This Is It

This week the San Francisco conference put the last dots on a charter written for a world of power, tempered by a little reason. It was a document produced by and designed for great concentrations of force, somewhat restrained by a great distrust of force.

Would it work? The best answer was given three weeks ago by Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius Jr.: "Will it keep the peace? That depends upon the will to peace with which the nations of the world support the charter and build strength into the world organization. We can do no more at San Francisco than to establish the constitutional basis upon which the world can live without war--if it will." Preamble & Purposes. The original charter drafted at Dumbarton Oaks by the U.S., Britain, Russia and China had no preamble, hardly a mention of justice, almost no hint of human aspirations. It was the lowest common denominator of Big Power concessions. The charter writ ten at San Francisco contains a significant but at present unenforceable bill of human rights. The equality of all states is solemnly affirmed, although the whole structure of the organization denies it.

Sovereignty, pervading San Francisco, dictated the charter's principle of "domestic jurisdiction." Under it, the world organization may reach into a country to get at the causes of war only when all the Big Powers agree that world peace is en dangered. The section finally agreed on gives a future Hitler a little less chance to prevent intervention simply by assert ing that his policies are "domestic." The principle of domestic jurisdiction bore importantly on future colonial questions, and Britain insisted on the restriction.

Membership. Cordell Hull's beloved phrase, "peace-loving states," stayed in. Such nonmember neutrals as Sweden, Switzerland and Portugal, such former Axis satellites as Bulgaria and Rumania can come in only when the Security Council recommends their admission and the General Assembly approves. Members may be suspended but not expelled. Withdrawal is neither provided for nor for bidden (any member could resign from the League of Nations).

The Assembly. The General Assembly will be the focus of talk and of hope --but not of power. In it each nation, great or small, has one vote. In this fact lies the Assembly's importance by the test of equality and its weakness by the test of power reality. A majority vote in the Assembly might be made up of nations which, at a showdown, could not enforce their will on any one of the Big Three.

Yet the Big Powers at the conference yielded on many points to expand the Assembly's functions. The Assembly can discuss anything. It can make recommendations for the peaceful adjustment of situations which might impair peace "regardless of origin." The only exception --and an important one -- is that the Assembly cannot recommend action on matters already taken up by the Security Council.

The Assembly must rely on its ability to mobilize world public opinion. One proof that this ability can be effective was the care with which the Big Three scrutinized every small-power proposal to broaden the Assembly's powers. The Assembly will control the organization's subsidiary agencies, of which the Economic and Social Council undoubtedly will be the most potent.

The Security Council. The theory of the Dumbarton Oaks drafters was that the League of Nations failed because it purported to put power where power did not lie and could not actually be put.

Therefore, the new organization would recognize that peace, at least for a while, depended almost wholly on agreement among all the great powers.

San Francisco did not tamper with this theory. The conference left most of the world organization's authority in the Security Council, and most of the Council's authority in the hands of its permanent, Big Power members -- the U.S., Rus sia, Britain, China, France. Six other nations will be elected to the Council by the Assembly.

The only important Security Council change was not in the charter itself but in an interpretation broadening the Yalta agreement on the Big Power veto (see above).

The Court. The old International Court will have its face lifted by a new statute. But San Francisco did not give the court compulsory jurisdiction over the nations. Only those which specifically accept the court's jurisdiction may be hauled to the bar. Others need come to court only when they want to.

The small nations had placed great hopes in the possibility of improving the charter by later amendments. But the best they could get was a provision for some future constitutional convention at an un specified date and under rules which safe guard Big Power control.

So What? In the light of the veto ar rangement, and of the continued sanctity of regionalism, the San Francisco charter did not add up to collective security.

But the charter represented a little progress. The great powers, which did not have to yield at all, yielded on point after point to small nations. The small nations had enough on their side to move the U.S. with its victorious ships and planes, the Russians with their 8,000,000 victorious soldiers. The great powers did not move much, but that they moved at all was the wonder and the hope of San Francisco. Said a U.S. newspaper veteran of Versailles and of the Washington arms conference: "They tell me this bickering is sordid. Sure it is. It's as sordid as the Delaware Legislature two nights before adjournment. It's the first time I've smelled anything that smells like world government. It's wonderful."

From A to Y. Such was the charter. When the nations queued up to sign it, Argentina, which contributed less than nothing to the war, would come first; Yugoslavia, on whose soil the war in Europe raged longest, would come last. Somehow this alphabetical injustice symbolized the kind of charter that San Francisco gave the world. It was that kind of a world.

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