Let my first words, as the representative of New Zealand, be words of grateful thanks to the French Government for its spirit of welcome, its kind hospitality, and for the skill and foresight with which the arrangements for this session have been completed.
2. We find ourselves, at this session of the General Assembly, at a significant point in the history of the United Nations, It is the purpose of this Organization to build up a system of joint security which will discourage would-be aggressors, or, in the last resort, bring actual aggressors to heel. In the Charter, and in the Uniting for Peace resolution [377 (V)] adopted a year ago, we have provided the framework within which collective power can be brought to bear upon any aggressor, even if that aggressor should shelter under, or be sheltered by, the use of the veto in the Security Council. Mr. Truman, and elaborated yesterday by Mr. Acheson, for limiting and regulating all armaments. Here is a genuine attempt to bridge the wide political differences which, unreconciled, continue to produce the fear and the insecurity which in turn lead the nations to rearm. We fervently desire such a reconciliation, and believe that the unrivalled facilities of the United Nations for negotiation and for conciliation upon a basis of justice should be used freely to that end.
3. The framework exists. Our task this session is to fill in some of the framework. And we must do so at a time when people all over the world, people who thought they had won the right to the blessings of peace by their sacrifices in the last war, are realizing that in the world today the price of peace is high indeed. Those people are asking not only whether the price can be paid, but also whether it is in fact worth paying.
4. We of New Zealand, who have fought aggression far from our shores in the two world wars, and now also in Korea, have no doubt that the price is worth paying. But we believe also that those who are being asked to make heavy sacrifices have the right to demand that there should be some light ahead, some hope for a reduction of the present nightmare tension, some prospect that the burden of armaments, now being carried for a clear and definite purpose, will in time become less necessary.
5. It is for that reason that we welcome, earnestly and sincerely, the new proposals, announced on Wednesday by
6. But we have listened to too many sad lessons in the last few years, or at least we have learned too many sad lessons in the past, to be carried away blindly in our desire for peace. The aggression in Korea has shown us the evil that is abroad in the world. The toleration, to put it mildly, by one of the great Members of the United Nations of that betrayal of peace has forced us to match the words of that Member against its deeds. The insincere conduct of the armistice negotiations by the enemy of the United Nations is a warning to us to be cautious. Only people who hold the United Nations in the greatest contempt could have manufactured those pathetically obvious “incidents” at Kaesong.
7. Let us continue to work for peace with goodwill and without provocation. Let us strive for the “peaceful coexistence” of which Mr. Stikker yesterday spoke so eloquently. But let us do so with sober realism and great care. Our aim is conciliation and honourable negotiation. But in order to make real progress with either, the United Nations must possess solid organized strength.
8. In moving ahead at this session with the joint organization of security, basing ourselves in the next few months upon the study made by the Collective Measures Committee, the starting point of our thinking must naturally be the United Nations action in Korea. This is the first test of the United Nations as an instrument of collective security. It is also — and do not let us forget it — a demonstration that when the crisis comes, when the aggressor strikes, the vital element is not machinery, not words, not organization, though all can play their part, but courage, resolution and morale.
9. It appears to the New Zealand delegation that the Korean war will be remembered in history as establishing two facts:
10. First, that the world recognizes aggression to be none the less aggression though it fight under an ideological banner and call itself liberation or by other high-sounding phrase.
11. Secondly, that there is a real though limited solidarity of the United Nations in defence of their principles. Real, though limited, the United Nations response to the challenge in Korea leaves us with divided feelings. We have all paid tribute to the decisive lead given by the United States and the heavy sacrifices which, along with the South Korean forces, the United States divisions have suffered in the common cause. The United Nations stands in debt to all those men who are doing the hard and terribly demanding work of fighting its battles, and none of us, who in this forum must necessarily talk in general or abstract terms, is likely to forget for an instant what harsh realities are implicit m such notions as collective security and resistance to aggression.
12. Of my own country may I say this. In the first world war, when our population stood at only 1,500,000 people, 100,000 of our young men volunteered for service overseas. In the second world war, when our population still fell short of 2 million, more than 200,000 men and women went into the armed services to fight for freedom. New Zealand’s dead lie buried in Norway, in France, in Italy, in Greece, in Crete, in North Africa, in Malaya, in Burma and throughout the islands in the Pacific.
13. In Korea, at this moment, New Zealand has approximately 2,000 fighting men. That may not seem a large number, but it represents one out of every thousand of population, a proportion that few other Members of the United Nations can equal. Many other countries are contributing also on the field of battle to the common effort. We are glad that their number has increased somewhat in the past year and are particularly glad to see detachments arrive from certain States which, owing to the circumstances of their history, have not before been called upon to fight in collective actions for the defence of freedom.
14. But we must confess that we think the response could have been better. There was no doubt in this case from which quarter the aggression came. This being so, it appears to us that participation in the united, effort might have been more general. In a world organization representing so many different interests, it is hard to find solid ground of agreement. We had hoped to find this common ground in the universal and sincere acceptance of the obligation of collective resistance to aggression which is the heart of the Charter of tire United Nations. Either the United Nations means this, with all Members taking their share, or surely it means very little. We can have no effective worldwide system of collective security until all countries are prepared to pull their weight in deeds as well as in words. As the Collective Measures Committee puts it: “Nor can any withhold its individual contribution, counting upon the efforts of others to preserve it, since by doing so it inevitably weakens the common effort on which it seeks to rely”
15. In the meantime, faced as they are with the threats of a seemingly implacable totalitarian group of countries, individual Members of the United Nations have no alternative but to build up their individual strength and, through regional arrangements, join it to that of other Members who can be trusted to be resolute and courageous in an emergency.
16. It is such a situation which has led New Zealand in the past year to enter into a regional security arrangement — a tripartite security treaty — with Australia and the United States, whose peoples New Zealanders respect and trust and with whom they share a common record of co-operation and sacrifice in the defence of freedom, as well as a common determination to maintain that freedom in the face of any future threat.
17. May I say at this point that as New Zealand’s representative I had the privilege of being associated at Canberra last year with Mr. Spender of Australia, and with Mr. John Foster Dulles of the United States of America, in the writing of that agreement. The treaty is one which gives us the security we desire. But it goes further than that. It reinforces and strengthens the whole fabric of peace in the Pacific. This tripartite security treaty, and others of a similar nature, like the North Atlantic Treaty, acknowledges the supremacy of the system of universal security envisaged in the Charter and emphasizes the obligation of the parties to give maximum support to the measures taken by the United Nations to maintain international peace and security.
18. Even so, the New Zealand Government has no illusions that regional arrangements of security are a final or a satisfactory answer to the problem of preserving world peace. They are a second best, valuable and necessary at present and a bulwark of the infant United Nations; but in time they must be merged in that wider system which alone can produce real collective security.
19. I desire to touch upon two other questions at this time and on both only because they are fundamental to the establishment of international goodwill and ultimately to the security of all of us. The first concerns a matter which should, like the duty to join in resisting aggression, be common ground: it is the duty which falls upon all of us to honour our international engagements. It is naturally of particular concern to New Zealand that the country whose rights — or the rights of whose nationals — have recently been violated by the unilateral over-throw of freely concluded agreements, is the United Kingdom.
20. The repudiation of treaties might have appeared more understandable, although still inexcusable, if done at the expense of a country which rigidly opposed all change and never listened to arguments for the revision of agreements in the light of circumstances. The United Kingdom, however, has, as everybody knows, conducted political transformations of the most tremendous significance where those could be effected by agreement. But no country can be expected to acquiesce in the mere repudiation of agreements to suit the convenience of one party. Whatever their particular political sympathies, all Members of the United Nations should, in our view, be united in upholding this principle.
21. In the case of the denunciation of the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936 there is the further consideration that the act threatens to disturb conditions in an area which is of vital importance to communications, such as ours in New Zealand, the free flow of which seems to us a matter of general interest. That nations, as I say, should seek the revision of situations which they consider derogatory to their status is understandable. That is not the point. The question is whether revisions are to be sought by consent; whether the United Nations itself is to become, in the apt but sometimes unheeded words of Article 1 of the Charter, “a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment” of the common ends of the Charter, or, alternatively, an international jungle.
22. And now, may I seek to make my last point. The United Nations is based on the postulate that it is not sufficient merely to organize security in the military sense. Resolution and courage, so necessary in the face of aggression, are not likely to spring from underfed or exploited peoples. The Charter of the United Nations recognizes that a broad foundation of co-operation between peoples in the economic, social and cultural fields must be built up. An international enterprise of which I shall now say a few words, the Colombo Plan, is wholly within the spirit of the United Nations, though not within its organization and framework.
23. No problem before us today remains a greater challenge to our collective endeavour than the grinding poverty of a large section of the world’s populations. If only we had imagination and vision and kept this situation in the forefront of our minds, I often feel that other problems, which we now so hotly debate, would shrink to quite minor proportions and so become more tractable.
24. New Zealand is proud of its membership of the British Commonwealth of Nations and is proud that this Commonwealth has sponsored the Colombo Plan for Co-operative Economic Development in South and South-East Asia. I am personally happy to think that I was New Zealand’s representative at the Commonwealth Conference in Ceylon which gave birth to the Colombo Plan. The co-sponsors of the plan include India, Pakistan, and Ceylon, countries which are actively engaged in the great task of emancipating themselves from economic want and social misery. New Zealand believes that this equal association is one of the prime merits of the Colombo scheme. As free and equal partners these countries helped to work out the principles on which the plan is based. As free and equal partners they have included in their plan their development programmes founded on their own appreciation of their potentialities for advancement in the next six years. It is the hope of the New Zealand Government that all the countries in South and South-East Asia will participate in the Colombo Plan.
25. We often hear it expressed that the so-called underdeveloped countries must help themselves if outside help is to be given or is to be effective. This is correct. But what is apparently not always realized is that the Asian countries — and I speak from my own experience — are very well aware of this. They are already working very hard under the direction of their own skilled and experienced administrators. We have the evidence of the Colombo Plan that they are determinedly setting about the task of helping themselves. And, in addition, there is the encouraging fact that, despite their own needs, they are prepared to help others. That, I think, is a very fine thing. It is also of some significance for all other countries of the world.
26. As Mr. Acheson reminded us yesterday, it is through the United Nations that we can wage the only kind of war we seek — the war against want and human misery. In south-East Asia untold millions struggle with hunger, poverty and disease. The message that came out of the Colombo Conference is a message directed straight to this Organization. It is that in a world racked by schism and confusion it is doubtful whether free men can long afford to leave undeveloped, and imprisoned in poverty, the human resources of the countries of South and South-East Asia, which could help so greatly, not only to restore the world’s prosperity, but also to redress its confusion and enrich the lives of all men everywhere.