United Nations: 1945–1960

Report Outline
United Nations in Concept and Practice
Work to Keep Peace and Curb Aggression
Proposals to Strengthen United Nations

United Nations in Concept and Practice

Collapse of the scheduled mid-May summit conference at Paris may impel the great nations of the world to put renewed reliance on more firmly established methods of international intercourse. Diplomatic missions have long been maintained in capitals of friendly nations primarily to serve as channels of communication and instruments of negotiation. Fifteen years ago the United Nations came on the scene with various organs especially designed to facilitate settlement of international disputes and to promote cooperation in matters of concern to the world community. If the summit failure causes the big powers increasingly to seek adjustment of their differences through the United Nations, it will at least have helped to forward purposes subscribed to by the 50 nations who signed the U.N. Charter at San Francisco on June 26, 1945.

Former President Truman, who at San Francisco that day called the Charter “a solid structure upon which we can build a better world,” said after the recent episode at Paris that he thought no further summit meetings could be held except under the auspices of the United Nations. U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold already had pointed, in a statement on May 19, to the special advantages in this respect offered by the United Nations.

The organization provides the framework for public diplomacy and for conference diplomacy on any level which governments may desire. But it does so as part of a regular procedure, without the building up of both expectations and problems in the way which it is difficult to avoid in such other approaches as tend to make of the negotiations pioneering initiatives of a unique character. … The organization provides also the framework for continued non-publicized negotiations in which it is possible to play on the whole range of approaches which have grown out of the experience of traditional diplomacy.