I.
INTRODUCTION
Creating the United Nations took a long, long time. Arguably it all began 77 years ago this week in July 1914 [NOTE: this speech was delivered July 26, 1991] when Austria-Hungary sent its ultimatum to Serbia. With two great outbursts of energy at the beginning and end and with a long, smouldering pause in between, the United Nations Charter was in some sense and by fits and starts thought about, debated, written and ratified between 1914 and 1945. In 1946 the General Assembly and Security Council held their first meetings. Hegel says somewhere that nothing great is achieved without strong emotion. It required two avoidable world wars to build both the global disgust with slaughter and the other strong emotions which twice in one lifetime made rulers and ruled think long and hard about peace. From 1914 to 1920 and again from 1939 to 1946 thoughtful people everywhere came to loathe war so passionately that they built, one succeeding the other, two permanent international bodies to tame aggression by means of collective security and to identify and control the underlying causes of aggression: hunger, poverty, fear, ignorance and misunderstanding. (n. 1) The United Nations today is so complex and far flung in what it does for peace that it is hard for us to take it all in. How does a giant oak tree look to a squirrel sitting at its base? Yet oaks and other plants grow from seeds. And sometimes it is human beings who plant those seeds. Now a seed being planted is easier for most of us to take in at a glance than all the leaves and branches of the maturing tree. Let us therefore look back to the planting of the UN seed: both to the process of planting and to four people among thousands, even millions, of Americans and others who did the planting. Those four Americans lived or at least worked in New York City during the Second World War. Their names are Sol Bloom, Virginia Gildersleeve, James Shotwell and Clark Eichelberger. -OOO-
NOTES (1)
For an overview of the League of Nations see W.P.A. Walters (1952) A
HISTORY OF
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS. For a spectrum of ideas competing for men's
minds before
the League Covenant see C. R. Marchand (1972) THE AMERICAN PEACE
MOVEMENT AND SOCIAL REFORM, 1898 - 1918.
On earlier peace movements in America see Merle E. Curti (1936) PEACE OR WAR: THE AMERICAN STRUGGLE 1636 - 1936. For ideas in the air and a conservative perspective on the First World War see Sondra R. Herman(1969) ELEVEN AGAINST WAR and Philip C. Jessup (1938) ELIHU ROOT. On American preparations for the United Nations excellent introductions include Robert C. Hilderbrand's recent (1990) DUMBARTON OAKS: THE ORIGINS OF THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE SEARCH FOR POSTWAR SECURITY. See also Ruth Russell's (1958) A HISTORY OF THE UNITED NATIONS CHARTER as well as Harley Notter's (1950) POSTWAR FOREIGN POLICY PREPARATION 1939 - 1945. -OOO- Presented orally 07/26/1991 Reviewed and edited lightly 03/23/2004 Revisited 02/20/2009 Patrick Killough Black Mountain, NC |