YouSaid · the spoken record

McNeil

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66
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1947-09-24
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1947-09-24
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1
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un-general-debate

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  1. “Masaryk made a good and proper and pointed reference to Spain — the USSR representative preferred to see the Council impotent rather than allow it to pass a resolution which he judged insufficiently strong.”

    1947-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 2 (1947)

  2. “For example, we are all aware of the circumstances which have led the United States to place the Greek question on the agenda of the Assembly, and how the USSR representative in the Security Council, despite the opinion of the majority of the Balkan Commission and of the Council itself, vetoed a United States resolution to establish a commission of conciliation and investigation in the hope of ending what all delegations, including the Soviet Union delegation, agreed in regarding as a threat to peace. On that occasion the veto was motivated by a desire to brand the Greek Government with responsibility for the misdeeds of its neighbours. In the case of Spain in 1946 — Mr.”

    1947-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 2 (1947)

  3. “Yet the veto was exercised in the Council, preventing the Council from taking action, preventing a formal expression of opinion on the merits of the case by the members of the Council. We are glad that the question now goes to the International Court of Justice. But from our point of view that is perhaps the worst abuse of the veto in the Security Council, though other nations would, no doubt, offer other examples equally or comparably grievous.”

    1947-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 2 (1947)

  4. “I regret, as the whole Assembly must regret, that we failed in this attempt. Let us look at one or two of the results of that failure. Last year there was a most melancholy incident now known as the “Corfu Incident”. First our ships, moving through the Corfu Channel, were fired upon. The old reply would have been to fire back. Our commanders kept their heads. There was no precipitate action. That was in May. Then in October two of our ships in the Corfu Channel were mined and badly damaged. Forty-four men who were pursuing their lawful occasions were lulled and others were wounded. We acted in. the spirit of the Charter and submitted our case to the Security Council. There we temperately pleaded our cause. There we established the facts. We had the Council with us, as we had world opinion with us.”

    1947-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 2 (1947)

  5. “By this code of conduct we hoped to make the Security Council the place where it was possible for a country to obtain decisions based on an assessment of the facts and a sense of justice, having at all times a steady regard for the purposes of the Council and the principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations. To that end my Secretary of State, Mr. Ernest Bevin, last year asked the five permanent members of the Security Council to meet in the hope that we could among ourselves secure an understanding, clarifying and unifying our actions, because it was quite clear that within the terms of the Charter and in terms of our position in the world we had special duties as well as special lights, and that we should not seek to avoid the duties and at the same time maintain our title to these rights.”

    1947-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 2 (1947)

  6. “It is a matter of more than regret to my Government that the question of new admissions, instead of being dealt with in the spirit of the debate and of the two resolutions of the General Assembly of last year, has once more threatened to become the subject of obnoxious horsetrading. This is a wholly unjustifiable disregard of the spirit of the Charter. It is therefore not at all surprising that the work of the Security Council should have driven Powers to consider if, within the Charter, they could find any other instrument through which world opinion could be registered. As the Assembly is aware, my Government thought that this question of working an untried institution like the Security Council could be aided by what we called a code of conduct.”

    1947-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 2 (1947)

  7. “The United Kingdom is naturally interested. We are interested in a number of countries for the best reason, because we think their claims are good. Let me mention only one. Can anyone possibly justify the rejection of Eire as a Member of the United Nations? Mr. Evatt, and our distinguished colleague from El Salvador, have both discussed this. Here is a reputable and stable Government whose relations with Members of this Organization are good and cordial. It is, above all, a peaceful nation, seeking by legitimate means to improve, at all times, its relationships with Powers similarly stable and legal. There is not one argument in equity that can be offered against its admission.”

    1947-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 2 (1947)

  8. “Even if the resolution recently adopted, which recommended a cease-fire between the Indonesians and the Dutch, and the subsequent appointment of the Committee of Three, does not provide a solution to this problem, it is to the credit of the Security Council that, even temporarily, the two sides have been spared the further ravages of war, and an opportunity for conciliation has been provided. When I have said that, however, it is almost all that one can say in praise of the Security Council. It is true that some progress has been achieved in the Atomic Energy and Conventional Armaments Commissions, and I shall deal later in some detail with this. Let me refer, in passing, to the question of new admissions, although a number of our colleagues, and particularly our Syrian colleague, have already dealt faithfully with the subject.”

    1947-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 2 (1947)

  9. “It is still possible to remedy this fault. Of course, the political and public disappointment with the United Nations has primarily grown from the slow paralysis which the world has been forced to watch creeping over the Security Council; There have been, it is true, some positive developments of the Council to which it is proper to draw attention. The despatch, despite the USSR abstention on certain clauses of the resolution, of a commission to Greece to investigate the cause of the frontier trouble was a distinctive international event. It could have proved a most encouraging example of the help which the United Nations ought to be able to put at the disposal of any nation, but particularly a small nation, in temporary distress.”

    1947-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 2 (1947)

  10. “We have rushed ahead to create some commissions which, in the present circumstances, we could well have done without. The Social Commission, for example, has been a great disappointment. Its work is, unfortunately, thoroughly indifferent in character. Nor can anyone be much cheered by the work so far achieved by the Commission on the Status of Women. Even in areas where we had the right to expect better results, such as the Economic and Employment Commission, our hopes are tempered. I think that much of the dissatisfaction here is due, as I have already attempted to state in the Economic and Social Council, to the fact that political considerations have entered into the Commissions where the technicians and economists should have been encouraged to work, altogether apart from the political obsessions of the individual members.”

    1947-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 2 (1947)

  11. “They aim understandably at obtaining independence, and they aim, too, at creating new economic relations. Again, therefore, the United Nations has a background which the League of Nations did not have in a comparative degree. One might have expected that the biggest advance in the work of the United Nations would have been shown in the area in which the Economic and Social Council operates. Again it is unfair and dangerous to underestimate what the Council has done, and I agree most warmly with Mr. Masaryk in emphasizing the importance of this work. I must, however, associate myself with Mr. Evatt in his fears that we are creating an elaborate harness and forgetting about purchasing a horse. The Members again are partially to blame. My Government, and I as its representative, must accept a share of responsibility.”

    1947-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 2 (1947)

  12. “Moreover, public opinion, quite understandably, has been too optimistic about the possibilities of this Organization and about the ease with which international problems could be solved. The fact that not only has progress not been in proportion to this unjustifiable expectation, but there has been a deterioration in international relations, has caused a reaction of disappointment and despondency, which is again, I think, quite disproportionate. Moreover, the complexity and range of our world problems are without precedent. We have been forced to deal not only with the legacies of the war, but also with economic and political problems which challenge the foundations of contemporary society. In the Middle East and the Far East we are seeing a growth, such as we saw in nineteenth century Europe, of strong nationalist movements.”

    1947-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 2 (1947)

  13. “I have no doubt, however, that we shall recover from our mistakes, and I want to say here that, whatever cuts my Government feels that it must propose, we are in no way retiring from the full support we have given to the United Nations. Our proposals will be as much influenced by our determination to make the United Nations as effective as possible as by our own temporarily straitened circumstances. The rapidity of the growth of the Organization and the diversity of tasks entrusted to the United Nations are, I repeat, without parallel. The League of Nations was not asked at the beginning to shoulder a commensurate burden. We must therefore expect to find some comparative inefficiency in the operation of the Organization.”

    1947-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 2 (1947)

  14. “Where this has occurred, we must admit our mistakes and cut down the burden of work which we have imposed upon the Secretariat. We shall have to decide priorities and adhere to them. On the other hand, as everyone who has studied the valuable survey produced by the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions must admit, there seem to have been unjustifiable extensions of the Secretariat,, and sometimes work has been undertaken in an extravagant and not very efficient manner. I think, too, it must be admitted that Governments have not always been helpful. They have not in all cases given personnel of the calibre such as the Secretary-General was entitled to expect.”

    1947-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 2 (1947)

  15. “In the first place, it is proper to remember that the United Nations has grown in a rapid and even in an impetuous manner. We shall at the appropriate time — through my colleague, Mr. Kenneth Younger, in the Administrative and Budgetary Committee — offer some detailed observations on the growth of the Organization and its appetite for money. Like everyone else, I want, however, most warmly to pay tribute, on behalf of my Government, to the range of work which the Organization is undertaking under the direction of Mr. Trygve Lie, our Secretary-General. Some of the work should not have been undertaken. Most often, let us admit it, this has been the fault of the Members of the United Nations and of delegations such as my own.”

    1947-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 2 (1947)

  16. “The Assembly will not expect me at this time to follow in any detail the subject which the representative of Syria has just discussed with such passion and erudition. I have no doubt that a detailed examination will occur more than once before each of us returns home. It is usual, on such an occasion, to make a survey of the work done during the current year. I propose, however, to make this very brief, primarily because it has been done so admirably by so many representatives. I am not going to contend that my Government is in any sense satisfied with the work discharged by the United Nations in the last year. I think, however, that it is only proper in assessing the limited success of the United Nations to note certain points which in any circumstances would militate against success.”

    1947-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 2 (1947)