HISTORY'S PROGRESS THUS FAR (cont.)

In 1927, U.S. Secretary of State Kellogg suggested a worldwide pact renouncing war.  In 1931, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University and founder of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in acknowledgment of his efforts in advocating worldwide cooperation to maintain international harmony.

Notwithstanding such effortrs by individuals and groups, however, Fascism reared its ugly head in Europe in the late thirties.  Internationalists viewed it as a common enemy to all peoples, and expressed the belief that only by banding together could the rest of the world prevail.

In August, 1941, aboard the U.S. cruiser Augusta, President Roosevelt and English Prime Minister Winston Churchill issued a joint declaration of their hopes for a better future for the world, which came to be called the "Atlantic Charter."  It contained eight principles, which bore much similarity to President Wilson's Fourteen Points:
a) no territorial gain by any nation;
b) no territorial changes without consent;
c) the right of people to choose their own form of government;
d) equal access to trade;
e) equal access to raw materials;
f) international economic collaboration;
g) freedom of the seas; and
h) abandonment of the use of force.
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In 1943, The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution entitled the Fulbright Resolution, which called for United States participation in an international peace organization.  In November of the same year, a counterpart, called the Connally Resolution, was enacted by the Senate.  Next, at a meeting following the horrors of World War II, future world security, and an organization that would subsequenytly be called the "United Nations," were discussed.  Such an organization would represent and foster a universal commitment to a peaceful world, via the establishment of an international forum to properly deal witrh such conflicts as should arise, as well as to promote freedom of international trade.

In 1945, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin proposed a further extension of this United Nations concept, in the form of an "assembly," or legislative body for the world, which would enact binding law subject to international enforcement.  Its members would be elected directly by the people of the countries that comprised the membership of the U.N.  It never came to pass, however; and in my opinion, the absence of a body having such capabilitry constitutes a primary factor behind the basic weakness and ineffectiveness of the United Nations today.

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