Peace Organizations Research Articles

Strengthening the United Nations. Report of the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace

Strengthening the United Nations. Report of the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace

The Emergence of the International Law Societies

The history of world politics of the half century before 1914 is full of nationalist wars, imperialist conflicts, and the diplomacy of the armed peace. To the less spectacular developments of internationalism so little attention is usually paid that the League of Nations almost seems to emerge full-grown from the head of Woodrow Wilson. It is true that the dominant trend in the relations between the sovereign states was anything but pacific, and the peoples were increasingly swayed by the emotion of aggressive nationalism. At the same time the world was becoming more interdependent economically and culturally, and there was a quiet but clearly perceptible growth of international-mindedness. A significant expression of this development was the movement of ideas in the eighteen-seventies which led to the establishment of two important law societies, the Institute of International Law and the International Law Association. The story of their origins is an interesting chapter in the history of international law and throws light as well upon its relationships with the organized peace movement.

The United Nations Emergency Force

When the Charter of the United Nations was being written and put into effect, the feature that was most emphasized by its supporters was the provision for the use of collective forces to keep the peace. It was the failure of this particular feature of the Charter system to become effective which was mainly responsible for the subsequent decline of confidence in the UN as a peace organization. For a time, hopes were rekindled by the role of the United Nations in meeting aggression in Korea. Recent events in the Middle East, particularly the establishment of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), have revived interest in the possibility of strengthening the UN as an organization to maintain international peace and security.Because of the hopes aroused as well as the results achieved, it is important to analyze objectively what UNEF is, what its role has been, and to what it may lead.

Charter Review Conference: Ninth Report and Papers Presented to the Commission. (New York: Commission to Study the Organization of Peace. 1955. Pp. 226.)

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Commission to Study the Organization of Peace

Commission to Study the Organization of Peace

The Moral Basis of World Peace

I HAVE been asked recently if I would not, upon my return to China a couple of months from now, establish a branch of the Spinoza Foundation in Shanghai. I have agreed to the proposal, if for no other reason, because that great Jewish philosopher of the seventeenth century made a very pregnant remark. Peace, he said, not the absence of war, but a virtue born from the strength of soul. I feel that in the present critical period it is a very important observation. I feel that it lays the correct emphasis. was what made Immanuel Kant say, in the succeeding century, It is a mistake to think that peace is a political problem: it is a moral I believe that for centuries the people in the West have considered the problem of peace only as a matter of political and social adjustment. Such adjustment is no doubt important, but I believe that we need something more than a mere adjustment of practical interests to establish a lasting peace. I should like therefore to address myself to a consideration of the question: Why is it that there has been such lack of harmony among the nations? Why is it that peace has been so elusive and difficult of attainment? I don't know that my answer will be at all satisfactory. I do know that it will not satisfy those people who consider themselves to be practical or realistic. My views will be somewhat long-range views, and I hold them because I believe that only when we lay aside the merely practical interests, at least for the moment, can we find a remedy for our present uncertainty. The war which we have just gone through has stimulated all of us, as never before, to thoughts of peace, and we have had quite a crop of notable book and articles on the subject. These have advanced many plans and schemes and blueprints for the organization of peace, but it seems to me that, important as they are, they do not go deep enough. Their emphasis continues to be on the periphery rather than on the core of the problem. For if the malady, as I believe with Spinoza and Kant, is in the hearts of men, then, however perfect a plan or scheme may be, it has small chance of success if it is not preceded by a radical and drastic change in our attitude towards political and international relations.

The Trend in World Politics

There is unhappily nothing new in the fear of war. But the circumstances now are a little peculiar. We are only two years beyond the fighting end of a war which on our side was always represented as a crusade to end wars, and which was immediately followed by the creation of an organization stridently advertised as an improved League of Nations. We are in the presence of a dual concentration of power which is unique in history for magnitude and inclusiveness. The conflict, already engaged though not yet military in form, is more one of systems of modes of life and government than any previous international struggle. Finally, interwoven with the other pulls and strains, is the rivalry for new armaments of a type which seems destined to revolutionize warfare if not, indeed, the general terms of life on our planet. Comparisons with the first few years after the war of 19141918, usually to the marked disadvantage of the present, have become a journalistic commonplace. The two redeeming features invariably chalked up to our credit, namely the strong new interest of the American people and government in organization for peace and the broad realization of conflicting forces that were present but not so clearly seen in the nineteen-twenties, are hardly of a sort to bring short-term comfort. It is, after all, the knowledge of the deep underlying differences that separate and antagonize the two great foci of power, coupled with the spectacle of frustration in the United Nations, that frighten us. Justification for the universal fear can be found not only in the day-to-day relations of the great states but in the clash of their philosophies. And one of the baffling features of an un-

Early Spanish Town Planning in the New World

FOR centuries before the discovery of the New World war was the major occupation of the Spaniards. The struggle to wrest Spain from the Moors developed a large number of vigorous and fearless men, efficient in the taking and exploring of new lands, but with little concept of, or aptitude for, the gentler and more difficult arts of peaceful organization.' Because of her martial preoccupation, Spain took little, if any, part in the revitalized urbanization movement of Western Europe. In virtually all her neighbors, an awareness of the need for town planning had been steadily growing for generations. Serious thought had been given to the problem, and steps had been taken to meet it. The French, for example, had had considerable and successful experience in the establishment of the bastides and villes-neuves. The English, patterning after the French, had set up numerous planned towns. The Italians were far from being tyros in the field. Even the people of Central Europe had had some experience in town planning. But it was not so with Spain. The idea that a town should be established according to a preconceived pattern was foreign to a Spaniard. Although there were numerous Roman foundations in Iberia, many of considerable size and importance, they had been transformed in the long interim from meticulously plotted grids into formless cities with-tortuous streets and alleys.2 It was singularly unfortunate, both for the Spaniards and for the Indians of the New World, that Spain was uninformed in town planning. Towns were needed for control, for distribution of goods, for taxes, labor, and conversion to Christianity. Yet the conquistadors burst into the New World

Unit Outline on Problems of International Organization and World Peace

Unit Outline on Problems of International Organization and World Peace

Belgium and the United Nations

BELGIUM possesses no greater special concern than the maintenance of peace. There is, then, no possible antagonism between her and the international family. Belgium has a longstanding interest in the effectiveness of international organization in general and especially in political organizations which are set up to assure peace and world security. It is hardly necessary to mention that Belgium was a champion of the League of Nations, with which she co-operated loyally and in which she placed her hope. She showed no disaffection for the old international organization until it became clear that the League was doomed to weakness as a consequence of the policy of appeasement, isolationism, and neutrality adopted by the great powers. Then, and then alone, did Belgium fall back on a policy of independence. Within the scope of this article it is impossible to give in detail the place and the role of Belgium in each of the international assemblies held in the course of the war. Let us only recall that she is a member of the administrative council of the Food and Agriculture Organization and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; that she ratified at the proper time the agreements of Bretton Woods; and that she has declared herself, in general, in favor of the freedom of the air proclaimed at Chicago. At the Paris conference she proposed a constitutional reform of the International Labor Office which seemed to her appropriate to the situation prevailing at the time throughout the world. But, important as are the organizations which we have just mentioned, these are only specialized institutions corresponding to a functional division of international activities. The work of all of these technical organizations can only be developed during peace. It must be co-ordinated and animated by the breath of politics. An over-all organ must be set up. The outline of such an international peace organization to which all other international agencies would be attached was sketched by the great powers at Dumbarton Oaks and completed at Yalta.

Catholic Youth in the Inter-American Century

As the armies and navies of the United Nations press on to victory in all parts of the world, we at home, who are planning for the organization of peace, have an obligation to the young people of the United States to perfect a program that will reap the fruits of our war-time partnership with the Good Neighbor Republics. Brought to a white-hot temperature during the clash of arms, the policy of inter-American friendship established its value in creating “the corridor of victory” from Brazil to Africa and in forging a strong, defensive shield on the West Coast, whose southern anchor extended from Chile, through the Ecuadorean Galápagos Islands, to the Panama Canal. Would not all the students in our colleges and universities acknowledge that this was an “accelerated program” of American amity that paid out rich dividends both in national security as well as in furnishing the bases, naval, land and air, which are now the springboards for victorious offensives in Europe and in the Orient? In the eyes of our young men and young women it must be clear that America’s need proved itself to have been an inter-American opportunity.

Catholic Youth in the Inter-American Century

As the armies and navies of the United Nations press on to victory in all parts of the world, we at home, who are planning for the organization of peace, have an obligation to the young people of the United States to perfect a program that will reap the fruits of our war-time partnership with the Good Neighbor Republics. Brought to a white-hot temperature during the clash of arms, the policy of inter-American friendship established its value in creating “the corridor of victory” from Brazil to Africa and in forging a strong, defensive shield on the West Coast, whose southern anchor extended from Chile, through the Ecuadorean Galápagos Islands, to the Panama Canal. Would not all the students in our colleges and universities acknowledge that this was an “accelerated program” of American amity that paid out rich dividends both in national security as well as in furnishing the bases, naval, land and air, which are now the springboards for victorious offensives in Europe and in the Orient? In the eyes of our young men and young women it must be clear that America’s need proved itself to have been an inter-American opportunity.

Arbitration in International Controversy. By Frances Kellor and Martin Demke New York: Commission to Study the Organization of Peace and American Arbitration Association. Pp. ii, 98. Index.

Arbitration in International Controversy. By Frances Kellor and Martin Demke New York: Commission to Study the Organization of Peace and American Arbitration Association. Pp. ii, 98. Index.

Rehabilitation of European Culture

THE encouraging measure of agreement reached by Mr. Winston Churchill, President Roosevelt and Marshal Stalin at the Yalta meeting, as indicated in the communique issued on February 12, goes far to offset some of the doubts as to common policy which have arisen since the tentative proposals of the Dumbarton Oaks Conference were issued last October. Agreement has been reached on the difficult question of voting procedure in the Security Council of the new peace organization, and a Conference of the United Nations is to be called to meet at San Francisco on April 25, 1945, to prepare the charter of such an organization along the lines proposed at Dumbarton Oaks.

Functional Approach to International Co-Operation

NO feature of the recent conference of Prime Ministers of the British Empire has been of wider interest than the attention given to the shaping of international organization after the War. No less impressive than the evidence of the unity of the British Commonwealth on essentials, and of its identity of spirit and resolve, is that of willingness to assume the responsibilities of world leadership and to make constructive proposals for the organization and maintenance of world peace. The emphasis placed on the inclusive rather than exclusive character of the British Empire is welcome and wise, all the more when, as in the recent speeches of Mr. Cordell Hull, of Mr. Dewey and others, there is evidence that the United States is giving equal attention to such questions. Furthermore, it is clear that some American periodicals such as Foreign Affairs are making a bold attempt to prepare American opinion to face whatever changes may be involved and to clear away misunderstandings that might hinder Anglo-American co-operation.

The United Nations and the Organization of Peace

Journal Article The United Nations and the Organization of Peace Get access The United Nations and the Organization of Peace. Commission to Study the Organization of Peace. Third Report. February 1943. (New York: Commission to Study the Organization of Peace. 8½″ × 5½″. 36 pp. n.p.) R. I. K. R. I. K. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Affairs, Volume 20, Issue 2, April 1944, Page 280, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/20.2.280a Published: 01 April 1944

Business, Free Enterprise, and the Organization of Peace

Business, Free Enterprise, and the Organization of Peace

No Nation Alone: A Plan for Organized Peace

No Nation Alone: A Plan for Organized Peace

Influences for Peaceful Organization in Postwar Japan

Research Article| October 01 1943 Influences for Peaceful Organization in Postwar Japan Alban G. Widgery Alban G. Widgery Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1943) 42 (4): 338–346. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-42-4-338 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Alban G. Widgery; Influences for Peaceful Organization in Postwar Japan. South Atlantic Quarterly 1 October 1943; 42 (4): 338–346. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-42-4-338 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsSouth Atlantic Quarterly Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 1943 by Duke University Press1943 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Problems of Economic Reorganisation

Journal Article Problems of Economic Reorganisation Get access Problems of Economic Reorganisation. By J. B. Condliffe. 1943. (New York: Commission to Study the Organisation of Peace. 812′​′×512′​′⁠. 44 PP. 5c. International Affairs Review Supplement, Volume 19, Issue 13, September 1943, Page 685, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/19.13.685b Published: 01 September 1943