CREDIT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 393, 3 January 1947, Page 6

CREDIT

(By N. C. PHILLIPS, Lecturer in History at Canterbury University College) CERTAIN discreet abbé, asked how he had fared during the French Revolution, replied, "I have survived." In 1946 the world has survived-a commonplace achievement, but one that deserves more emphasis than it would in other years. After all, mere survival, the lowest of ambitions, is the first condition of convalescence. Peace rarely gets away to a good start. At the end of a troubled year, it is some consolation to reflect that the long peace which followed the Napoleonic Wars was all but still-born over differences at the Congress of Vienna, and that men in most ages have believed that theirs was the day when heaven was falling. Great wars have always left great sores. The victors bicker over the principles of the settlement or even over the division of the spoils; the losers do their best to profit from the dissension; there is a continent or a world to be repaired; old problems, such as those of arrested nationalism, are brought to sudden maturity. Add to these in 1946 the fear of the atomic bomb anda havoc unequalled 4n extent, and you will not wonder that peace has been kept imperfectly or precariously, but that it has been kept at all. To say so is not to pitch hopes too low, but only to place the year in its post-war context. The world has been given a respite-whether or not due to exhaustion — and a chance to evolve a more temperate frame of mind, to sit down, as Bishop Butler says, "in a cool hour." At the outset, then, let us firmly chalk up that fact on the credit side, * + * [JN the future of world order there are three possibilities ---a return to the oe old system of the balance of pow‘domination by one or two great Sis (eventually by one), and free coi among equal states. In 1946 there have been signs that the last and the only acceptable solution has begun

to prosper. United Nations, the child of | ) the departing year, has become established as a prime factor in the policies of the Great Powers. To be sure, it has | had a rude baptism — think of Iran, Greece, Spain, Indonesia, Syria-but it | has not drowned in’ the font. With the | setting up of the Trusteeship Council, | the last of its agencies, U.N. has, within | the year, elaborated a structure more | comprehensive and richer in technical | resources than any previously known. | Furthermore, it has anchored itself in | the United States, a fact worth any | number of Wilsonian "Points." It has | also displayed, if somewhat fitfully, the | will to work its machinery. The early | temptation to smother the Persian com- | plaint against the U.S.S.R. in exchange | for the withdrawal of the complaint | against British troops in Greece, | was manfully resisted, and U.N. did its | job of tempering the inequality of bar- | gaining powers between the two parties. | But what of ‘the veto? The question is fundamental. It raises the two great and allied question-marks of the year-the issues of Russian foreign policy and the future of national sovereignty. Let us admit that Russia has been the chief no-co-operator, as witness her reckless | use of the veto, her pressure on Persia, Turkey and Greece, her abstention from UNESCO and FAO, her obstruction of the trusteeship drafts, her reluctance to implement the Potsdam agreements. She has pursued a policy which on the face of it is unhelpful, covetous, disingenuous, and irritating from the conviction of its own exclusive righteousness. But there is no shred of evidence that Russia contemplates war or places a low value on her membership of U.N. The abiding impression left by the events of the year is that Russian. policy is defensive. Perhaps Russia really believes the Marxist dogma of an inevitable clash between communism and capitalism, but the Marxist time-table is already a little out of joint. The capitalism described by Marx has already been consigned to the museum of antiquities, and I fancy that the explanation is historical rather than philosophical. Three times within the last 30 years, Russia has been invaded through Poland; she has a memory for the White armies and the Archangel expedition and the betrayal of the League | of Nations; she is flushed with victory and feels inclined to dictate her own terms, quite apart from her unfamiliar_ity with democratic procedure. Certainly she may be expected to resume the Tsarist drive to the Mediterranean. The Eastern Question, like the poor, is always with us. Russia seeks security and hovers between that afforded by her own strong right arm and that offered by U.N. She has been probing for the limits of concession. There are indications that she has found them and in the last month (continued on next page)