I have the great honour of presenting before this democratic Assembly of the nations of the world, united in the common task of maintaining international peace and security, the general principles that inspire the foreign policy of the Chilean Republic at this decisive hour of our civilization.
The Chilean people, throughout its long history as a republic, may boast with legitimate pride of the facts which bear witness to its deep democratic convictions, its solid institutions based on social rights and justice, its lasting respect for all individual freedoms and guarantees and its constant defence of human dignity.
These principles, transferred to the international plane with calm and realistic judgment, cannot fail to be expressed by a generous spirit of co-operation, a sincere desire to contribute to the best of our ability to all efforts to strengthen the fraternal solidarity of the nations and to safeguard cultural values, which are the only means of bequeathing to future generations that happier world to which they are entitled.
For these reasons Chile has always given its disinterested co-operation to all international conferences and organizations of a world-wide character and has been at pains to contribute to the unity of the nations of the Western Hemisphere. It has strengthened the links that unite them by its direct action and spirit of continental brotherhood, and by collaborating with all these nations in that identification of hopes and fears which has resulted in positive manifestations of brotherhood, in real common achievements such as those attained at the recent inter-American conferences of Foreign Ministers and, most especially, in the Act of Chapultepec and in its recent complementing by a pact for security and defence of the hemisphere signed at Rio de Janeiro.
American ideals, which the genius of the great President Roosevelt so greatly enriched by his good-neighbour policy, are our ideals; and it has therefore been our concern to translate them into concrete forms on the international plane and make them effectively represent the voice of the world that is now being born.
Of these American achievements, the most significant and the most important for the Chilean people is the new and transcendental meaning we have given to democracy. Indeed, we have stripped it of its purely intellectual or political meaning in order to revitalize it, place it beyond the limits of rigid formulas, make it a basic human concept, founded on respect for the condition of man, for ideas in general and for social equality; a respect which, on the international plane is transmuted into the right to live without fear in the sincere defence of peace.
Such is our message and our mission. Faithful to this message and this mission, Chile signed the United Nations Charter which embodies the same ideals; we have more than once affirmed our unshakable faith in the principles which inspire it, in the fundamental rights of man, in the juridical equality of nations, in absolute respect for the pledged word, in tolerance and in the peaceful relations among all peoples.
Faithful to these principles, Chile identifies herself with the view expressed by President Roosevelt that hope for a peaceful and progressive world will depend on the good will and judgment of the peace-loving nations, both great and small, which
assume a responsibility proportionate to their individual capacity, for the purpose of working together for the maintenance of peace and security.
Faithful to these principles, Senor Gabriel Gonzalez Videla, the President of Chile, recently said that “Chile’s international policy is one of loyal and disinterested collaboration in the maintenance of peace.”
Chile considers that the United Nations provides the last opportunity to rid the world of the scourge of a new war and secure for the peoples those four freedoms for which they fought on the fields of China, the steppes of Russia, the deserts of Africa, the isles of the Pacific and the beaches of Normandy.
Finally, Chile believes that in signing the San Francisco Charter it assumed an unavoidable responsibility in the arduous task of building a new world based on social justice and human: solidarity, a task which can only be fulfilled if we continue, in this difficult post-war period, that joint and victorious action which the great Powers successfully carried out at the most critical junctures of the last war.
My Government wishes to point out to this Assembly the urgent necessity of ensuring the economic stability and development of those nations which, directly or indirectly, are suffering the consequences of the recent conflict or are faced with the most grave and tremendous problems in the fields of finance, industry agriculture and commerce.
Political independence and security, both internal and,international, must be developed in that economic peace which affords men and States the opportunity for living in dignity.
The maintenance of peace requires that the present world crisis be overcome. We cannot speak of political solidarity without giving primary consideration to economic affairs.
Economic co-operation is absolutely necessary for the American nations, and with this in mind the Chilean Government, through its representative on the Economic and Social Council, urged the advisability of establishing an economic commission for Latin America to study and remedy the present precarious situation of those countries.
The economic picture of Latin America viewed as a whole, shows a group of countries with colonial economies, producing raw materials, short of capital, sparsely industrialized and populated, and with low standards of living. These conditions, seriously aggravated by the effects of the war, and more tragic in some countries than in others, are a serious obstacle to continental security and consequently to the economic recovery of the whole world. Moreover, they constitute a potential danger to the survival of democratic regimes. Ideas subversive of constitutional and juridical order are nourished by economic prostration.
This critical situation of the Latin American countries, which motivated the Chilean proposal, was explicitly acknowledged by the Economic and Social Council when it set up preliminary machinery for the appointment of an Economic Commission for Latin America. The Council’s resolution also requests the Secretary-General to initiate immediate studies of the problems which threaten the stability and development of the Latin American countries.
Our delegation is pleased with the result achieved and feels confident that the bodies concerned will carry out their work speedily and effectively, toward the rapid realization of the hopes shared by all the Latin peoples of America.
Our commercial policy is inspired by the desirability of rationalizing and co-ordinating" the economies of the countries of the Western Hemisphere, overcoming adverse conditions, creating more secure domestic consumer markets, using our own raw materials for industry, and facilitating the concentration of capital.
These are the motives which inspired Chile to amplify her former policy of pacts based exclusively on mutual concessions. We now advocate agreements of wider scope which may result in the creation of complementary economies and in the opening of wider markets than those existing at present. These motives also justify our position in the Economic and Social Council and are of the greatest importance to the new economic structure of the world.
Such are the basic guiding principles of Chile’s international policy.
We are a nation of free men, living and experiencing democracy; a nation which does not persecute anyone because of his ideas; which devotes its efforts to work in complete freedom and which, in the international sphere, offers its loyal co-operation to all nations in the defence of world peace and security, the juridical equality of all States, the respect of treaties and the foundation of world security in the economic co-operation of all countries and the rejection of those false claims of autarchy which lead only to sterile antagonisms.
Chile feels that all these aspirations can be concretely realized through general or regional agreements in strict conformity with the principles inspiring the United Nations and constituting a real complement to that body; for example, agreements like the recent treaty of Rio de Janeiro signed by the, nations of the New World for the purpose of defending hemispheric security.
The nations of our continent have felt the vivifying inspiration of such desires. They have realized the transcendental nature and assumed the responsibility of the era through which our civilization is passing. In Rio de Janeiro they inarched boldly and surely forward to the future and convened a conference to meet in the latter half of next year to study the economic conditions and solve the economic problems which now press heavily upon us.
Such regional agreements, which contribute to the work of the United Nations and adhere to the rules laid down in the San Francisco Charter do not, in any wise, imply the formation of regional blocs of a political character, which Chile has always rejected because they tend to cripple joint action, to obstruct mutual understanding and to breed dangerous and harmful suspicion.
The noble and decisive task of defending international peace and security demands the most effective co-operation, the deepest understanding and that generous disinterest which subordinates minor conflicts and the purely private advantage of individual nations.
With this conviction, Chile makes a fervent appeal to the good will of all the peoples of the world to forget transitory difficulties and to devote all their energies to achieve their common permanent goals.
With the deepest sincerity, the Government of Chile cannot but deplore the fact that understanding and co-operation today seem weakened and even gravely impaired by differences of the most dangerous proportions.
The world views these misunderstandings with fear and anguish, and this anguish and fear are manifested by a spirit of sceptical defeatism as to the efficacy of the United Nations and its ability to achieve the high purposes of the San Francisco Charter.
This spirit of pessimism — for it must be recognized as such — has recently been intensified by the struggle which international public opinion observes is being waged constantly in the Security Council through the repeated use of the veto. This situation moves Chile to recall that the privilege of the veto was granted at the San Francisco Conference as a sincere proof of the confidence of the small nations in the great Powers. The latter, for their part, undertook to use that privilege with prudence and discretion in conformity with the principle of the juridical equality of States.
Oppressed by the hardships of today, man must be able to go forward with a firm step towards a hopeful future, and the United Nations must restore to him this security by the sincere collaboration of all countries, by removal of the misunderstandings which arise from different philosophies, by the lasting guarantee of peace and the confidence that there will be no more recourse to arms in the defence of particular interests or ideologies.
Now that humanity has witnessed, horror- struck, the two terrible catastrophes produced by war when war was applied as a means of solving problems, and now that efforts have been made beginning with the Briand-Kellogg Pact to outlaw the use of force as a political instrument, we must refuse to allow war, which the ancients called the ultima ratio, to become the prima ratio or the unica ratio.
While determining the new bases of community life, we cannot allow the fundamentals of peace to be forgotten either, nor can we allow nations to work towards the development of political and economic situations which might provoke another war; especially as the period of military operations is always the shortest in the tragic development of a conflict.
Chile believes she is interpreting the wishes of the small nations in making this appeal to all the peoples of the world so that they, in a noble demonstration of their understanding of history, may restore to mankind the peace which it has so fully earned through the harrowing years.