Mr. SCHUMAN, after referring to the speech of welcome by the President of the French Republic (136th meeting) said that his country was glad that all the Governments represented at the Assembly had accepted France’s hospitality, and was grateful for their expressions of friendship and for the flattering terms in which they had described the part it had played in the history of mankind. The United Nations, while remaining attached to the headquarters they had finally chosen, desired to emphasize the universal character of the Organization by temporarily transferring the meeting place of the General Assembly and the Councils of the United Nations to other continents. Europe was the birthplace of the ideal and of the principles on which the Charter was based, and in this case France was only the representative of Europe. It was right that Europe should enjoy the privilege of welcoming the great forum of the peace-loving nations. In the atmosphere of an ancient civilization and surrounded by the evidence of a glorious yet troubled past, a better idea could be gained of the magnitude of the task and the immense difficulties with which the United Nations was confronted. Here they had a better understanding of its anxieties, but they had also grounds for hope.
In happier times, Paris would have had unmixed joy in welcoming the United Nations to a setting which had been miraculously preserved, and would have welcomed them to a city whose pride it was to be and to remain universal. But joy was today tempered with seriousness. Better than any other country France was able to judge the dangers of disunion between nations divided no longer by traditional political rivalries but by profound ideological differences. The United Nations had founded its organization upon mutual understanding and trust; it would live only in so far as both understanding and trust were kept alive. But in actual fact, the United Nations was faced not only with conflicting interests, but with passions, suspicion and moral confusion, the results of two world wars. From the wounds inflicted by those wars Europe had not yet recovered. The French representative was, however, sure he expressed the general feeling in declaring that, in spite of everything, the United Nations was determined to keep its faith intact.
The agenda for the third session was disturbingly the same as that of the previous your; the questions were the same from one year to the next, and the problems were still unsolved because the situation had not improved. International relations continued to be governed by the division of the world into two blocs. The failure of the United Nations to overcome essential difficulties, the mental anguish in which mankind lived and the continuance of dangerous local disputes, were all due to that fundamental division. The same weakness was to be seen in the internal working of the United Nations. New Members, however well-qualified, could not be admitted and the over-frequent use of the veto hampered the functioning of the Organization.
The United Nations must be universal or it would cease to exist; no peace-loving nation should be excluded for any political or ideological reason, provided its admission did not prejudice the principles of international morality, democracy and freedom upon which the Charter was based.
Many countries had asked to be admitted, and some had now been waiting for a long time. The opposition to their admission was based on the strict letter of the Charter, but without any seriously valid justification. That was not the spirit of the Charter, and the United Nations were entitled to call for a more liberal outlook, and for greater understanding. Thus, the door had been closed for over a year to the Italian Republic. The representation of Europe in the United Nations was tragically mutilated. The admission of Italy would at least tend to correct an unbalanced situation which was both inequitable and fraught with serious disadvantages.
The unanimous vote of the permanent members of the Security Council was necessary for the admission of every new Member. In the opinion of those who framed the Charter, that unanimity, which was one of the directing principles of the Organization, was designed to ensure its proper functioning. In fact, the abuse of that rule had had precisely the opposite result.
France had not invented the right of veto and did not advocate it; France had accepted it at San Francisco simply as a means of reconciling the equality of rights and the difference of means, between the various States. The intention from which it sprang had been seriously misunderstood and the result was a kind of paralysis damaging both to the prestige of the Organization and to the efficiency of the system. The question had been frequently raised and passionately discussed. Any revision of the text on reasonable lines would meet with the entire approval of France. But the difficulty was not the framing of a suitable text but the finding of a remedy for an actual situation and a state of mind. Excessive recourse to the veto was the expression of a fundamental opposition which threatened the future of the United Nations and thereby of the whole world.
Since, in such a situation, the machinery of the Charter was partially thrown out of gear, the delegation of the United States of America had proposed at the second session that a permanent body should be created to represent the General Assembly and to study, in the intervals between regular sessions, such questions as might be referred to it. The Interim Committee was the outcome of that suggestion under conditions which, whatever might be said, were in perfect accordance with the rules. It had now been at work for ten months. The French delegation was inclined to let it continue at least until the next General Assembly since it considered that no effort should be spared to improve the functioning of the Organization.
The representative of France recognized, however, that that was not an essential aspect of the fundamental problems which would have to be considered, among which a leading place must be given to military and moral disarmament.
The General Assembly had before it a report from the Security Council on the prohibition and control of atomic weapons (A/579). That was a question of life and death for the world. The Atomic Energy Commission, which the Security Council had set up for the purpose, had worked for more than two years under conditions which reflected great credit on its members, and had done splendid work, with the help of the most highly qualified experts. It was sad to think that, in spite of those efforts, no agreement had been reached and no specific and practical proposals made, though everyone anxiously desired them.
The report would give rise to protracted controversy, in the course of which passions would undoubtedly be aroused and accusations freely made, of which the present general discussion was already providing a foretaste. In that matter, which dominated the general problem of disarmament, the French delegation considered control to be the fundamental factor. Essential decisions regarding prohibition or limitation were easier to formulate than to enforce; they could be properly applied only in so far as they were combined with a control that was really effective. The French representative felt compelled, with deep regret, to state that in the matter of control, agreement had so far proved to be impossible.
Unlike the atomic problem, the question of general disarmament had not yet been considered in detail by the Security Council, and was therefore open for future discussion. But it too, could only be settled if a little confidence were again shown in international affairs, and if effective control were loyally accepted by everyone. There was no question of interfering in the domestic affairs of the various countries, and if sovereign rights were brought up as a justification for refusing any serious obligation, then, it might be said that all obligations limited in some respect the sovereign rights of a State. The world could not possibly organize for peace unless each country agreed to certain contractual limitations of its sovereign rights for the common good. The important thing was that those limitations should be freely, consciously and reciprocally accepted, then limitations would be the very reflection of independence and the normal exercise of sovereignty. France considered such agreement of greater value than unreal settlements resulting from constraint.
Moral disarmament was the complement or a condition of material disarmament. The delegation of the USSR had referred to one of the aspects of moral disarmament the previous year, and the Assembly had naturally condemned unanimously those who were described as warmongers. Such unanimous statements were satisfactory as far as they went; unfortunately, it was less easy to apply such principles, as had been discovered during the Conference on the Freedom of Information at Geneva in the previous spring and summer.
Similar difficulties had been encountered in connexion with a question which was closely allied and perhaps even more significant, that of human rights. The representative of France hoped, however, that during the present session the General Assembly of the United Nations might give final form and unanimous agreement to the declaration submitted to it. France could point there to a long tradition, if not claim a title to discovery. It would rejoice if in the present year, which for France, as for many European countries, marked the hundredth anniversary of a year of great historical events and teachings, there was proclaimed on its soil a declaration of rights which, in turn, would be a milestone on the road of human civilization.
There were certain very delicate factual problems on the agenda. The report of the United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans was before the Assembly, and certain decisions would have to be taken in connexion with it. Civil war in Greece was unfortunately not yet ended, though the area of hostilities had been considerably reduced. The question of assistance furnished to the rebels by some of the neighbours of Greece was still open, and the United Nations was therefore bound to continue, and perhaps intensify, its activities in that direction. The United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans, in spite of having been limited in its scope by the regrettable abstention of certain countries, had played an extremely useful part. It would doubtless be necessary to maintain it, at the same time specifying its rights and powers.
Almost a year had gone by since the General Assembly had adopted the recommendations contained in resolution 181 (II) concerning Palestine. The French delegation had hoped that those recommendations would have been accepted by the peoples concerned and would have brought peace to the Holy Land. On the contrary, violence had increased. The Security Council had tried to stop the war. The French delegation warmly welcomed the success of its intervention in establishing a truce. France for its part had given the United Nations every assistance that had been asked, and its corps of observers had suffered grave losses. The French delegation paid tribute to the heroism of those great servants of peace, and above all of their chief, who had shown the way of sacrifice.
Before his death Count Bernadotte had sent the United Nations his last report (A/648), containing concrete suggestions for a final settlement of the Palestinian problem. The French delegation was pleased that those suggestions emphasized, as did the resolution of 29 November 1947, a recommendation for an international statute for Jerusalem. That seemed the only solution likely to safeguard the Holy Places, and recent events had confirmed that view. France could not forget its traditional role in that part of the world. For the rest, the Mediator’s proposals could serve as a useful basis of discussion, bearing in mind that their final acceptance by the peoples concerned was still a basic condition of a lasting settlement.
The question of the former Italian colonies was before the General Assembly, following the expiration of the time period of a year which the four great Powers had been given to seek agreement. The French attitude in the matter had always been the same from the beginning. France believed that Italy was competent to administer those territories within the framework and with the safeguards of the trusteeship system, provided, however, that Ethiopia, which had suffered so greatly, should receive the satisfaction to which it was entitled. Other considerations would doubtless be raised in the course of the debate; they would have to be studied, bearing in mind both the requirements of justice and the needs of the peoples of those territories.
Mr. Schuman declared however that, whatever importance the French delegation might attach to the questions he had just dealt with, it considered the cardinal problem to be that of Europe, and, within Europe, of Germany.
The French representative had been much moved by the account the Polish representative had given (139th meeting) of his countrymen’s sufferings. The French also knew the horrors of German invasion and occupation. France, as well as other nations represented at the Assembly, had been tortured body and soul. Three times invaded in the course of one generation, it did not wish, any more than Poland, to encourage the reconstruction of a Germany capable of aggression.
But neither did France wish to associate itself with a policy which would only repeat the mistakes made after the First World War. Germany, isolated and prey to an unemployment, had fallen to Hitlerism and, in spite of a democratic constitution, had not resisted the pressure of nationalism. Germany would be democratic only in so far as it could progressively normalize first its economic activities, and then its political life, without being subject to the temptations of a presumptuous hegemony.
Deprived as it was now of an autonomous organization, Germany would have to begin by carrying out an internal re-education and then incorporating itself, with its special peculiarities, in the community of European nations. No form of government compatible with democratic principles should be refused to Germany. But the first step must in the nature of things be on a federal basis, which was certainly not incompatible with the principle of German unity. If Germany was at present cut in two, it was because the Allies had not succeeded in reaching agreement on methods for a common organization of the four zones from the administrative, economic, monetary and political points of view. The Powers responsible for the three Western zones had thus been led to prepare a separate statute for those territories, which could not remain indefinitely in the same status, three and a half years after the crumbling of the Reich. In London, France had had no intention of approving the partitioning of Germany or of eliminating the USSR, authorities from matters which were of common concern to the Allies in virtue of previous agreements. France’s action had been dictated by the absence of an unanimity, for which it continued to hope but which it could not impose.
In Berlin there was a steadily deteriorating situation in regard to currency, transport and municipal administration. In spite of the fact that the former capital of the Reich was divided into four zones, there should be a centralized quadripartite control and administration. But the Assembly would readily understand that such communal life required a minimum of goodwill. France had not found that goodwill on the part of its USSR partner, and as it intended neither to allow itself to be deprived of its rights nor to abandon the population placed in its charge, France was appealing to the United Nations, having after almost two months exhausted every possible way of reaching direct agreement for a solution of the conflict and for ending the forcible blockade imposed and maintained by the USSR authorities.
The new Germany would have to fit itself into democratic Europe. The partition of that old continent, so often and so grievously torn by war, was a relic of the past: a past to be respected and which France would not dream of suppressing, but the present age was that of big economic units and wide political agreements. Europe must unite to survive; France intended to work to that end with all its strength and all its soul.
Already a European public opinion was forming and already there were appearing the outlines of concrete efforts which marked the first steps on a new road. The economic reconstruction of Europe was already becoming a reality, through the mutual help of European nations, supplementing the generous aid of the United States of America. Sixteen countries, large and small, had met to drawn up joint production programmes, to expand reciprocal trade, and to 1 share among themselves the credits offered by the American nation.
Within those sixteen countries, closer agreements were being prepared. Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg had set the example first by establishing the customs union known as Benelux. France and Italy were completing the details of the union which their Governments, with the support of their respective Parliaments, had then and there agreed upon in principle... It was to be hoped that those examples would be followed. For its part France had made it known as long ago as the previous year that it desired to enter into similar agreements with any European country inspired by like motives. That offer still held good for all Governments, whether of the West or of the East.
That was, of course, only the beginning of a great work: its achievement would be beset by difficulties and understandable hesitation. Time would be needed, as well as energy, perseverance and even courage, and final success could be achieved only through the co-operation of all, France in no wise desired to see a Europe divided. God grant that those holding aloof at the present time might not take too long to be convinced of it.
Economic union implied political co-operation. Ideas regarding European federation and confederation were gaining ground. The French delegation was happy to see that those ideas were being taken up and studied at many meetings in which the persons most representative of European opinion were taking part. They should now be considered and supported by the Governments themselves. In close agreement with the Government of Belgium, the French Government had proposed to follow up the suggestions for a meeting representative of opinion to draft a European organization. Such a meeting would have to weigh all the difficulties and evolve reasonable proposals which would take account of the need for wise and cautious progress.
Mr. Schuman went on to say that in the notable speech which the Assembly had applauded the previous day (l44th meeting) the representative of the United Kingdom had emphasized that Great Britain, while remaining the centre of the British Commonwealth, was a European Power. France also would know how to reconcile its position on the Continent with its obligations to the French Union. The lessons of the war and the general evolution of ideas had made it possible for France to accept spontaneously a revision of old ideas and a new formula for the conduct of relations between the mother country and the overseas territories. The charter of that new community was the French Constitution of 1946, which was like a transcription of the principles of the United Nations Charter. The bold measures taken on behalf of unequally developed populations would surely be rewarded by the confidence they inspired and deserved. Thus at every level there was to be found that essential element of confidence without which there would be neither peace, nor security, nor fruitful cooperation.
Because of some aspects of its internal politics, France sometimes shocked its friends by its capricious instability. But in fact France remained true to itself, in intention and in action, true to its human tradition and to its ideal of fraternity, both within and beyond its borders. France’s ambition, Mr. Schuman concluded, was to be, and to become more and more, a faithful servant of a peaceful and reconciled humanity.