Syria

Fayez EL-KHOURI Bey explained that although his brother, Faris El-Khouri Bey, who had participated in the activities of the General Assembly as head of the Syrian delegation ever since the birth of the United Nations at San Francisco, was unable to attend the fourth session, the Syrian delegation would do its best to follow in his footsteps and to draw inspiration from his wisdom and his high qualities of justice, honesty, and love for peace. 96. It was difficult to speak about Syria apart from the countries of the Near East or, as it was sometimes called, the Middle East. Syria was not a State in the meaning which the West attached to that word; it was only a part of those vast Arab lands on the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean and its inhabitants were the same as those of Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt and North Africa. If that racial unity was not apparent in the distribution of the Arab States, it was nevertheless a living reality in the souls and hearts of the inhabitants of those countries, and a strong faith which made them foresee that sooner or later their Unity would be realized. 97. That hope was not new; it was half a century old, and at one point in the lifetime of the current generation it had come very near to realization. Those who were acquainted with modern Arabic history knew well how legitimate Arab rights had twice been disregarded under the cloak of power politics. The first occasion had been after the First World War, when the Arab world had been divided into many States and subjugated to foreign mandates, against the will of the population, by the Allies, themselves the very promisers of freedom. 98. That destructive policy had been pursued for a quarter of a century, until the Arabs had found themselves grouped into a number of jealous States, all unprepared to assume the responsibilities of independence or to protect the frontiers of their countries. Conquering elements had been brought into Arab countries by the Allies themselves, who had armed them, given them money and munitions, and had let them fight against the Arabs and drive them from their countries, with the result that the lawful owners of Arab lands and homes had become distressed refugees threatened by death and annihilation. 99. The Arabs had subsequently been accused by the mandatory Powers — the very Powers which were responsible for their defence — of being unable to defend themselves: a strange accusation, when the whole world knew that those Powers were the first to blame. 100. Independence was no easy matter for newly-born nations. In the firm conviction that independence could not be taught overnight, but had to be practised before a people could assume its responsibilities and reap its fruits, Syria had opposed the Mandate System while it was yet only an idea, and Had fought its application in Syria, despite the fact that the League of Nations had insisted on supporting it. As a result of the League’s, policy, the general situation had continued to deteriorate in the Near East until it had culminated in the existing state of affairs, which was an abiding proof of the League’s failure to apply the principles upon which it was based. The short span of life of the League had proved beyond any doubt that it had been a game of power politics and private interests and that the great Powers had not been as sincere in their actions as they had pretended to be in their words. 101. The failure of the League of Nations had resulted in the Second World War. European politicians and statesmen had again started to preach the principles of freedom and democracy, confessing their past mistakes and making vows to the whole world of the sincerity of their intentions in the time to come. 102. The peoples of the world had been deceived by those new and generous promises. Syria, too, had believed in them. It loved democratic ideals and had anxiously hoped that their realization would bring about its independence and happiness. It had therefore again joined its efforts to those of the Allied nations land had cooperated in the war against nazism and fascism. He himself had received the Allies in Syria in 1941, looking forward to the realization of the independence which they had declared, and he had had the honour and privilege of establishing the foundations of the first Ministry of Foreign Affairs in independent Syria. 103. At that time Syria had placed all its resources, all its lines of communications and all its forces, at the disposal of the Allies, in order to achieve victory. So enthusiastic had his country been for the democratic cause that it had expressed its determined will to declare war on the forces of nazism. and fascism. The Allies, however, for reasons which Syria had not understood at the time, had prevented it from so doing. Once the war was over, it had become clear that the Allies had been conspiring against Syria and that for Syria to have declared war would have stopped those conspiracies. Had Syria declared war on the Axis, it would have had trained and equipped armies with able commanders to defend the Arab countries in hours of peril, thus preventing homelessness and misery. All indications showed that that would not have served the purpose of the Allies. 104. The United Nations had been formed in April 1945, with Syria among its Members. There had, however, been consistent proof that the League of Nations, which had been a failure, had been reborn in the Organization and that the evils which had led to its death were again at work in the United Nations. Wise and peace-loving individuals felt that the United Nations would suffer the same destiny as its predecessor. 105. No sooner had the war ended than the victorious nations had divided into two enemy camps, each claiming that they represented true democracy and that the other was a deceitful pretender. The United Nations had, in fact, been reduced to a centre of venomous propaganda, where the seeds of aggression and war were being sown. No greater proof was needed of the enmity existing among the great nations than the words heard from the rostrum of the United Nations, no greater proof of the lack of faith among the great States in the Organization than their international groupings outside it. 106. How could those Powers expect the smaller nations to believe their appeals to the principles of justice and democracy, when they were seen to act contrary to those principles, concentrating their forces to spread war in most areas of the world where people were killing each other and being killed by poverty, ignorance and sickness? 107. The two camps were continuing to mobilize their forces and to instigate peoples against each other, calling the whole process the “cold war”. It was indeed a “cold war”, in that it had not yet burned the great Powers with its fire. It was, however, no “cold war” for the Chinese, the Indonesians, the Arabs or the Greeks, who saw their houses burning, while the flames were fed with fuel rather than extinguished with water. 108. Such were the painful and frightful realities. The representatives of the smaller, nations, whom destiny had favoured with rich lands and placed in a strategical position that excited the envy of the greater Powers, could only Warn the powerful States to fear God, to sympathize with the weak and to place a ll. it to their ambitions, for the world had room for everyone. 109. It had been said that the misunderstanding between the USSR and the Western democracies was. a matter of conflicting ideologies. It could be questioned whether that was true, or whether it was rather an excuse for spreading their influence over the countries which they described as under-developed. 110. It was no new struggle but, in fact, centuries old. Many conquerors had attempted the same thing: Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Kaiser William II and Hitler. The student of human history would realize, unfortunately, that humanity had not advanced a single step towards moral perfection; material comfort had developed in every possible way, but it was all designed to serve the mortal body, and not the immortal soul. 111. The East had been the first teacher of the. world and had laid down the basic principles for its civilization. The teachings of the East were still the core of modem Western civilization, and although the West had materially surpassed all previous centuries in the development of matter and in conquering the difficulties of nature, in the realm of the spirit it had not been able to make one single addition to the high principles formulated by the East. The striking feature of the day was to hear the West priding itself on all its preparations for war to defend Christian civilization, which it had taken from the East and which preached love and peace. 112. The East, which had inherited those principles from its fathers and had practised them consistently, had become convinced that the deeds of the West did not correspond to its words. Oriental civilization would have guaranteed the happiness of its people had it not been for those new Western theories which in the West itself had resulted in dispute, chaos and cold war. 113. The latest system which had appeared in the West and which had, gathered around it the poor and persecuted classed was the communist system which had brought about the division of the world into two camps and had become the cause of controversy among great leaders and statesmen. To oriental eyes, however, which had seen the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires and had witnessed the birth and death of social systems, it was obvious that man’s inspired ideas were doomed to perish and fail and that only God’s inspiration to man could live. 114. As to the various revolts which had broken out in different parts of the world, they were only a reaction to oppression and an expression of dissatisfaction with tyrannical social systems. Calm and the end of revolution would be brought about only with the realization of social justice and equity. 115. Communism, or any other revolutionary system, would not find easy followers in the Orient, the peoples of which would not exchange their high social and humanitarian ideals for those new principles. The oppression of the Orient by the West, however, its exploitation and the denial of its right to justice and the pursuit of happiness, would certainly have a strong reaction. 116. The situation in Asia was undoubtedly an unhappy one. In the midst of such deterioration, caused primarily by the erroneous policies of the West, communism would find in the Orient a fertile ground in which to grow and prosper. Poverty, hunger and sickness would always find an outlet in any revolutionary social system that would upset the prevailing order and relieve people of their sufferings. What, in fact, had the poor, the hungry mid the sick’ to lose in changing the order which had caused their poverty, hunger and sickness for another that promised to save them and to transport them to a paradise of wealth, health and satisfaction? 117. Such dangerous omens were a warning to stubborn imperialists, and equally to those who made generous promises, for they were playing with a fire that would consume impostors and tyrants. 118. One of the results of the division that existed among the great Powers was the splitting of the Organization into two camps, one led by the USSR and the other by the United States. To speak of the division in the Organization implied that the small States had also been divided, joining one or the other of the two camps. On the other hand, those two camps would not have been able to establish themselves if the small States had not joined either of them. If the United States and the USSR had been left in isolation, and if the small States had taken a neutral attitude, treating each problem separately and judging what was right and what was wrong without condoning the purposes and intentions of the two great States, there was no doubt that their attitudes would have altered and their obstinacy would have given place to a spirit of compromise. The interests of the great States were opposed, and it was difficult to reconcile them. But an examination of the causes of that discord would show that the small nations were among the causes of the disagreement. Their rich, undeveloped resources made the great States envy each other and enter into a race to see which could be the first to exploit those resources. Otherwise, they would and nothing about which to disagree. Why should not the small States, therefore, agree among themselves to form a third camp and hold the balance in their hands? That camp would in fact be the camp of peace, for the small States had no ambitions, they harboured no ill-will toward anyone, nor had they any imperialistic designs. All they wanted was to protect the weak against the ambitions of the strong and to establish justice, right and peace, with malice toward none and with goodwill for all. 119. It was regrettable that the small States took little interest in the disputed cases that came up for study and' did not devote to them the interest or attach to them the importance which was usually given by the great Powers. On the contrary, they waited for the great Powers to come to a decision and to submit one plan or another to the vote. Some of them voted for one side and some for the other, without looking into the origins of the case and without remembering that by sacrificing the interests of one small State, they were sacrificing their own interests and that, one after the other, their turn would come. The votes of the smaller nations were the power at the disposal of the great nations in organizing their camps. They should, therefore, attach their real value to their votes, before casting them. For that reason he urged the small nations to make good use of the power in their hands and organize themselves for the sole purpose of guaranteeing world peace. It might be claimed that the right of veto which had been given to the great Powers was the cause of the misfortunes of the Organization, and that without it the whole world would have been in a condition of prosperity and peace. He believed that that was an exaggerated view. The right of veto undoubtedly contradicted the principle of equality among all nations but in spite of all the damage that had been caused by its abuse, it must be admitted that the cause of the sickness did not lie in that alone. In the Syrian representative’s view, the attitude which had been taken by the small nations in the various committees, as well as in the General Assembly, had resulted in damage to the whole structure of the United Nations which was at least equal to the damage caused by the veto. 120. The regrettable fact must frankly be recognized that in spite of all the efforts made and the good will shown, the noble and humanitarian aims of the United Nations would never be attained so long as destructive hands were working secretly, with their power politics and diabolic intrigues, to destroy the honest and useful structure which was being erected. It should be realized and understood that no problem could be considered solved unless it was solved fairly and justly. 121. Fayez El-Khouri Bey appealed to the Members, representing the nations of the world, to help to bring the politicians of the world to reason, in order to achieve the aims of the Organization. He appealed to them, moreover, to bear in mind that economic stability and world prosperity were chimerical and futile fancies if they were not preceded by and founded upon justice, equity and security. 122. In conclusion, he drew attention to a number of points. In the first place, peace among men and the happiness of the peoples of the world could be achieved only through right, justice and freedom, not through military conquests; an aggressor might be able to achieve his aims by means ,of bayonets, but he could never sit and relax on the points of those bayonets. Secondly, the victorious in the modem world were no happier than the vanquished; the economic situation prevailing after the two world wars was a striking example of that truth. Thirdly, the tragic fate of the League of Nations should never be forgotten; it constituted a warning that everything possible must be done to save the United Nations from the same fate. Fourthly, when voting, each delegation must take into full consideration the consequences of its vote. The damage which might result from a precipitous vote could not be restricted to the nation against whom that vote was cast; sooner or later, it would also damage the people of the delegation which voted without full consideration. Fifthly, bargaining, to the detriment of others, should be avoided in the final voting. Lastly, the small nations should not forget that the Organization could not live without them, and should not, therefore, lose sight of the value of their votes or underestimate their power in bringing about results.