Facing Tests T HE UNITED NATIONS was the object of great concern and anxious assessment during its second year of existence. Despite hardships, it has emerged with increased vitality and strength by meeting its responsibilities. The anxiety regarding the United Nations reflected equally the reliance placed upon it by its Members and the doubts which had developed during the year that the United Nations could measure up to its responsibilities in the difficult international circumstances. Earlier prospects of rapid transition to settled world conditions faded away, and with them the optimism following the military victory was largely lost. As the existing realities of the international situation confronted the United Nations with difficult tests, however, a new determination gradually emerged on the part of the great majority of the Members to give faithful effect to the Charter. The firmness of that determination was increasingly shown by the majority of the Members in the latter months of the year. Fundamentally, the United Nations had to choose in 1947 between two risks in shaping its course: the risk if it avoided decisions and recommendations on the larger issues and engaged in quiet work on the lesser controversial matters, and the risk if it boldly took hold of the troubles pouring in upon it and made realistic decisions and recommendations. The first alternative might promise some moderation of the international atmosphere by not entailing heated debate on major issues in the world's great forum of opinion; it thereby might seem to avoid any possible hazard to the existence of the United Nations. That course would assuredly have doomed the United Nations to dealing only with matters of secondary account and to betrayal of the vital principles and purposes of its Charter. The United Nations chose the second alternative. The organization was designed to deal with troubles-problems on which Members feel strongly and on which they are unable through their own direct and other diplomatic relations to reach a conciliation of views and agreement. Thousands of problems and questions have been handled every year in the diplomatic relations of Members with other Members, 773838° -48- -2 3 and this will continue. The United Nations is neither an organization to replace direct and other relations among Member states nor a convenient depository to be filled with matters that nations have not fully tried to handle by their own efforts. It can help Members to carry out programs of action agreed upon by various Members and of such a nature as to enable the United Nations to render effective service. For the United Nations, however, to attempt to deal with all of the international problems of its 57 Members would of course burden it beyond all possible capacity for effectual work in any field. On the other hand, if the United Nations declined to face existing international difficulties within the range of its responsibilities under the Charter, its own work would be fruitless, and it could not long survive. It became apparent as the months of 1947 passed that several conditions were responsible for the hardships confronting the United Nations. Members had not fully appreciated that the total of what the United Nations was being asked to do was too great if the outcome was always to be as sound and well judged as the complexities required. Sometimes it was urged to consider matters not yet legitimately in need of its attention since direct means of adjustment had not been thoroughly tried by the Members immediately involved. Cases were brought occasionally to an inappropriate organ. With good will and additional experience these conditions should be corrected. A more serious condition was the tendency shown by some Members to utilize the United Nations for propaganda or other objectives of purely national advantage rather than to carry out the principles and the purposes of the Charter for the common good. Opposition to the views of the overwhelming majority on a number of problems was maintained by a few of the Members even after recommendations had been made. Unanimity among the major powers was the exception, not the rule, on certain of the most important of the matters within the scope of the United Nations during the year. This ordinarily did not operate to preclude action, but it exercised deep influence in several important instances upon the consideration of the problems and upon the conditions affecting the carrying out of the decisions or recommendations reached. To build common viewpoints and to create the bases of full cooperative relations among all Members will require genuine and unflagging efforts by all concerned, both within and outside the scope of United Nations activities. The course pursued by the United Nations during the important year just past showed deep awareness of this fact. The most important trend in the work of the United Nations in the existing circumstances did not concern any specific problem; it was rather a determination on the part of the overwhelming majority of the Mem bers to put the Charter actually to work and to insist that the obligations of each Member under the Charter be faithfully observed. The state of affairs that rendered it necessary for the United Nations during 1947—though having little experience as an organization and still lacking full machinery—to choose between risks arose from the widened economic, social, and political difficulties in international relations as a whole. Since the United Nations cannot rightly be understood except in the light of world events, a brief survey of these difficulties is essential. Framework of Events, 1947 How LOW THE ECONOMIC SITUATION in vast areas of the world developed into its present dangerous condition is current knowledge. It arose partly from other than economic and social circumstances. It was the product of disruptions and dislocations resulting from the war, piled upon prewar maladjustments. Difficulties attained such dimensions early in 1947 that confidence and hope showed unmistakable signs of weakening under the strain. Immediate help, accordingly, had to be given by the United States and by others in position to do so. Emergency relief was extended by the United States during the year to Greece, Turkey, France, Italy, Austria, and China. More basically, a cooperative plan to build stability was projected between the United States and 16 nations of western Europe by a European Recovery Program. Five of these states are not Members of the United Nations. Although the Soviet Union and the states of eastern Europe, several of which are Members of the United Nations, were invited to take part in this cooperative program, they did not do so, and Communist leaders in these countries and elsewhere have since declared their opposition to the program. The protracted delay in arriving at peace settlements and the failure of the major powers to pursue common policies as to those settlements were fundamental in the existing tension and difficulty. By the Charter of the United Nations, the responsibility for making the peace settlements is left to the victor states. The delay in discharging this responsibility, like the specific questions at issue in the settlements themselves, had far-reaching effects upon international political, economic, and security relations. Not until September 1947 did the peace treaties with Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania (and likewise with Finland, with which the United States had not been at war) become effective. The seventh meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers in London later in 1947 failed to reach agreement upon the principal issues of the settlements with Austria and concerning Germany. And, despite a considerable amount of cooperation among most of the states directly concerned, the establishment of peace with Japan remained in the preliminary stage of trying to agree on the procedure to be followed in drafting the treaty. The essential bases of postwar world order necessarily must continue incomplete until these settlements are effected. The conduct of certain governments in eastern Europe constituted a further fundamental source of problems. Assistance to guerrillas in Greece was given by its three northern neighbors. Hungary was the scene of a Communist seizure of power. The Communist regimes in a number of eastern European countries ruthlessly eliminated opposition parties. Communist parties in various countries created disorder which disturbed international relations. The pressure of non-self-governing peoples for rapid attainment of self-government or independence was a development leading to extensive readjustments in world relations. Palestine was a factor of international anxiety and of strain among nations normally having amicable relations. India upon assuming self-government during the year divided by consent into two states, with several political entities left to decide their course. While this change was accompanied by some disturbance, more serious clashes in Kashmir developed as the year was closing. Developments in Indonesia reached the Security Council in mid-year as a matter of concern for the maintenance of peace. There was also unrest in Indochina. Elsewhere in the Far East, ferment and change occurred. China was the scene of continuing civil strife, and in varying degree there was strife in Burma and Siam. Despite repeated efforts by the United States to obtain the collaboration of the Soviet Union in establishing an independent Korean state, Korea remained divided under separate American and Soviet military occupation. This situation exerted a dividing effect instead of advancing the unity of Korea under independence and its own national government, to which the occupying powers and also the United Kingdom and China are pledged. Grim facts did not entirely characterize the year, though they largely obscured the more favorable developments. Aside from the encouragement stemming from the general agreement on tariffs and trade described below in this report, advancement in domestic economic reconstruction was evidenced in various countries. The specialized international agencies, including among others the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Inter national Monetary Fund, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Labor Organization, the Civil Aviation Organization, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, were all active and increasingly effective. Progress on the refugee, health, and trade organizations continued, and some advances were made in international cooperation in the fields of telecommunications and shipping. The American republics undertook to bulwark international peace and security by the treaty of reciprocal assistance concluded at Rio de Janeiro. Governments in an increased number of countries became relatively stabilized. Security and political, economic, and social development in the Pacific were enhanced by the establishment of trusteeship over the former Japanese mandated islands, under United States administration, and over Nauru, now under administration by Australia on behalf of New Zealand and the United Kingdom as well as of Australia itself. The United Nations in the Mainstream of World Politics W HILE THE INTERNATIONAL SITUATION during 1947 is only sketched above, the broad lines of the developments affecting the United Nations and its Members are apparent. Its Members individually faced the need, in a year that began with bewilderment and was beset with trouble, to understand the nature of the issues involved, to find a sure sense of direction, and to determine a clear program. Progress in these respects was being made as the year closed. The pages of this Report indicate the assistance which the United Nations is giving and can give to such progress. To contribute to that broad objective was a principal United States policy in the United Nations during this period. Among the problems of critical urgency placed before the General Assembly were several on which the United States introduced proposals. One principal proposal concerned the threats to the maintenance of the political independence and territorial integrity of Greece. It was made to the Assembly since the Council was prevented by Soviet vetoes from taking necessary decisions to stop the threats. A majority of the members of the Security Council, basing their conclusions on the on-the-spot evidence found by the Commission of |