"WORLD PEACE THROUGH LAW" — "ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT" —
these are the cherished hope of mankind for the future.
Today, government leaders recognize WORLD GOVERNMENT is the only hope for lasting world peace.
But take a long look at the GREATEST ATTEMPTS OF MAN IN ALL HISTORY to put together such a world government.
What do you find?
It's time you recognized NO HUMAN GOVERNMENT knows the WAY to world peace!
THE United Nations is in trouble. Envisioned by world leaders as the ONLY way to lasting peace after World War II, the United Nations Organization was formed, a building site donated by the Rockefeller family and an impressive, modern building complex erected to house the many offices and conference halls.
The record is not unimpressive.
There have been some successes, some failures. But too many of the international disputes to come before the United Nations have tended to remain unsolved — like running sores between governments.
And today, the headaches seem to outnumber the successes.
With Red China, German reunification, the Cold War, and dozens of little hot wars to worry about, the UN finds itself heir to a whole host of problems not remotely envisioned by its founding fathers in the early post-war years.
Take a brief look in retrospect.
The Anything-But-United Nations
It seems almost like the fulfillment of an old household slogan, "Hindsight is better than foresight." And, to millions of us, the archaic attempts at world peace after World War I by the League of Nations appeared, in 1941, unbelievably shortsighted.
We saw, in retrospect, the terrible inadequacies of the Treaty of Versailles, all of the faults with the shortsightedness of the Western allies — the problems inherent in the Danzig Corridor, the refugee problems, the Sudetenland, the Saar and Czechoslovakia.
Suddenly, in 1939, it began to crystallize. Finally, in 1941, on December 7, it came sharply into focus for Americans who preferred to dream and play on their island of security in the midst of a world in ferment.
And now, in this modern age, we see in retrospect the failings at Yalta, Teheran, and Potsdam. We see the shortsightedness of Western planners in allowing a nuclear stalemate to occur; a divided Berlin and a divided Jerusalem, and the almost staggering lack of initiative on the part of the West to win the peace after they had won the war!
My father, Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong, was an accredited press correspondent attending the world conclave in San Francisco for the formation of the United Nations Charter, in 1946.
He saw and heard there the greatest statesmen in the world, including Britain's Clement Attlee and Russia's Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, solemnly admit the United Nations was the world's "LAST CHANCE" for peace. No truer words were ever spoken!
The United Nations DOES represent man's greatest single effort in all history to bring ALL nations together in mutual understanding and cooperation.
Take a brief look at the record.
Since those fateful days, more than FORTY WARS have been fought, the world has been hurled from the machine age to the jet age through the nuclear age and into the space age, and many wars are still blazing today!
Little did the policy makers realize they were literally building into the United Nations its ultimate death knell.
Leaders in some of the big powers have warned the United Nations HAS ALREADY FAILED. Many have called it a "sounding board" for Communist propaganda.
And today, the headaches seem to grow only larger, and more insistent.
In a conference on world law, Secretary General of the United Nations U Thant said, "What element is lacking, so that, with all our skill and our knowledge, we still find ourselves in the dark valley of discord and enmity? What is it that inhibits us from going forward together to enjoy the fruits of human endeavor and to reap the harvest of human experience?
"Why is it that, for all of our professed ideals, our hopes, and our skill, peace on earth is still a distant objective, seen only dimly through the storms and turmoil of our present difficulties?" (Emphasis ours)
Yes, WHAT ELEMENT IS LACKING? We shall see — and see very clearly.
COULD the formulators of the United Nations Charter have even remotely envisioned all of the bizarre events that have occurred since those days in 1946?
Could anyone, unless he understood Bible prophecy, have foretold sudden emergence of many new nations, barely toddling, like political babies, through world power politics as raw tyros and beginners, yet each one presenting its own peculiar headache to all the big powers?
Had ANY of the big powers foreseen such a strange occurrence — the United Nations would not be facing its present crises.
The Growing Number of Nations
Here's what is actually happening:
Independence has become the magic word in the impoverished "have-not" nations of today. From the screams of "UHURU!" in Kenya to the banners of "liberated!" in Central America, independence is the exalted panacea of all times.
Now, rag-tag, scraggly, illiterate and impoverished little countries scream for "independence" immediately!
Staggering though it sounds, about one third of the total population of this broad earth, (more than ONE BILLION people!), have run up their own flags during the great dismemberment of empires that has followed in the aftermath of World War II.
From that dramatic August of 1945, sixty new nations have been created on the face of this earth!
Here's what that means!
Government is much more than just big business — requiring educated men. Government should require a vast amount of education; in true history, government, languages, true and proven science, literature, and in ALL fields! Right government should require kindness, selflessness, understanding, equity, trust, patience and faith!
It should require men of courage; capable of great personal sacrifice; completely HONEST men, who always tell the truth, even to their own hurt!
It should require understanding of the deep racial, social and economic problems; the problems of health, education and welfare, of conservation, of labor and management. It SHOULD require a depth and grasp of HUMAN NATURE, and real dynamic LEADERSHIP!
It SHOULD require all these qualities, and a great many more!
But contrast these vital prerequisites to rule with the spectacle of some of the newest nations on earth. In the great dismantlement of empires, MANY new nations have sprung up. MANY MORE are just around the corner in modern history. Here's a part of the picture.
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PIP Photo
KENYA — Independence Day celebration, December 12, 1963. In attendance, foreground, tribal natives clothed in skins.
Government is now in hands of one-time Mau Maus. Is this a solid basis for a stable government?
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Only a Flagpole to Raise
Some of the bloodiest riots of recent history have involved the urgent desire for independence on the part of many tiny, struggling nations.
Like young juveniles whose awakening bodies and minds, though youthful, begin to cry out for "experience" and "freedom" — like teenagers who wish to completely throw off the yoke of all parental guidance and authority, many "new nations" which are not yet "nations" have struggled to throw off their real or imagined "yoke."
But nationhood is not all that simple — even as adulthood is not quite so rosy and simple as many a teenager pictures it!
Take the examples of Ghana, Nigeria and Indonesia. As Time magazine pointed out, their troubles are especially instructive, because most of the world's new nations have nowhere near the natural resources of Ghana, Nigeria or Indonesia.
Time said, "Far too many of them [emerging new nations] raise their flags with little but a flagpole to go on . . ."
Many "capital cities" of some of these nations are not cities at all, but small tribal villages with dirty, garbage-strewn, unpaved streets; a collection of mud and straw huts of incredible squalor and filth; with no schools, no public health or sanitation facilities, no plumbing or electricity, little, if any, public transport, and almost total illiteracy.
Still, many scream for independence!
The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease
Waiting right now for the new magical status of "statehood" are Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Mauritius — all due to become independent in 1966. Swaziland and South Arabia will follow soon.
It was reported recently that thirty-one additional colonial territories in the British Empire alone remain to be freed around the world, not to mention the nineteen others to be given equal status by other former colonial powers.
When you realize it is generally the weakest, most vociferous and insistent, and most violently anti-colonial who are given "statehood" FIRST, the problem takes on staggering proportions!
And, nearly always, the FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS for these new "nations"
is to clamor for membership in the United Nations!
And, shocking as it may sound, EACH ONE OF THEM, when accepted into the United Nations General Assembly, has EQUAL VOICE and an equal vote with the United States, Great Britain, France or Russia!
Recent history has proved that, while many of the emerging new Black African nations waved "racism" as their banner in wanting to throw off the yoke of the White powers, they have, nevertheless, tended to vote as a "bloc" in the United Nations.
In other words, while screams of racism represented the crucible through which they gained independence, they tend to vote in the United Nations along racial lines, rather than as independent, objective, sovereign nations.
But, as many such new "nations" have found, simply getting the nation in business at all can be an exhausting task.