New Tools for Peaceful Settlement

Abstract

evils which war brings. The path which we are choosing-inevitably choosing-is the one on which in 1920 we refused to set our feet. This time we dare not and we must not fail to contribute our strength to organized society, in full co-operation. Had the United States been a member of the first League of Nations, had we not remained neutral, claiming the right to trade with the aggressor as well as with the victim, I, for one, am convinced by close observation at Geneva, and particularly during the early years, that the League would have been able to stop the Axis in its infancy. The fact that now we are apparently determined to enter the new League and to give it not only co-operation but leadership brings hope that the new organization, built on the foundations of the old, will succeed in the great adventure of establishing permanent peace. In fixing the provisions of the peace the United Nations-and by this I mean the small states as well as the large-will find themselves heir to rich resources opened to them by the experience in the art of international co-operation gained by the League in the course of those years. The League of Nations could not prevent the Second World War, it is true, but it did prevent a number of minor wars, and it scored a great number of other important successes, even in political matters. The League achieved these through a new technique of peaceful settlement which should mean a most valuable contribution to political science. Possessing some fifty-six members, small states as well as great powers, from all continents, it was able to entrust its many delicate pieces of work-inquiry, supervision, and administration-to the citizens of states not selfishly concerned in the outcome. It was this settled policy of appointing nonpartisans that enabled it to fashion new tools for peaceful settlement and to polish old ones to such a point of efficiency that they might well be called new. Two of these tools are of especial interest today, for they offer solutions for two problems of territorial adjustment which will be necessary for permanent peace. The first is the international supervision of the exchange of populations; the second, the international civil administration-temporary or permanent-of special areas.