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colonies has been swifter than anyone foresaw when the charter was drafted, it does not satisfy people who are not yet free.

The emphatic and indignant position of the African nations with regard to the repugnant policy of apartheid in South Africa is, however, not without growing realization of the difficulties of the racial situation there. 27 And their insistence on self-determination for the African population of the Portuguese territories has also been confined within temperate limits. 28 One can even hope that the talks now taking place between the Portuguese Foreign Minister and the African representatives in New York may be the first step toward a peaceful solution of that stubborn situation.

There are other serious problems confronting the United Nations. For one, there is the disturbing situation in Yemen, where progress toward disengagement and peaceful settlement has been slow. 29 And now we have Indonesia's threatening gestures toward the newly formed Federation of Malaysia and the conflict between Algeria and Morocco. And I haven't begun to exhaust the list of reasons why there is never a dull day in the United Nations-or night, for that matter.

I haven't mentioned disarmament or all the other items before the General Assembly. Some we may solve this year; those we don't will be back on the agenda next year-part of the continuing, neverending search for peace. In this search it is not enough for nations merely to look at each other. They must look in the same direction. So the big question we face today, of course, is whether the Communist bloc will ever look in the same direction as we do. The answer may be a long time coming. But the recently concluded nuclear test ban treaty 30 now signed by more than 100 countries, is the most important single step taken since the war in the field of arms control and disarmament. Perhaps even more important than the treaty-which the Russians emphatically rejected when I proposed it in the General Assembly just a year ago 31-is the clear demonstration that, when the nuclear powers have a common interest and act upon it, when they look in the same direction, they can make progress.

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As for the test ban treaty, in the future the air we breathe will be cleaner and our children will have a better chance of growing up to contribute to the well-being of mankind rather than to its destruction. And, being human, I must add that it was a great personal satisfaction and gratification to me because, as some of you may recall, I urged such a treaty during the presidential campaign in 1956and probably lost a few million votes in the process. Now, 7 years later, the overwhelming approval of the Senate 32 is a reflection of

See post, docs. VIII-46-55. 28 See post., docs. II-52-55. "See post, docs. VII-25-39.

30 Post, doc. X-69.

32

See American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1962, pp. 1286–1290.

The Senate approved ratification of the Treaty on Sept. 24, 1963 by a vote of 80-19.

the strong support the treaty has in the United States, and with it we have moved a little closer to safety and sanity in the world.

33

The unanimous resolution of the General Assembly, proposed by the United States and the Soviet Union, not to orbit or station weapons of mass destruction in outer space is another hopeful sign. It adds to our hope for further progress in disarmament rather than the resumption of old cold-war rhetoric that has been the chief ingredient of all the meetings in Geneva up to now. Much remains to be done in these talks; the surface has just been scratched, and now it is time for second steps. If Premier Khrushchev is as interested as we are in peace and disarmament—and I think he is-then we share a great common cause and progress should be possible.

It in no way detracts from the significance of recent agreements, however, to remember that the basic conflicts and differences in ideologies still remain.

The Foreign Minister of Pakistan put it well some days ago in the General Assembly: "The world," he said, "is asking itself the question: Will the test ban treaty be a turning point in history? We cannot see past the veil which obscures the future. Dangerous questions are still outstanding. There has been no change as yet in the position of the East and the West on Viet-Nam,34 Laos,35 Germany, Berlin,36 and Cuba 37-even though their frozen positions have somewhat melted." 38 This list, I could add, is far from complete.

In tempering our optimism, too, we must bear in mind that dif ferences between the East and the West are not the only ones that threaten the world. I have mentioned the last stubborn racial and colonial problem in Africa. We cannot ignore the growing pressure of the Chinese Communists and what some darkly hint is the attempt to divide the world between the whites and the nonwhites. And in Latin America in recent weeks we have witnessed some serious blows to democratic government, while in Asia-in Laos and Viet-Nam, to mention only the obvious-the long struggle for peace and progress still goes on.

Our imagination, our courage, our will, therefore, face remorseless tests everywhere we look. How we meet them may determine the future course of world history. There is, for example, much dissatisfaction about our foreign aid programs. But we must not lose sight of the fact that in the long run equal chance and equal dignity for the emerging masses the guiding philosophy of our aid program-may have more to do with peace and security in the future than the outcome of the ideological conflict between East and West that has held our attention for so long.

I was reminded of this recently when reading about the death of Edith Piaf and how she always helped lesser known artists. When

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you reach the top yourself, she said, "You have to send the elevator back down so that others can also get to the top."

As I have said so many times, for so many years, we dare not neglect any opening that will help us advance our belief in a peaceful and equal future for all men. To seize every opportunity to break through to the reason and conscience of others is, indeed, nothing less-or more than enlightened self-interest.

Understanding, therefore, that very real dangers and conflicts still grip our world today, the fact remains that the United Nations observes its 18th anniversary in a moment of relative calm. And it is in this calm that we must see and put into perspective the gigantic tasks that are still before us.

In our own land, for one, we cannot rest until the last vestiges of indignity or discrimination are abolished forever-until every man in America can look his neighbor in the face and see a friend-not a color. For the very essence of freedom, after all, is nothing less than dignity.

I recently told a committee of the United Nations, during a debate on racial discrimination, that we in this country are now living through our third revolution in the name of freedom.39 It has been essentially peaceful, and nearly all Americans, Negro as well as white, are determined to keep it that way. But today, even as in our first revolution in 1776, we are in anguish and our anguish is evident to all. We make no effort to hide or disguise it, which is more than many can say. And the fact is that what troubles we have today are the result of progress made yesterday. We are moving through a period of social change in the direction of equal rights for all in the last corner of our land. That much still remains to be done is selfevident. But our greatness as a nation demands that the shadow be dispelled and our international commitment to freedom and justice for all be redeemed.

And if some among you question why I refer to a national dilemma when speaking about the United Nations, it is because, as one who loves America, I wish to see her as a model for all mankind. For it is in America, I believe, that the fervor and will to create a more just and more coherent international order should and can be at its most enlightened and sustained.

And the attainment of equality for all in America will give the twin causes of freedom and human rights a great impetus throughout the globe. For the rights of man--the quality of life on earth in our time-is, after all, the key to peace.

It has been precisely that quality of life on earth with which the United Nations has been concerned since 1946. Looking back, most of us remember with what hopes and dreams the United Nations was launched. For many Americans the adoption of the charter was a kind of expiation of our earlier rejection of the League of Nations, and those who believed this noble experiment might have worked if

39 U.N. doc. A/C.3/SR.-1217; Oct. 1, 1963.

the United States had participated in it pinned extravagant expectations on this new experiment.

There was desperation in our hope then, considering the alternative a chaotic world, war and total destruction. And there was still the question: Could the nations of the world unite to keep the peace? Many orators answered with an emphatic yes; but few could forget that the previous answer had been no!

Today our hope is based on 18 years of experience, of building the United Nations into a going concern. It has survived repeated threats to its existence and its effectiveness. It helped create a climate that has contributed some progress in disarmament, détente, and hope for the future. And in urging the great powers to take the next step, it is helping us decide today whether the family of man shall live as in the past-in anarchy and violence or build a new, decent world community with freedom as its political habit and peace as its goal. Has mankind ever made a more fateful decision?

We have been victims of the past. We don't intend to be victims of the future. For we Americans are deeply committed to living in a free and peaceful world. In this convulsive atomic age the only way to live is to live in peace. And because the Charter of the United Nations is both the vision of this new world and the roadmap, we are resolved by necessity and desire to make the United Nations system work.

As I look back on these 18 years and I was one of the jubilant midwives present at the birth-this anniversary, therefore, seems to me to be the brightest one of all. At first, as I said, we had only hopes. Now our hopes are firmer and more confident. True, when we look back it is to 18 years of tumult and danger. But we are confident now that we are building an effective organization which can deal with crises because it has done so again and again. And each success, each humble effort at pacification accomplished at any level, brings peace

that much closer.

The journey of a thousand leagues, we say, begins with a single step. So we must never neglect any work of peace that is within our reach, however small. We have constantly to carry on, or re-begin, the work of building the institutions and practices of a nonviolent world, keeping always in mind, beyond the setbacks and disappointments, that a free people should ever be seeking their greatest adventure in the works of peace, that even in the midst of conflict they must never surrender the creative and compassionate attitudes proper to a peaceful community.

Let me emphasize again, no one claims that we have developed a perfect instrument in the United Nations. Certainly it is no magic lamp. It is not the whole answer to lasting peace. It never was from the day the world divided after the war. And it is not a world government. But world society has to achieve the minimum institutions of order, and the only embryo of such an order is the United Nations system, which represents the will of most governments to recognize more than national interests.

Above all, perhaps, the consensus of the members represents a moral

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force that cannot be lightly ignored, one that day by day attempts to conciliate, mediate, discuss, compromise, or, if need be, simply delay the conflicts which play, like earthquake tremors, across the frail political crust of our society.

I have ranged widely in these remarks, but such is the complexity of a world in which one thing always leads to another; and the business before the General Assembly this autumn ranges more widely still.

Our task is to build the organization to help us master our physical environment, foster peaceful change, and promote human rights. Our task is to use the organization-its facilities, its resources, its talents, its procedures to work at the problems that lie right before us, plain to view.

Vast opportunities may have been opened up by modern science, by the fluid state of international relations just now, and by the rising impatience everywhere about the achievement of full personal freedom and equality. History and our own peoples enjoin us to probe every opening, to explore every international device, to take every step that reflects our common interest in progress and in peace.

Our efforts will be erratic, and the world will remain a dangerous place to live in. But we have our wits and our resources; we have the United Nations in which to pool them for peacekeeping and nation building; we have the beginnings of a habit of cooperation on a good many kinds of problems. And we have a simple conviction: that it is not beyond man's capacity to act human!

On this United Nations Day, therefore, let us renew our hope that, finally, men will learn to live as brothers, to respect each other's differences, heal each other's wounds, promote each other's progress, and benefit from each other's knowledge.

B. Review and Improvement of the United Nations Machinery

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ANALYSIS OF A SYSTEM OF WEIGHTED VOTING IN THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Address by the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs (Cleveland) at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C., May 8, 1963 (Excerpt)1

There is a temptation, which many commentators do not resist, to recommend that the United Nations operate according to some system of weighted voting. When it comes to financial decisions, there must

Department of State press release No. 253, revised (text as printed in the Department of State Bulletin, June 3, 1963, pp. 871-876).

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