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3 Contemporary China; A Reference Digest  [i] (1943-1944)

handle is hein.cow/cchinred0003 and id is 1 raw text is: Sec. 562 P. L & X. U. S. POSTAGE PAID NEW YORK, N. Y. PERMIT NO. 8383 CONTEMPORARY CHINA A Reference Digest Published Fortnightly by Chinese News Service, Rockefeller Center, New York Vol. III, No. I May 31, 1943 Toward World Organization* During the last three decades we the people of the world have been living in a state of international anarchy. In a single generation we have seen the two greatest wars in the history of mankind, and we have been unable to create an international order that can prevent the outbreak of systematic violence. We are, literally, wandering be- tween two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born. Before we look forward to the future, let us cast a retrospective glance at the history of mankind. From the forest primeval when the prehistoric man hunted after wild beasts to the state of civilization in which we are living at present is a long passage indeed. We have already reached a high stage of political evolution. We have passed the primitive state of nature in which human beings were solitary individuals, each a law unto himself, as described by Thomas Hobbes and Rousseau; we have outgrown- let us hope-the era of national isolationism as symbolized by the Great Wall of China; we have crossed the threshold of a new stage of political evolution in which all men are neighbors and all nations are interdependent. Time was when individuals considered themselves as isolated entities, whether as moral men or simply as carnal beings. Time was when nations or states regarded them- selves as absolute sovereign bodies, as closed economic spheres, or as secluded cultural units. The time now has come when all individuals and nations must think on a higher plane and on a larger horizon. The people on earth are so utterly dependent upon one another that the present state of international anarchy is no longer satisfactory and tolerable, just as the state of nature was unsatisfactory and intolerable to founders of civil society. The world that is to emerge out of the present global war is a great question mark. No one knows. To forecast the shape of things to come and to prescribe in any defini- tive terms the pattern of the future world organization will appear premature and even futile at present. How- ever, thinking men and women everywhere in the world- in the United States, in the United Kingdom, in Russia, *An address by Lin Mousheng at the Institute for Postwar Planning, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. as well as in China-are today looking forward to the world that is to come. Mankind abhors the state of inter- national vacuum; mankind cannot long stand in thishis- toric zero hour. It must organize itself into a universal entity. Even as the war is global, so the peace that is to follow must be global, in organization and in operation. The Pact of the United Nations It seems imperative that after this war we must organize a government at the world level, a United Nations of the world. That government must have two broad objectives: main- tenance of peace and promotion of the well-being of mankind. When the war is over, all members of the Allied na- tions, and eventually all members of the Axis, should be invited to become parties to a Pact of the United Nations. This Pact shall be considered as the supreme law of the world and of each and every member state. Any state violating the Pact shall be deemed to have violated not only international law but also the supreme law of its own land. The Pact of the United Nations should contain among others provisions forbidding every member state the right to wage war or use force for the settlement of interna- tional disputes and also provisions disallowing every mem- ber state the status of neutrality. These provisions will in the first place outlaw war un- conditionally. Each and every member state is made to renounce definitely and unequivocally the vague prescrip- tive right to be the sole judge of its own case and to declare or resort to war as an instrument of national policy. International law as yet does not positively re- quire a state to submit all disputes to adjudication or arbitration unless it agrees or has previously agreed to do so. The inadequacies of present international law are as obvious as the inconveniences of the state of nature where every man was sole judge of his own case and could use force to settle his quarrel with his fellow men. In the second place, there should be provisions disallow- ing state members the status or condition of neutrality. Reproduction by Permmission of the Buffalo & Erie County Pl-ilic Libiamy DIkJalo, NY

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