The UN Failure

The author of this book, an Ohio lawyer, is a man of strong conservative leanings. With respect to the UN, he fears a socialist revolution by international agreement, abhors world government, distrusts the conduct of U.S. security policies under UN collective auspices, favors the Bricker Amendment, and worships the sovereign United States of America. But his study of the UN winds up with a recommendation that we “continue to support the United Nations until something better may be devised,” set up a world law and an agency to enforce it, and create a reliable structure of world peace. These latter positions reveal a set of ideals that seem to belie the first-mentioned set. I like my coffee hot and my highball cold, and I prefer my conservative’s conservative. Let us, by all means, have the benefit of political debate, but a debate between clear-cut positions of meaningful difference, if you please!

Mr. Maier praises the UN for being the “town-meeting of the world,” a “clearing house for the common efforts of freedom-loving nations,” and a means of “exposing the inadequacies of systems other than ours.” The UN “furnishes the best medium now available,” he believes, for “mirroring world neighborhood affairs, particularly those threatening world security.” Some wires must have crossed somewhere. First, these findings are incorrect. A town-meeting is an assembly of neighbors discussing problems of common life, but the UN in the present situation is the scene of a gigantic propaganda battle. It gives voice and vote to bitter attacks on the principal Western nations. It magnifies and exacerbates the numerous frictions among non-Communist countries. It is a place of ruthless power politics, which are waged with the methods of parliamentary assemblies but without the modifying and uniting influence of an overriding common purpose.

GN

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Gerhart Niemeyer

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The author of this book, an Ohio lawyer, is a man of strong conservative leanings. With respect to the UN, he fears a socialist revolution by international agreement, abhors world government, distrusts the conduct of U.S. security policies under UN collective auspices, favors the Bricker Amendment, and worships the sovereign United States of America. But his study of the UN winds up with a recommendation that we “continue to support the United Nations until something better may be devised,” set up a world law and an agency to enforce it, and create a reliable structure of world peace. These latter positions reveal a set of ideals that seem to belie the first-mentioned set. I like my coffee hot and my highball cold, and I prefer my conservative’s conservative. Let us, by all means, have the benefit of political debate, but a debate between clear-cut positions of meaningful difference, if you please!

Mr. Maier praises the UN for being the “town-meeting of the world,” a “clearing house for the common efforts of freedom-loving nations,” and a means of “exposing the inadequacies of systems other than ours.” The UN “furnishes the best medium now available,” he believes, for “mirroring world neighborhood affairs, particularly those threatening world security.” Some wires must have crossed somewhere. First, these findings are incorrect. A town-meeting is an assembly of neighbors discussing problems of common life, but the UN in the present situation is the scene of a gigantic propaganda battle. It gives voice and vote to bitter attacks on the principal Western nations. It magnifies and exacerbates the numerous frictions among non-Communist countries. It is a place of ruthless power politics, which are waged with the methods of parliamentary assemblies but without the modifying and uniting influence of an overriding common purpose.