The United Nations: World Assembly

THE span of years the world has traversed between the foundation of the first League of Nations and the opening in London of the General Assembly of the new United Nations Organisation is so short (it is 26 years to the day) that the new experiment seems to be almost overloaded with the memories, lessons and precedents of the not very distant past. In them­selves, they make neither for optimism nor pessimism. It is true that the first experiment of an organised international society failed, but initial failure need not be disastrous if its lessons are learnt. The belief that right, reason and good will were sufficient bases for world order was probably one of the great obstacles to the working of the first League. Its dis­appearance can be healthy provided the opposite emphasis on power does not in its turn run away with the nations and lead to a Great Power triumvirate too rigid and too oppressive to be tolerable for long.