbian student. Few people in the United States, Great Britain, China or even in many parts of Continental Europe itself had ever heard of Sarajevo, or of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Yet, within a month, Austria had declared war on Serbia, which it held responsible for the shooting and, in the following years one by one nearly every country on earth, directly or indirectly, became involved.
The World War Affected Everyone
Before that war ended, over eight million five hundred thousand soldiers of a score of nations had been killed or had died from wounds; twenty one million two hundred thousand more had been wounded, and millions had been crippled for life; thirty or forty million civilians had died from disease or hunger or had been driven from their homes, some never to return; millions of children had been permanently weakened by hunger and deprived of their education; and property worth millions of pounds had been lost, destroyed, blown up or sunk in the seven seas. Even in the victorious nations, tens of millions of men, women and children were never to recover from the effects of the war.
For the first time in history, it could be said that there had been a war which had truly affected, in one way or another, every one of the two hundred million men, women and children on earth often to their utter ruin. And so, for the first time, it was brought home to people in all parts of the earth that any war anywhere might affect them, and that the only way to avoid personal suffering from war was to act together to prevent war from the breaking out again, anywhere on earth.
The League of Nations Aimed at Security
It was in response to this strong universal feeling that there came into being the most recent and most immediate forerunner of the United Nations: the League of Nations, with its two companion bodies the International Labour Organization (I.L.O.) and the Permanent Court of International Justice (World Court), an improvement on the previous Hague Court. These three with membership eventually open to all nations were to provide a practical, permanent machinery designed to improve world conditions and to prevent war. They also, through the International Labour Office, and the League's many bureaux, committees and sections were to give the peoples and nations of the world a means whereby they could study and solve problems which affect the general well being of mankind, problems which in the past had so often helped to bring wars about.
These agencies did not, however, succeed in their main objective the prevention of another World War. On the day on which the League was officially born (January 10, 1920), there were still several conflicts hanging over from the World War. The League aided in settling several of these, and, for a time, gave promise of settling other disputes as they arose such as the Mosul Oil dispute and the dispute following the Italian attack on the Greek island of Corfu.
But when, in 1931, Japan made an open, unprovoked attack upon China, the other League Members did not exercise their powers in order to prevent Japan from occupying Manchuria. Within the next six years, Japan seized several additional portions of China, and finally went to war against the whole of the Chinese nation (1937).
Italy, meantime, attacked and conquered Ethiopia (1935 36) and Albania (1939); and Germany remilitarised the Rhineland (1936) in breach of the Treaty of Versailles and annexed, one by one, Austria (1938), Czechoslovakia (1938 39) and a portion of Lithuania (1939). Germany's example was followed by Hungary and later by Bulgaria. In the case of the Japanese and Italian aggressions, the League protested, and in the latter case actually applied sanctions; but the guilty nations merely withdrew from the League and went ahead with their conquests. Germany, herself, had withdrawn from the League in 1933, before starting on her career of aggression and conquests.
And finally, on September 1, 1939, the boom of heavy guns and the roar of German dive bombers over Poland announced the beginning of the final catastrophe another World War and the eclipse, for the time, of the ideal of peaceful settlement embodied in the League.
The League Lacked Sufficient Powers
Many and varied reasons have been given for the failure of the peace machinery, created after the First World War, to prevent the disintegration which finally culminated in the Second World War. Although the League had been originally proposed by President Wilson, the United States did not become a member, nor was Russia a member for the first fourteen years. Thus, from the very start the League lacked the strength and authority which it would otherwise have commanded, and the member nations became much more cautious in their support. They were naturally hesitant as to either taking decisions or using their armed forces in a world not strongly united and completely organized for peace.
While the League failed in attaining its main purpose, the prevention of war, it did succeed, together with the World Court and the International Labour Organization, in providing invaluable experience for the organization and maintenance of peace in the future. It also accomplished much work of a permanent value in other fields. Some of this work, in which non member nations including the United States have been associated, is still going on to day, even in the midst of war, and will undoubtedly become part of the foundations on which the United Nations will build.
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