In addressing the General Assembly at this sixteenth regular session, we can allow ourselves only one brief satisfaction—that of congratulating the President on his election to office. Those of us who have seen how rapidly he has adapted himself to the United Nations, who have watched him displaying outstanding political and administrative abilities and distinguishing himself serenely in our Committees and in plenary meetings by the particular authority of his comments in most difficult circumstances, can now express our profound satisfaction at having elected him to preside over our proceedings. We take pleasure, moreover, in witnessing the rapid rise to the summit of international affairs of a country—Tunisia—whose history is illustrious but whose independence and political coming of age are of recent date. We Spaniards, many of us Mediterranean in origin, find in Tunis a kinship of spirit and mutual understanding. Our President is the product of many intermingling cultures; but let me be permitted to see in him, particularly, the compatriot of that great Doctor of the Church St. Augustine. 9. The new President of the General Assembly will have to work hard—as he is well-qualified to do—to fill completely the place of our outgoing President, Mr. Boland, in whom we retain for the future, after his success in the Assembly, a great international magistrate whose services may more than once be needed not only by his country but by the whole world convened in international conclave. 10. And there end whatever thoughts of gladness we can have at this moment. The great shadow cast by the death of our Secretary-General, Mr. Hammarskjold, fills all that remains with real sadness. As the days pass, our feelings remain unchanged, He has been taken from us at the peak of his activity; and there are few men as capable of such activity as the eminent personality we have lost in the jungles of Rhodesia. He belonged to that choice and wholesomely aristocratic caste—a blessing of heaven for the peoples—in whose members are united genuine intellectual interest, the qualities of the man of action, and personal courage— a virtue not always found in men of the spirit, in their detachment and isolation from contact with the world. These select few men of action—their supreme example in history is perhaps Julius Caesar—bring a special fire to their actions by the very fact that they know them to be based on the sound analysis which belongs only to great minds. And such a man was Mr. Hammarskjold, who died at exactly the same age as Julius Caesar. I shall never forget how this Nordic son of other cultures and other ways of life—this son of his great country, Sweden, with its remarkable spiritual strength—had no difficulty at all, on his visit to Spain, in transcending the picturesque and the superficial in his comments and penetrating to the innermost spirituality of things and places. I remember accompanying him in Toledo, which has been the subject of so many brilliant literary descriptions but also of so many platitudes; and I was surprised at the unique understanding of what is pure, elegant and essential in this great historic city of Spain which was displayed throughout by the Secretary-General of the United Nations. It was in Spain, again, in a memorable address, that he spoke of St. John of the Cross, and we shall always associate his memory with that invocation of the greatest of our mystics. 11. I shall not say that the end of Mr. Hammarskjold means the end of the United Nations as an independent organ with its own personality: the United Nations must survive, and it is the task of all of us to see that it does. But it would be naive in the extreme to blind ourselves to the difficulty of replacing the Secretary-General—and this precisely because of the indeterminacy of function to which our Organization in large measure owes its effectiveness. Because of the somewhat shadowy existence it lives, the United Nations needs to be led by men of clarity and dramatic character. The purposes for which the United Nations was founded are beyond dispute: to maintain world peace, to prevent any interference by countries in the affairs of others and to preserve the principle of self-determination among its original Members and those later admitted. But the difficulty of maintaining itself within the bounds of its own structure, in the complex problems which confront it, makes its task, and especially that of its Secretary-General, one of continuous creation. 12. In every conflict, the United Nations has both to abide by precedent and to establish precedent. We can all call examples to mind; there can be few if any judicial and political authorities—and the United Nations has something of both—which combine such indeterminacy with purposes and intentions of such ambition. And the Secretary-General has to overcome this difficulty by dint of intelligence and imagination, together with the personal courage to remain steadfast in the face of powerful forces. That is why he must be an individual, a human being, an indivisible person. The repugnance felt by most delegations at the proposal to reduce the Secretariat to a deliberative organ, to give it over to the clash of opinions expressed in a "troika" or to make of it any other kind of multi-yoked vehicle is due to their understanding—conscious or subconscious, perhaps even intuitive—of how personal the office of Secretary-General must be. 13. We want a responsible Secretary-General, operating as hitherto from New York, the most suitable place for United Nations Headquarters. We see little to be gained by distributing our Organization's essential organs over various parts of the world, and still less by sending them to dubious places which would use the United Nations to win some colour of political standing. The essential work of the United Nations would benefit little by dispersion; the intentions of those who propose it may be sincere, but they are being led astray by side-issues and secondary considerations. 14. It is said that in the face of the Soviet threat the peace of the world depends solely on the United Nations. All of us who have come here believe in the benefits of such .international deliberations, in the clash of opinions which so often produces clarity and just decisions. And the more we take part in the proceedings of the United Nations and measure the high ability of the participants, the more this faith grows The training and experience of the representatives convened at this General Assembly of the United Nations give ground for comfort and optimism. Moreover they teach us, by example, the unity of the human race—confirming the convictions of those of us who follow theological doctrines—and show us the kinship of feeling and sentiment which exists between representatives coming from countries which were formerly quite strange to one another and even separated by a gulf of sinister legend, who have nevertheless, now that they have met and exchanged opinions, proved most akin in their aspirations and most capable of understanding and, indeed, loving one another. 15. Like others who have spoken here we believe that for the small and middle-sized nations lacking physical power the United Nations is a remarkable safeguard and a strong and universal bulwark. With its ability to understand the evolution of the world and to prevent possible conflicts by forestalling them, the United Nations has through the very process of assembly and deliberation acquired a personality of its own—a personality expressed principally in the office of Secretary-General. If it Is to achieve its end, all of its Members, beginning with the most powerful, must renounce many of their passions and much of what have traditionally been regarded as their rights. Despite our faith in the United Nations, however, we consider that it would be going too far to set the Organization up as the sole organ of peace. With all its peculiar virtues and powers, the Organization will always be largely a reflection of its membership, and in particular of its great Members, those having the greatest influence, those who from its foundation have reserved to themselves the leading positions and the power to prevent disorder by exercise of their united will—a fact which we by no means criticize, but indeed approve. This guiding Holy Alliance, as it were, formed after the Second World War to rectify an abnormal state of affairs, had positive advantages and gave strength to an entity which without it might have succumbed to chaos and dispersion of effort. 16. If, then, the countries represented here forget the moderation they should display and stand on rigid positions, the United Nations will be faced with breakdown. It will then no longer be a mirror of universal reality improved by a unity of higher purpose, but reality itself in all its harshness, beyond the control of the new law created by the United Nations and incapable of performing the function of world co-ordination which was the original purpose of its founders. The noble arena of the United Nations will have vanished without any fault on the Organization's part-As the Spanish proverb has it: "The mirror is not to blame for what it reflects". If the mirror of the United Nations reflects only bitterness and division, the Organization will change its character, will follow other roads, will lose its universality and will finally perish having left the lofty ideals of San Francisco far behind. That can happen, and it is our duty to do whatever lies in our power to avoid it. 17. The smaller countries, possessing no decisive armaments, always speak with some timidity and with some fear of interrupting important tasks when they intervene in debates on issues of life and death. Yet our physical presence and our moral effort can fulfil a function too. We can refrain from pressing those we believe to have right on their side. We can avoid words which may embitter or vex Powers which need the utmost patience in their tasks. We can also declare our support, whatever may be its weight, for those who are preserving a balance in the face of a thousand well-known threats to world order. 18. When the people of Israel were fighting the Amalekites, they observed that whenever Moses raised his hand their armies advanced, "But Moses' hands were heavy"; we read in Exodus, "and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword." 19. We less powerfully armed States, by our words and our conduct, must stay up the hands of the countries on which Providence has imposed the fearful responsibility of maintaining principles: and observing right conduct, and must put stones under them for their repose. 20. We beg those great nations—and I shall not hesitate to name them: I refer to the Western nations— to shoulder their full responsibilities; we do not believe that they can evade them by taking refuge In any organization. And in the United Nations, as in all acts of international life, we must with our words and our deeds merge our efforts with theirs. And let us declare our intention, as my delegation does sincerely, to remain at their side if the hour of danger strikes. To be specific: so far as my country, Spain, is concerned, the Head of State, speaking on 1 October before the National Council at Burgos, has recently made the following statement: "I need not repeat to this National Council that our predictions have proved correct and that the principles of our international policy have not needed revision. Suffice it to say that the central line of that policy, the Iberian bloc and the agreements with the United States, are today among the most effective safeguards of Europe's defence, and offer the countries of the West a bastion and a rallying-point." I stress this statement because some newspapers have published inaccurate reports which misrepresent Spain's clear, straightforward and immutable policy. 21. Since all countries desire peace, the more powerful peace-loving countries have a free hand to seek the necessary means, to negotiate flexibly so as to ensure satisfactory results and prolong, in one form or another, the ordered march of the world. We are confident that they will do so. His Holiness Pope John XXIII has expressed this faith as no one else could have done. We share his goals, without reservations or qualifications, and shall co-operate in carrying them into effect. 22. The conflicts of the present-day world will inevitably, if God withdraws from us the protection of His hand and the hour of darkness strikes, prove fatal to all of us: this is a drama in which the "spectators" may well run the same risks as the protagonists. I might say, comparing it to a Spanish sport doubtless familiar to some representatives and, indeed, practised in their countries—a sport which it Is easier to admire than to defend—that it is a bullfight in which the bull may leap into the stands and attack the public—or those who regard themselves as the public. This will not happen; nor do I believe that there is really any bull. However, we must have thought for the untoward and unexpected possibility of such an event—one never dreamed of even by the illustrious Ernest Hemingway, who devoted a great work to the subject of bullfighting. 23. History offers few examples of angelic countries being ranged against demoniac countries; in the Christian view such a thing, given original sin, is impossible. Nor can we look back on a past of sweetness and light; on the contrary, the past has been full of bitter contradictions, as anyone who has a long life behind him has had many occasions to appreciate. 24. However, there has never been ranged together a group of nations such as that directed by the Moscow Government; nations whose conduct is clearly at variance with the peaceful vocation of the human race and calls for the unqualified resistance, if this should prove necessary, of those who serve that vocation. Moreover, Moscow's offences have been of a most scandalous character. Take, for example, the division of Germany and the problem of access to Berlin; As a great New York newspaper has pointed out, this problem has its location in the most central point of the world, in a region which has been the theatre of many different and illustrious cultures, a region in which events take place in the fullest light of publicity. Germany is manifestly a national unity; no one would dream of disputing the fact that it must be preserved as the national unity which it has freely established over the centuries. If there were any need to put that question to the test, then the principle of self-determination would have to come into play: the Germans would have to be asked whether, after the many complex events that have taken place, they still believe that they should continue as a single people and play their part in international life as such. The reply is not hard to predict. Questions and answers, therefore, are redundant. 25. Spain believes that Germany must be united. A divided Germany is a focus of international tension dangerous, as we well know, to peace. The Germans today have shown that they wish to reunite their country only by peaceful means. Their most responsible leaders have said so, and have asked for the question to be put to the country. All the peace-loving great Powers appear to be one in desiring and promoting this goal. Yet we know the outcome. 26. The public scandal of this patent crime is poisoning international relations and robbing peoples whose co-operation for peace is needed—the Soviet peoples themselves—of any authority. It is not an edifying spectacle to watch them putting on a show of humanitarianism and philanthropy in issues affecting distant continents, to see them up in arms over the violation of some liberty in other parts of -the world, while at the same time they practise, in the ancient centre of Europe, the cruellest oppression, in defiance of the will of a people. A scandal is not so notorious in some outlying suburb as it is in the centre of a city. And the scandal of divided Germany is being played out, we might say, in Park Avenue or in Fifth Avenue near Central Park, where it Is visible to all. 27. This is not the first such case in the history of the world. How much damage these great violations of law have caused, and how much the peoples themselves have had to pay for them. For a good part of my life, up to the end of the First World War, I was able to witness the tragic consequences of the partition of Poland perpetrated in the eighteenth century; of the violation of the rights of that noble and enslaved people by the Tsar of Russia, the King of Prussia and the Empress of Austria. Let me say in parenthesis that we of Spain were alone, I believe, in protesting as a nation, in 1772, against this act of violence. Our King Charles III voiced his indignation at that time. In chapter 66 of his book Memoirs of the Kings of Spain of the House of Bourbon, an English historian, William Coxe— I quote him because he is English -wrote as follows: "The King of Spain expressed his dissatisfaction at this injurious act of encroachment with more energy than appeared to accord with his sedate and reserved temper. 'Ambition and usurpation', he said, 'do not surprise me in the King of Prussia and the Tsarina; but from the Empress Queen I did not expect such perfidy.' Had the other Powers participated in these sentiments" —concludes Coxe— "Spain would doubtless have warmly espoused the cause of the Poles." 28. Berlin represents another iniquity, another partition of Poland at which, like Charles III, we protest. Heaven grant that it may not survive as long! But it will bring just as little good fortune—we may say without superstition—to those responsible for it. Similar and just as important in our eyes are those other injustices which, though less conspicuous, are of equal moral and juridical concern to us: I refer to the cases of Viet-Nam and Laos, countries at present being made the victims of sinister manoeuvres. 29. Is this the consequence of Moscow's doctrinal crusade of Marxism? To a large extent it is. Countries dominated by doctrinal ideas and emotions, countries lacking the balance to appreciate the limitations of international life, have always tended to embrace these fanatical forms of coercion, which end by rousing general resistance, this in its turn culminating almost always In the victory of liberty and moderation. The impetus to these movements is the Marxist ideology peculiar to Bolshevism. But this is not the sole motive force of international events. Imperialism, the desire to impose the domination of one's own country in the concert of nations, and to impose it by force, also play a decisive part in the dangers at present created by the Russian empire. As history shows, it has sometimes been necessary to bridle the ambitions of the Tsars, to form coalitions for that purpose and even to fight wars—the Crimean War is a case in point. The present communist empire has inherited the same drive to unlimited expansion, with no exaggerated respect for frontiers. We should not be so blinded by doctrine as to forget this typically nationalist neo-Tsarism. I know not why, but these doctrinal conquerors never transfer any of their power to other politically and militarily weaker countries, even when these fanatically profess the same principles. There they stand, ever in the vanguard of policy and of the power-apparatus serving that policy; never do they surrender leadership to their ideological brothers, who must remain their respectful assistants. 30. It would thus be incorrect, despite all appearances to the contrary, to regard the nations as divided into two bands or parties deployed for battle. The problem is more varied and less ideological than that. Purely doctrinal alignments, calling upon the world to resist aggressive neo-Tsarism by some sort of pacific, political and diplomatic Sebastopol, are not lacking. Bolshevism, of course, exploits its revolutionary doctrinal position to cause unrest in the internal life 'Published in London by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1815. of other countries. Eminent speakers have described to us here—the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Guatemala did so with praiseworthy-courage and precision-how communism has gone about its work in their countries, exploiting factors of internal agitation for the subversion of law and order. The Spanish delegation could say a great deal about the skilful and tenacious accumulation of powerful foreign communist forces on its territory in the past.. But that is an old story, and I doubt whether I need enlarge on it. We should remember from the Philippics, however, that even in the absence of pure doctrinal passion there are means of undermining the free politics of other countries for the benefit of foreign tyrants. The Macedonians represented no doctrine. We should not, therefore, allow ourselves to be carried away by exclusively doctrinal opposition to the communist appetites, however great we know them to be; we should resort to the old political methods of balance and defence, 31. The peaceful coexistence advocated here by the Soviet delegation, if it were advocated for sincere motives and if it were practised honestly, would be entitled to our sympathetic consideration, and even to our approval. Every one of the countries here represented—and this is an essential principle of the Charter and one of the foundation-stones of our existence as the United Nations—maintains its right to decide its own domestic policies. The right to independent State organization is one of the most sacred and cherished rights protected and preserved by the nations. The internal institutions of the Bolshevik empire are of no concern to the United Nations or to us—and God knows how absolutely we oppose the doctrine and practice of communism, Because we are faithful to the ideas of Christianity, of the Western world, we are grieved at the slavery endured by so many oppressed peoples behind the iron curtain; they will never lack the sympathy of Spain, nor will their servitude ever be sealed with our moral approval. But it would never have occurred to us to criticize these institutions in organizations based on international coexistence, or to denounce their activities, were it not for the aggressive external attitude of the Government concerned. Unlike other delegations, perhaps, we for our part believe in the possibility of a policy of peaceful coexistence between peoples having different systems. It is the Soviet Union which violates this policy of coexistence and compels us to resist. If the remedy lies in the conversion of the communists to other principles—as the Foreign Minister of the United Kingdom has argued here, whether in jest or with noble idealism I do not know—I tremble at the thought of the disasters which may come to pass before this transformation, one so difficult and so unlikely in the light of past experience, can take place. The baptism of Clovis is not an everyday event, and I find it hard to imagine the eminent gentlemen who direct Moscow's policy receiving the baptismal waters of liberty, despite their recent verbal endorsement of the opinions of His Holiness Pope John XXIII. Let us be satisfied with sincere provisional policies such as might encourage the hopes of the world for their better conduct. Our safeguards are to be sought, to use the far-sighted words of the Foreign Minister of the United Kingdom, in upholding the efforts of other peoples of the world; and the defensive armour we need in present international conditions will be created by building up our own strength, each country to the extent of its capacities. These principles have not lost their validity, nor will they do so until the peoples unanimously accept the limitations of disarmament under full safeguards and subject to comprehensive supervision. 32. We have every respect for the intentions of those nations which are seeking the road to peace. We declare this respect—and I say this on behalf of my delegation—in all sincerity. We know the caution with which they are proceeding and we know how complex are the problems they all have to face. Nevertheless, we find it hard to understand how many of them, important States, can believe it possible to maintain an attitude of neutrality and share their censures between the two alleged parties to the dispute. There is no dispute here, nor any parties; there is an imminent danger of aggression, and there is the duty to help those who are best able to resist that aggression by giving them our moral support and, if it should unfortunately become necessary, our material aid. Who can have any illusions about Bolshevik violence? Never have I had so much in mind the text from St. Matthew which I quoted last year: "He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." And he who makes no distinction between organized revolutionary fury, with States in its service, and those who denounce and restrain that fury, is willy-nilly against the cause of peace. 33. Those who cherish the legitimate temptation to play a political role by following this policy of non-involvement will meet with no small disappointments, despite the interested praises of those who wish to create this state of indecision and convert it into a political system—and that at a time hardly propitious to the lukewarm, to those who, in the words of the Apocalypse, are neither hot nor cold. 34. Only from positions of strength and of understanding of the peril confronting us, moreover, will it be possible to reach agreements, and indeed even peaceful settlements. It is hard to believe that anyone in his heart of hearts desires the frightful test of war. We should survive it; and submission to tyranny is a worse evil than war. The next war has always been thought of as the last and final one. But we have already experienced a number of "last" wars, and mankind survives. That, nevertheless, is no good reason for not exerting ourselves to the utmost to avert catastrophe. 35. Disarmament and the suspension of nuclear testing are subjects which have been treated here with particular authority by the supreme representative of the United States. My country's Press has warmly welcomed the proposals, which we applauded when we heard them, made before this Assembly by President Kennedy [1013th meeting]. 36. What point ii there in repeating and pressing our arguments? What boots it to comment on the activities of the atomic Powers and the lesser activities of the many Powers which possess no atomic weapons? Certain principles of agreement between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States have met with universal approval. 37. The representatives of Moscow, who are undoubtedly well enough informed about the strength of the Western Powers—strength sufficient to discourage from dangerous ventures anyone who has not lost his reason—will surely find in their human feelings and their political self-interest stimuli to rational re- flexion. And in the background there remains the world of countries having no excessive ideological demands but firmly attached to their pragmatic desire for the maintenance of peace, and convinced that that goal can be achieved only with due regard for principles of absolute justice. 38. Much has been said in the general debate on the subject of colonialism. My country's position on this question has always been very clear. It is a position deriving from Spain's history and from the political doctrine laid down by its great philosophers and theologians at the very outset of its colonial vocation. After Rome, England and Spain were for many centuries the great colonizing—colonizing, not colonial—peoples. At the same time, let me point out once again that most peoples have been colonies of others. Spain received its present shape, transmitted across many centuries, from the Roman Empire; and we still retain memories of freedom and independence side by side with memories of resistance to Rome. There are still teachers who tremble with legitimate emotion, and make their pupils tremble with them, when they describe Numantia's heroic resistance to the Roman legions. I myself, I confess, hated the Roman Tyranny when I was a youth at school, and I still feel understandable pride at the stout defence opposed to it by those original Spaniards, the Iberians. I will add, moreover, that as a Spanish Basque I have also felt some pride in reading in the works of the Roman historians of the revolts of the Ancient Vascones, taking them to have been actually Basques, and in reading of our resistance to the Visigoths after that. 39. Need we be surprised, then, when we' see the fire of independence winning the hearts of the new nations? But at the same time—and here I am speaking from within the Spanish experience—how can we Spaniards forget the creative role for our country of Rome, to which we owe our original cultural existence and so many of the preconditions for nationhood? 40. When I think of this problem I think as a Spaniard of something for which Spain bears a fundamental responsibility to God and man: the creation of a good part of America, which Spain discovered, not to speak of the Philippine Islands. 41. In his fine address to this Assembly, the representative of Uruguay described the sense of mission which informed the original Spanish enterprise in America. There is a much-quoted passage in which the great Spanish polygraph Menfindez Pelayo tells of the lofty intentions and absence of materialist motives of the Spaniards who transplanted themselves to America, and who later, in the persons of their descendants, became the leaders of the new peoples of Spanish origin and tongue on that continent. And, without forgetting the essential originality of these peoples and their importance in contemporary international life, we feel a sense of fraternal gladness at finding ourselves in their company, and at finding also that they are today almost without exception in the vanguard of the cause of peaceful civilization, and are working for that goal side by side with the most powerful Western Powers. 42. We are sometimes saddened, may I say in parenthesis, at the fact that Spain, having completed the great work recorded in the annals of modern history, should now be forgotten. A few days ago one of the great New York newspapers published in a supplement a study of the way of life of the former imperial nations which have now been reduced to more human dimensions. The most important nations of Europe were dealt with in turn, and comforted with some shrewd observations about the fruitfulness of their present state of resignation; but there was no mention of Spain. I felt as though we were being denied even the melancholy sweetness of decadence. Apart from the problem of communism, I remembered that certain doctrinal divisions dating back to the beginning of the modern era still colour the judgement of some excellent spirits when they deal with matters of Spanish political history. And it also occurred to me—all this in parenthesis and outside the context of our debate-how little recognition is given to the role of that other great branch of Spain which still remains Iberian in its sensibility and culture—Central and South America; an absence of recognition reflected in the fact that in discussion of the election of a new Secretary-General no mention at all is made of the eminent representatives of that region, among whom there are men of unique distinction. 43, A particular feature of Spain's overseas territorial expansion was the fraternity established with the indigenous inhabitants of the newly-discovered countries and the fact that they were at once treated according to the principles of humanity, which means racial fusion. Let me spare myself a great many words by citing a passage from a historian of Spanish and Colombian blood, Ballesteros de Gaibrois, the son of a great Spanish historian and a Colombian lady who was also an excellent historian, both of them now deceased. I quote: "Mixed marriages brought about a decline in the birth-rate of pure Indians: the more mestizos, the fewer Indians. These mestizos were the founders of the Antilles, for example; they belonged to the first and best families, and their culminating expression was achieved in Peru in the person of the Inca Garcilaso, whose works on the things of his native land of Peru are classics and are written In the purest literary style of Castile. The attitude of the Spanish conquistador to the Indian before the promulgation of laws and ordinances was Christian and generous, and based on an intuitive recognition of what was the only possible road to peaceful human relations, devoid of all racial prejudice and discrimination," How, then, can we fail to welcome with enthusiasm the birth of new peoples, welcome their advent to full political life and their seating themselves here among us? How can we retain any discriminatory reserve as regards other races, when we ourselves have mixed with peoples of many races in the lands on which we have set foot, and have communicated our blood and our spirit to them? 44. With the nineteenth century, the colonizing task of Spain came almost to a full stop. Our participation in the African enterprise of the nineteenth century —that now being debated here—was very small. But we are not so blinded by envy of other more fortunate peoples of that epoch as to be unable to judge their labour of civilization with objectivity and to see in the advent to full statehood of the nations of Africa the harvest of the progressive seeds they sowed. 45. These new nations are entitled to feel every satisfaction. All we ask of them is serenity, calm, and some concessions to time and the exigencies of evolution in judging other countries. Let them, if their goal is dignity and fraternity, apply their intelligence to understand the various forms of State organizations; let them not mingle lofty aspirations with unjust reactions—reactions sometimes inflamed by those who desire and promote universal disorder— against the nations which guided their first steps along the path of progress. 46. I have several times quoted here in the United Nations, in connexion with the right of self-determination of the new peoples, the very wise words spoken in December 1957 in the First Committee by Mr. Drago, the representative of Argentina. I had the good fortune to hear him on that occasion. Our sister-nation of Argentina is distinguished by the exceptional ability of the representatives it sends among us—as we may well see at this present session—and by its choice and astringent tradition of public law. Mr. Drago, the son of an eminent international jurist, was typical in that respect of his country. He defined with wisdom and precision the meaning of the right of self-determination according to the spirit and the letter of the Charter. As this is a subject much discussed here, I should like once again to remind you of the doctrine laid down by Mr. Drago. I quote the most important passage in his statement: "Therefore, the 'self-determination of peoples' mentioned in Article 1 (2) of the Charter means the freedom of sovereign peoples to choose their own Government. There would be no sense in this provision of the Charter if it made the development of friendly relations among nations dependent on the right to self-determination, in the abstract, of communities or peoples which had not signed the Charter. In their commentary on Article 1 (2), Leland M. Goodrich and Edvard Hambro wrote that the delegations gathered at San Francisco did not apparently intend the words 'the self-determination of peoples' to encourage demands for immediate independence or movements for secession; that seemed to be clear from the terms of Article 2 (7) and of Chapters XI, XII and XIII relating to Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories. "The false interpretation of Article 1 (2)", Mr. Drago continued, "has given birth to the slogan of 'the self-determination of peoples' which has been so frequently repeated in this debate. There is no such thing. Neither Article 1 (2) nor any other precept of the Charter calls upon the non-self-governing peoples—those which, to use the words of the Charter, 'have not yet attained a full measure of self-government'—to rebel. Clearly, the idea of the self-determination of peoples set forth in Article 1 (2) of the Charter has a meaning very different from that usually attached to it." Our former colleague was right. To accept any other interpretation would mean encouraging the disintegration of nations and playing the Bolshevik game. A great politician of the beginning of the nineteenth century is reported to have said that given no more than a tree, a river and a clever lawyer with means of propaganda available to him, he would undertake to create a nationality. That is a dangerous and poisonous caricature of self-determination. The true historic self-determination may be seen in action here in the arrival of the African nations, which we old countries—former colonizers, I repeat, but well content with work—welcome with open arms and overflowing hearts. I bid a special welcome to the latest arrival, Sierra Leone. 47. There have been many occasions on which the world has seen itself, or has thought it has seen itself, threatened with destruction. Providentially, it has survived, and God has made life beautiful and worthy of being lived. I say with sincere conviction, after having lived for many years upon this earth, that the same thing will happen again. Let us have faith in universal good sense. Let us have faith in human nature and let us hope that the world will move forward, free from threats of final destruction, towards a future worthy of the divine spark which we all bear within us, a divine spark which commands us to oppose even that form of evasion of life which is represented by birth control—a subject on which we shall raise our voice at the proper time. The very eminent representative of Costa Rica has already said in most courteous terms but with all necessary firmness [1034th meeting] that in view of the serious implications it would have for the social and political organization of his country, not to speak of its religious organization, he was obliged to oppose the proposed study. I associate myself with his words. 48. I need not say how greatly my country, Spain, shares in the universal dream. We are a peaceful people who have suffered many trials. We owe much to United States assistance—which, I should like to say with all the clarity at my command, has brought us great benefits—and our doors are open to the life of the world, as has been evidenced this year in the figure of eight million tourists who visited our shores. It is in the interest of the peoples to help one another: those which are most advanced should lend a helping hand to those who lag some way behind. But let us also bear in mind what we were told only a few days ago by the head of an important international economic institution: that the peoples themselves must strive industriously to exploit their own sources of wealth and must intensify their efforts to catch up with the most advanced peoples. As the old proverb says: "Trust in God and keep your powder dry". First let us trust in God; then let us call frankly upon the powerful nations to help other nations. But "keep our powder dry": that is to say, let us all stand firm in our peaceful resolve, in our activity and in our labour —for the reward of labour is nearly always prompt and comforting.