I would first like to express to the city of New York, on behalf of the Brazilian delegation, our sincere gratitude for its kind hospitality to us during the period of the General Assembly.
The United Nations first saw the light of day on the soil of the United States; its creation was inspired by the great President Roosevelt, assisted by his eminent Secretary of State, the Honourable Cordell Hull. The plan drawn up at Dumbarton Oaks was approved at San Francisco by the States which form the United Nations. They drew up a Charter which was henceforth to govern their mutual relations. Those facts have a significance which should not escape us and which, as a son of this continent, I am happy to stress.
America, land of liberty, inhabited by peoples who are without the prejudices accumulated in other continents by centuries of endless struggles, cradle of the greatest of all democracies, offers the United Nations an opportunity without precedent to flourish and fulfill its great political, economic, social and cultural mission.
Brazil, in its two-fold capacity as a member of the community of nations and as a State forming an integral part of this hemisphere, is proud to have contributed to the creation of the United Nations Charter. Its past, its peaceful tradition, its love of order, its respect for law and its democratic sentiments made it ready to welcome keenly the idea of the organization of an international society to maintain justice, the respect of treaties and the other sources of the law of nations.
That is why my country has given wholehearted support to the initiative of the great Powers. It took part not only in the San Francisco Conference, but also, in August 1945, in the preparatory work which preceded the first part of the first session of the General Assembly.
The United Nations has been functioning for only a few months. The fact that the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council and other organs have had regular meetings since January of the present year does not mean that they are not still in the process of being organized, with an incomplete personnel, a tentative budget, the problem of permanent headquarters as yet undecided, and so on.
To that must be added the post-war conditions throughout the world resulting from the delay in drawing up and signing the peace treaties.
All things considered, we have only been in existence for a very short time, during which we have been busily engaged in organizing ourselves in a world which is still waiting to return to normal. It would be entirely premature, in the circumstances, to attempt to judge the part played by the United Nations up to the present.
I wish to say that my country has very great faith in the cause of the United Nations. After the painful years we have just passed through, we cannot conceive of the world on the thresh- hold of which we now stand without support of the kind which the United Nations proposes to offer for the benefit of mankind, namely, a guarantee of the maintenance of order and of international security in a political and legal system which guarantees to both victor and vanquished respect for their lives, their rights and their liberties.
As you see, I am speaking to you with my eyes fixed on the Charter. The latter represents the second attempt within twenty-five years to give to the peoples a statute enabling them to live as a society in an orderly and civilized world.
An attempt was made at Dumbarton Oaks, and afterwards at San Francisco, to improve on the Covenant of the League of Nations by the introduction, in the Charter of the United Nations, of more realistic provisions than those contained in the instrument of which the invasion of Manchuria marked the failure. The most important of the provisions marking a difference between the Covenant and the Charter is that establishing a Staff Committee to help the Security Council in case of a threat against the peace, a breach of the peace, or aggression.
The United Nations has, however, been established on the basis of a very far-reaching principle. This principle, to which the creators of our Organization attached the greatest importance, both before and during the San Francisco Conference, has been embodied in Article 27 of the Charter. In their view, in order that the United Nations should survive, and fulfill its task, unanimity among the permanent members of the Security Council, that is to say among the great Powers, was essential; without that the United Nations would cease to be.
Article 27, if it is considered in the light of the principle of the equality of all States before the law, was a very heavy price paid by small and medium-sized nations in order to obtain a charter. That provision of our statute is more generally known as the right of veto granted to the permanent members of the Security Council.
Brazil, although theoretically opposed to the veto, accepted it in a constructive spirit in order to get results. We thought that, whereas all States are equal before the law theoretically, their responsibilities as regards the maintenance of peace are in direct proportion to their means of action and, consequently, vary greatly. For that reason we decided that it was necessary to place trust in the great Powers.
It is, however, obvious that this trust which was placed in them in the same spirit by the majority of the Members of the United Nations, lays an obligation on the great Powers, which benefit from it, to honour it. They will succeed in doing so, in the first place, by working together for the reorganization of the world. We all realize that the task is not easy. But we are equally convinced that, however difficult the obstacles may be, they will not prove insurmountable when confronted with the good will and sincere desire of the great Powers to achieve all the purposes to which we have subscribed since the Atlantic Charter.
Today the peoples of the world have one supreme desire. After the terrible sufferings of the last war they long for order and peace. They are anxious for two things: they wish for a return to order and they hope that it will be lasting. They will not tolerate the idea that every generation will have to undergo the horrors, more terrible each time, resulting from the illusion of solving by war problems which war can never solve. Peace rests, no doubt, in the hands of the great Powers; but the world will never accept the idea that their conflicts of interest can justify the sacrifice of the well-being of mankind.
Let us look again at the Preamble to our Charter, which says that we are “determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind”. Nations have frequently an historic mission to fulfil in the world; if that is their destiny nothing can hinder it. Today, it would, however, be madness, it would be a crime, to attempt to fulfill it outside the framework of the United Nations to which they belong.
A heavy task awaits us. We have met here, in the first place, to finish the work started in London at the beginning of the year. In the meantime, many additional subjects have been put forward for us to study. We are faced with an extremely heavy agenda. Moreover, we are meeting after a considerable delay resulting from a double adjournment.
All the subjects before us are naturally of very great importance; whatever their nature, they deserve the same attention from us. At the stage the United Nations has now reached, however, I have no hesitation in saying that some of those subjects have a predominant interest. These are, in the first place those connected with its organization; and, secondly, those which have been submitted to us for examination by organs such as the Economic and Social Council, et cetera. We must concentrate our efforts on them if we wish the work of the United Nations to give the fullest results and if we desire the United Nations, which is at last emerging from the preparatory phase which has lasted quite long enough, to play the part for which it was created.
Such is the purpose of the Brazilian delegation in coming to participate in the second part of the first session of the General Assembly which is now meeting in New York. Brazil is thus continuing to act in accordance with the objective and constructive attitude which she adopted at San Francisco, of which the essential purpose is the formation and development of the United Nations in the world. This General Assembly can count on our whole-hearted support in carrying out the work we have undertaken in the shortest possible time.