Carlos P. Romulo 

For the past several weeks, the city of Berlin has been the focus of men’s fears. Today, and for the duration of this session of the General Assembly, the city of Paris will be the centre of men’s hopes. Our meeting coincides with a turning point in history. We are called upon to decide the momentous issues of our time; whether we shall have war or peace; whether man shall live in larger freedom or under increasing regimentation; whether the nations shall eventually unite into a single community of peoples under a world charter, or divide permanently into armed and hostile camps governed only by the predatory laws of the jungle.

These, in essence, are the problems that confront us. They involve the fate of every man, woman, and child now living as well as of generations yet unborn. There is something supremely ironic and yet touching in the way by which events have persisted in demonstrating the world's need for the United Nations. Every international problem that has defied solution by individual states has come before us, as to a court of last appeal—the problems of atomic energy, Greece, Iran, Egypt, South Africa, Korea, Indonesia, Kashmir, Palestine, Czechoslovakia, the former Italian Colonies, and perhaps, before we adjourn, the gravest and most difficult problem of all, the quarrel of the great powers over Germany.

Inadequate as its efforts have often proved to be, hampered by indifference and sometimes by a deliberate intent to thwart its efforts, the United Nations yet remains as mankind’s chief and perhaps its last hope for universal peace, freedom and security. It is an experience at once humbling and inspiring to realize that we represent at this moment the only force that can stand between the peoples of the world and the catastrophe that threatens to engulf them. May this thought guide and sustain us as we begin this crucial session of the General Assembly.

War is the great, the overriding problem before us. The danger is no longer remote or hypothetical. It is real, and it grows with every passing hour. War is on the march in Asia. It chafes angrily under the uneasy truce of Palestine and stalks with iron tread the Continent of Europe. We meet under its shadow. We cannot ignore it, any more than we can ignore a time-bomb ticking away at our feet. Even as we deliberate here on the problem of peace, some of the great powers arm and gird for war.

We have no power to impose peace. But we do have the moral authority to demand it. I am sure that I speak not only for my own nation but for the people of every other country as well when I say that we do not want war, that we consider it to be neither necessary nor inevitable, and that we believe the powers directly concerned can avert it if they will to do so.

We need no new formula for peace. We have one in our own Charter, in which we pledge; 

“to live together in peace… to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security: and to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest.”

We have not only the formula but the rules and the procedures to make it work. It is the resolution, the will to implement it, that is lacking.

The Philippine delegation calls upon the great powers to make a fresh and determined effort not only to resolve their present quarrels without recourse to arms but to find some means whereby they could live in peace long enough to give mankind a chance to build, through the United Nations, stronger safeguards for the security and well-being of all. We make this plea for their sake as much as for ours. War will solve nothing; it can only destroy everything we value. Such is the destructive power of modern weapons that to lose the peace now is to risk losing all.

We, the small nations, for our part can help to avert war by pooling our strength and wielding our collective influence as a third force dedicated to the cause of peace. Less involved than the great powers in the snares of the grim struggle for the political and economic mastery of the world, we, the small nations, are in a better position to represent the true will and the real interests of mankind. We call upon them to close ranks and present a solid front against any attempt to undermine the peace.

The past three years have witnessed the growth, within the United Nations, of a healthy tendency on the part of the small countries to act in conformity with these objectives. The time has come, I believe, for them to assert themselves more completely, to oppose any scheme or manoeuvre which would serve the interests of any single state or group of states at the expense of others, to act for the common good whenever the occasion demands or the opportunity should arise.

The conscience of the world deserves a stronger voice than has spoken for it during the past three years. Let the small nations, speaking in unison, be that voice. The mute millions, the common people of the world, expendable in war, forgotten in peace, cry out for a true and steadfast champion. Let the small nations, acting in concert, be the advocate of their cause and the guardian of their welfare.

The great powers, their hands tied by the inexorable demands of power politics, have been unable to make the peace. The sum total of their achievements is a political stalemate, a precarious balance between the possibility of peace and the prospect of war. It may be that the small nations using wisely their moral power, pitting all the weight of their combined influence against war, may yet tip the balance on the side of peace.