The approaches to this subject have been traversed by so many speakers that it would be profitless for anyone at this hour to attempt to follow along the main path. I want to express a view strongly in favour of having this country a member of the United Nations Organisation. I would like to give, briefly, some reason why my vote and my voice would go that way. There will be one big note of exclamation standing out from this debate when people begin to consider it, and that is why it was introduced at this time. I understand the Taoiseach said to-day that there was a time when he understood the last date for application of membership of the organisation was July 15th. Then that date shifted, and when it may be we do not know, but it may be to-morrow or the day after. Apparently, the situation as the Taoiseach saw it was, that if the last date for making application was the 15th July, we would not have been asked to give the Government sanction to enter it. As to what has happened between some date prior to the 15th July and this, the 24th July, I am in the dark. The country will want to know that, but the country will probably not get an answer now. The country, in retrospect facing this debate, will be able to inquire and may possibly get an answer as to what change occurred between, say, a date prior to the 15th July and this date which moved the Taoiseach to come in here to ask the Dáil to give him a recommendation that we should enter the United Nations Organisation, and that the Government should take whatever steps are necessary to join it as soon as may be convenient. The question as to the point of time not merely raises a difficulty but puts a note of interrogation that I believe the country will put hereafter.
There is another matter that I want to question. I have often mentioned in the House a phrase that was used with regard to the late president Roosevelt. It was that when he was bringing his country along the path that let eventually to war he was always a little bit in advance of his people, but not running too far ahead to be repudiated by them. He was praised for what was called a supreme effort in psychological timing: keeping just so far ahead that he could get others to come after, and yet not so far that they would think he had gone ahead of them. What psychological timing have we had, with regard to getting people to realise the obligations imposed on them by entering this organisation, or of the benefits, if there are to be benefits, that may flow to us as one member of the peoples of the world if we do get an organisation and if it works right?
I do not understand that there has been any approach on any platform to this subject. There has been no attempt made to educate the people, and no attempt made to tell them the pros and cons of this dispute or of that argument. Certainly, there has been no timing, psychological or otherwise, in regard to the circumstances approaching our entry. I believe that if anybody went out on a tour of propaganda in connection with the United Nations Organisation the first approach of the people would be to repel them. If one desired to get their acquiescence for entry into this organisation, one would have to approach the people with the knowledge that the obstacles were great and many, and great persuasive powers would have to be used to get them to agree to enter. The first thing that one would have to face in this country, on account of its history, is that it has developed an insularity, a tendency towards isolationism which does not obtain even in America. One must recognise that that is partly the result of our history, and that it is also due to the ordinary human fabric of which we are made. Men's emotions have a very limited range. A man may think of, and be enthused about, himself and his family or his blood relatives. He may wander out into other enthusiasms in relation say to club games, a county team, and, even on big occasions, there may be some national enthusiasm in the way of sport or intellectualism or something else. But it is very hard to get the range of the emotions of the people of this country, which is mainly rural, widened so as to appreciate an organisation of this sort, particularly when it is built up as we have this one built up at the moment.
At the San Francisco Conference, at which the charter finally took shape, out of 26 European nations only eight were represented. The conference was mainly non-European, and however difficult it might be to get those people to cast their views outside their own shores, it would be mainly interested, outside those countries, in Great Britain and, possibly, in America. The set up of the conference which made the charter was, to a great extent, Asiatic and, certainly, non-European. The other thing to explain to the people of this country is that to any realist our entry into this organisation is not so much an escape from the shelter of Great Britain or, if you like, the United States of America as a definite welcoming; a close and intimate association with Great Britain, and the hopes of a better association and a more intimate line with the United States.
Our history would, naturally, at first glance cause our people to be repelled by that view, which, I think, will have to be exposed to them. Suppose one got the people a little bit further and got them interested in history, one would have to explain to them that, prior to the beginning of this century, the whole idea of peace in Europe— and that was where peace was required—was built upon what was called the concert of the great powers. You had two or three powers with mighty armies, mighty arms and fleets roaming around to prevent small nations breaking the peace. A precarious balance was built up by association and counter-association of most of the big powers in and about Europe and that helped to preserve the peace for some time. That particular conception had broken down and in 1914 the war had come. Again, the people founded themselves on the idealism of the League of Nations. The League of Nations went too far with idealism. It promoted the ideas of arbitration, conciliation and collective security and, under the sway of these three ideas, nations abandoned defence policies and gave up, to a great extent, foreign policies. That security seemed to rest on whatever was gathered in Geneva around the League. Then, that went west.
Now, we are faced with another situation. Let it be frankly stated that what we are now having is the concert of the great powers of the type prior to 1900, but now set in an international framework. Let nobody believe who reads this international charter made in San Francisco that the Security Council which will hereafter keep the peace is other than the great powers. Some people believe that, when we go into this assembly, we can keep our status as a sovereign nation. It may be as an act of our sovereign will that we shall go in—that was, I think, what Deputy Moran referred to—but, having gone in, if the United Nations Organisation is to become anything of a reality, we must subtract something from our old sovereign power and put some limit—it may be by our own individual choice—to the exercise of that sovereignty. Once we take the step which we are asked to take, the whole conception of a completely sovereign State will have gone.
To what do we subscribe? I say that the reality behind that charter as it stands at the moment is that we give ourselves over and take up whatever obligations there are under the charter, to be moved hereafter by two out of the three remaining great Powers in the world. As to Japan and Germany, there is no great likelihood of their being resurrected in any reasonable period of years ahead. We have left—Britain, America and Russia. If these three great Powers can keep the peace between themselves, no small nation will be allowed to break the peace. As a matter of fact, no small nation has ever been allowed to break the peace so as to create a general upheaval. Outside the Balkan wars and a dispute between Bolivia and some neighbouring State, there was, in my memory, no attempt at war between small Powers. The wars have been due to the big Powers who fell out and dragged everybody else in their train.
That is the present situation, as I see it, and we must explain to our people that, in respect of whatever obligations we take upon ourselves—I shall refer to them in a moment—we shall be moved in their exercise hereafter by some of those great Powers when some of them will have fallen out and have come to a viewpoint which the third will not accept. This country must accept that as the situation. All that would not be very encouraging to an Irish audience. Again, I suggest that it is the truth and the reality and that, if we are to get this matter properly understood by our people so that the Government may feel that they have the people behind them, these are the thoughts we shall have to put before them, with certain countering observations which will follow.
May I refer again to the point made by Deputy Moran? While we are now a sovereign State and while nobody can question that the decision that we are about to take on this motion will be a decision of a completely free and untrammelled people, I do suggest that, once that decision is taken, we must accept the view I am putting forward—that, hereafter, we shall have limited ourselves so far as the exercise of our full sovereign powers is concerned.
The obligations we accept are many and serious. Reference was made to neutrality. Neutrality has been elevated in this country into something in the nature of a positive virtue— something like justice, honesty and truth. It is not any of those. Nor was it at any time in the past seven years at that level. It was a matter of expediency and, so far as this country was concerned, what was involved was only State neutrality. The State did not take any side but the people took sides. There was not ideological neutrality so far as this country was concerned. Whatever it was, even such a small part of neutrality as is encompassed in the term "State neutrality" must hereafter be given up if we join this organisation. Deputy O'Higgins has made allusion to one point upon which I ask for information. The covenant of the League of Nations did contain sections under which it was possible for a States-member to retire. There were circumstances under which a States-member might be put out and there was a condition that, if the covenant of the League of Nations was changed, that being regarded as the constitution of the whole organisation, a member could leave if it did not like the change. There are no such provisions in this charter. It may well be that the situation is that you are invited to come in with the knowledge that you cannot leave, no matter how much you dislike a change in the charter.
Provisions are made for the amendment of the charter without any corresponding provision, such as was contained in the covenant of the League of Nations, about leaving the organisation. I am not forgetting that the whole organisation might dissolve and break up, as did the League of Nations. It was a question at first of certain members leaving but, in the end, the situation was that the organisation broke up. That might happen again.
Without any such crisis developing as would lead to the complete break-up of this organisation, can a situation arise in which this charter would be changed or modified in a way we would not ordinarily accept but to which we would still be bound or is there any legal way under the charter by which we could free ourselves from our obligations? I cannot find any such way. It may be that, at some of the conferences at which the phraseology was analysed and parsed, some loophole of escape was pointed out, but I know of none. If that is the situation, we enter into this organisation knowing that we may be bound to everything known by the old term of "sanctions"—economic sanctions, a phrase used so widely that it covers almost everything, including financial sanctions. That means breaking off all economic approach to a nation against which the States members of this organisation would have set their hand. We should be bound, in conjunction with other States, to act under orders. I want to stress that the orders will, in the main, be the orders of two out of three—or possibly the whole three— remaining great Powers. We can be forced to war. We can, certainly, be forced to make our territory accessible to forces that are going to war for the charter against members who are going to break it. How it is considered that neutrality will be possible under these circumstances, I cannot conceive. We place an obligation on ourselves to make our territory free for the passage of troops, for the landing of stores, for the storing of supplies, even for the station from which jet-propelled rockets and bombs may be discharged, drawing, of course, corresponding fire upon ourselves. When we pass this motion freely and as an exercise of our sovereign will to-night and when the Government acts upon it, that is something of what we will take upon ourselves. There are other more limited obligations to an approach to war. We have clearly this, that in an approach to a war, which we possibly might not undertake or might not even join in, we are not left hereafter a free, unfettered judgment in the matter. In advance, we tie ourselves to an acceptance of whatever the Security Council, which in fact is the three great Powers, the old concert of Europe, tell us to do. Whatever they tell us to do we now say to them we shall hereafter do.
So far, if I were addressing an Irish audience, I would have discouraged them from any desire to join this organisation. I think that, even though, if it might at first glance be discouraging, if it be the truth, it should be told to an Irish audience. I would not leave it there. There are advantages; there are I think even greater advantages than have been spoken of in this House in connection with this organisation. First of all, this organisation is to my mind a better one than the League of Nations. It has heavier obligations but it gives a greater promise that the fulfilment of these obligations will lead to the desired end. One hears the phrase used about it in this connection, that it is the League of Nations with teeth in it —strong teeth put into it. That is so but again that may not be a welcome phrase since it is rather reminiscent of what the wolf said to Red Riding Hood: "The better to eat you with, my dear." It may be that the teeth are going to snap on ourselves but is it not better, if you are going to have an organisation of this kind, to have one that at least will be effective rather than something that will lapse into futility as the League of Nations did?
In this we are faced with a dilemma with which nearly every constitution-maker of a domestic type is faced. Lincoln expressed it long ago in the dictum that it was difficult to see how a Government, given powers that were necessary to meet great emergencies, would not be given too strong powers over the liberty of its people. That is the dilemma. If you give your own domestic Government forces and powers and if you relate these to a time of the greatest emergency you can contemplate in your history, if your domestic Government seeks to apply these powers in ordinary times, the liberty of your people is gone. In the international sphere it is exactly the same. If we give this organisation such powers as will be required when great emergencies arise, then it may be that if these powers are abused and used against members of the organisation not in times of great emergencies but in times and circumstances of disquite, we may find that we have vested them with powers which are far too strong for that purpose. However, that is a risk we must take.
On the whole, I think anyone reviewing the circumstances of the last 20 years must agree that it is better to take this new risk of having a world organisation thoroughly armed against a possible world emergency than to find in face of a new world war that we have an organisation which languishes in feebleness and futility as the old organisation did. People have been warned by the past. I find no evidence, in reading in connection with this matter, that people are accepting this new organisation as any substitute for national defence. Most people do hope that they will get some alleviation from the amazing financial burdens put upon them for the provision of defence but there is none of that idealistic attitude that once you become a member of this organisation you can abandon all preparations for national defence. A certain cynicism has taken the place of the old idealistic outlook in that regard and nobody nowadays believes that the new organisation is going to be any substitute for a foreign policy. On the advent of the old League there was a disposition on the part of European peoples to regard the time for the old groupings and the old regional arrangements as past having regard to new interlocking economies. The feeling was that people could work freely and without any alliances, freely advance these economic alliances, tending towards strength, and that all faith was to reside in the new organisation. It may be that we shall come to that situation with regard to the United Nations Organisation but at the moment there is no such disposition. It is a healthier sign of public opinion all over the world that while it is ready to welcome this organisation it does so with a certain kind of apprehension and suspicion. It means that they will still build up something in the nature of home defence forces and will still bend their wits to the formulation of a foreign policy.
I have said this is the old concert of Europe in an international framework. It is the old concert of Europe with this reservation. It is now in an international framework and the international framework is this charter. This charter, whatever may be the pious hypocrisies that may be scattered through its text, does mean that the nations are going to meet and that there is going to be a forum for the making of world opinion. There is going to be a place where grievances can be voiced. There is going to be an arena in which people may fight out in a peaceful way disputes which otherwise might lead to war. There is going to be an outlet for public opinion, particularly agreed public opinion, and the nations will hereafter get a habit of mind as well as this physical habit of meeting together under a system of conciliation. That may lead to something in the nature of fraternity, something even in the nature of the idealism that surrounded the old League. Public opinion has already had a certain influence in the formation of this. The early stages of it were struck at Dumbarton. The second version was made in the Crimea and the third emerged from San Francisco. The San Francisco version, though not changed to the extent that people thought it might be, was considerably changed for the better and was changed, in so far as it was changed at all, because of the impact of public opinion. The fact that everything was free and open and that there was public discussion of the issues involved did show the value of this method. That is one of the possibly unsubstantial merits of this organisation that one would have to cite to an Irish audience to get it to agree to this whole matter.
In addition to that there is to be an international court established. Deputy Moran I think stresses that over much. Deputy Moran apparently has the view that almost immediately there will be decisions by that court and that those decisions will be carried into effect by force of arms. We are a long way from that, but in any event we have created a court and have created it with the experience of some 20 years behind us of the Conciliation Tribunal at The Hague and the permanent court associated with the League of Nations. Even though as many disputes were not brought to those tribunals and courts as might have been brought, still something in the nature of case law, something in the nature of precedent, and something in the nature of a resort to equitable principles has been found possible from time to time. Those old systems are not entirely forgotten now and the new court which we shall establish will have something in the nature of a background. It is to be hoped that people will be encouraged more and more and influenced more and more to have resort to the court and that an international rule of law will get thereby its first beginnings and will be permitted to grow up as the rule of law has grown up in most civilised countries to-day.
In addition to that, there is an Economic and Social Council. That I would like to stress very much. Anybody who reads about the work done by the League of Nations knows that it had a social and humanitarian side and most people I think will accept— although it is generally forgotten because of the failure of the League itself on the political side—that on that side the league of Nations did an enormous amount of good. One has only to think of the provisions that were made for health, the prevention of disease and the epidemics that used to sweep over the eastern countries and depopulate them, the advances that were made towards stopping the traffic in opium, and the traffic in women and children, the advances that were made along social, educative, and humanitarian lines, the attempt made by the League to raise the conditions of employment and rates of pay, and the good work it did with regard to the refugees and the displaced persons of World War No. 1, and even the attention which it gave, under the mandate system, to those who suffered as minorities where minority groups were left in the carving out of Europe after that war. All that was magnificent work and all that work had its reflection on the peace of the world. All that work is now thrust upon the new Social and Economic Council with a term of reference better phrased and more liberally expressed than ever was any term of reference of any such organisation before. Remember, too, in connection with this Social and Economic Council, there is no veto. Whatever is to be done in the Social and Economic Council is done by a majority vote of the council itself and the council is widely representative and can be made properly representative if the nations who have secured a footing on it put their best minds there and set them to tackle the problems that will come before it under the impact of that glorious term of reference which appears in Article 55. Article 55 says:
"With a view to the creation of conditions of stability and well being which are necessary for peaceful and friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principles of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, the United Nations shall promote:—
(a) higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development;
(b) solutions of international economic, social, health and related problems; and international cultural and educational co-operation; and
(c) universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion."
That, as I say, is a tremendous addition to the whole United Nations Organisation. At this moment, with the war still so near to us, minds are bound to be bewildered and confused and to be focused almost entirely upon war and the threat of war, together with the fear of a new war. I ask the people to turn to this and to keep their minds for a little time off war and the possibility of war and to ask themselves whether, if that Article 55 is properly worked, it may not be possible to remove the greater part of those things that make for war. I think it is universally accepted nowadays that it is bad conditions in the homelands of certain countries that lead to the further conditions in which the people who want war find it possible to indulge themselves.
I say that, as a charter, that is in line with the best minds of the entire world and may I say, too, with regret, it is very much in advance of the best we have been able to do here. It speaks of a higher standard of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development. There is no limitation in these terms of reference. It has often been regretted, with regard to the old humanitarian and social committees of the League, that the Covenant of the League did not give them as wide terms of reference as are contained in that charter. Although they did great work for the refugees and did raise the standard of living they did not deal—because they had no power to do so—with such problems as tariffs, trade obstructions, currency, employment and migration because these matters were considered to be subjects which should be dealt with by the old sovereign States and it was supposed to take from the status of the sovereign States to have an outside body, even of an international type, ruling upon domestic problems in relation to tariffs, trade, currency, employment or migration. These terms are wide enough to include every one of those things that were held to have been subtracted from the consideration of the old social and humanitarian council. If the council now set up works in conjunction with and follows out those terms of reference, and if it be well manned, and if there be no cheeseparing about the finances placed at its disposal, and if information is given freely and willingly by all the States that form the organisation as to what their domestic situation is so that comparisons can be made and backward nations brought up to the level of the more advanced, then we shall have done all that we possibly can to clear away the misconceptions, the misunderstandings, and the bad conditions which promote war in its earlier stages.
I sincerely hope that we shall join this organisation. I do not take the view that has been expressed in this House to-day that we are going to educate a lot of the other peoples of the world by our concepts and that we are going to increase the standard of living in all sorts of countries by telling them what our standards are here. This organisation is going to be educative for us. It is not that the organisation will be, or can be, educated by us. It will be a great education for our delegates to find themselves brought up against newer ideas with regard to economics, with regard to higher standards of living, with regard to full employment and all these other relevent matters. When we go to these conferences I hope that we shall go in the spirit that we have a lot to learn and, possibly, that we have something to give. But we must always remember that we go there with two tremendous fortifications. Firstly, we are a small nation and at the United Nations Organisation there will be many small nations gathered together; we shall find there small nations who are proud of their distinctive culture, proud of their history, proud of the fact that they are able to live apart from the kind of organisation that has been imposed upon the world by the greatest Powers. We can show, if we have it to show, our diversity of character and living and we can get from these small nations many things, and we can give to them the benefit of the type of life that we have and the type of life that our traditions and our history should lead us to ambition for ourselves in the future.
We have one other fortification. This country has lived too long apart from all the other nations of the world. Too long has history fended us off from a proper association with nations, even nations of different religious outlook from our own. If we go to the United Nations Organisation we will find there not merely small nations, but we will find ourselves able to associate with people who belong to the greatest institution that the world has ever seen, the one to which the majority of the people of this country belong, the Catholic Church. We will be able to find there Catholic viewpoints, a Catholic philosophy, a Catholic way of life, a Catholic line on economics that I personally think we are ignorant of at this moment. In association with small nations hoping to keep their distinctive cultures and economies and with the other institution, the longest lived in the world, we will be able to find education for ourselves with a foundation and with a historical background the like of which, I think, we do not recognise we have communion with.
The last thing I would suggest to an Irish audience, if I got them to listen to me this length, would be that we may find people to stand with us in the big division that is clearly coming as between the peoples of the world. I am leaving out the question of war. If there is an approach to war, if people live under the apprehension of war, there will be no development along any lines of promise for good international relations or good conditions of employment of any type. If war is kept off, there are apparently two viewpoints which will be seen in sharp contrast and conflict throughout the world. One will be the viewpoint of those who believe that men are best left to live by themselves without State direction and the other is—and this is where Russia overshadows the scene— that of countries which believe that men are best when they are ordered and disciplined, when they are made to live and even made to live well. I hope that we will get, in our association in the United Nations Organisation with people who have had more horrible experience than we have had, all through being ordered to live that type of existence and who will react to us and, possibly, get us to react favourably to them, to recognise that the best way of life is where men are left as free as possible to live the lives they can work out for themselves and to avoid those hosts of bureaucratic locusts that are being let loose all over the world charged with the task of ensuring universal felicity by administrative means. That is the social line as I see things and the conflict that is ahead of us. I should like to feel that we will have people going to this conference who would like an open economy of life and who would abhor and run away from this closed economy. If we get that, as well as this old association that we have, then there is something to put as a counterpoise against the terrors of war and the fact that, if war comes, we may be ordered to carry out certain military actions or even made to do things which, left to ourselves, we might not do in the times that hereafter prevail. I hope I have not succeeded in repelling an Irish audience by speaking in this way. In view of the advantages to be gained from this organisation, not merely to us but the whole group to which we will belong, the whole United Nations, we may be able to get the people behind us when we ask the Government to take whatever steps are necessary to become a member of this organisation.
The question of Partition obtrudes itself on the scene. I have not heard what has been said in the House in reference to that, but I know that Partition is a highly dangerous subject to talk about. I shall, however, risk saying a few words. It has been stated here, and we must all accept it, that it is our last national problem. I have given my own experience, it may not be the experience of other Deputies, that that is one of the few things on which it is impossible to get any enthusiasm or any cheers from an Irish audience, even though it be our last national problem. I do not agree with those who say that nothing has been done. I shall content myself with saying that I think in recent years a lot has been done to worsen the situation. It is quite possible, however, that good may come out of what seems to be evil. But let nobody believe that any person who is going to the United Nations Organisation will find an appreciative and sympathetic audience if he begins to talk in terms of the wrongs done to our people in the North. That is a phrase that is open to all sorts of misconceptions and that will be distorted in elections to come.
Our people are suffering. In any event, whether they are or are not, whether they are suffering as much as some propagandists say, or whether the propagandists do not go as far as the reality as to what the suffering is, the great crime of Partition is that it sundered people that ought to be inside the confines of this geographical unit. One concept is that it is something of a spiritual wrong. That cuts no ice here and will not cut very much abroad. Do not let anybody believe that any tale of hardship or wrong about our people in the North will get a step further at any international conference.
Think of what these people have come through; think of the prison camps; think of the mass exterminations; think of the deliberate taking away of provisions from people to bring them to the point of death, if not actually to death; think of the deprivation of every amenity that makes life pleasant; think of all the persecutions of people for reasons of race, for reasons of religion, for reasons of nationality; think of the years after the Versailles Treaty, when there were sections of countries left with minorities which in those sections were a majority. In that period there was nothing like the brutalities and barbarities of later years. Yet nobody could have got the slightest comment of a sympathetic type from a Geneva audience in talking about the position of our people in the Six Counties. I tried it with members of three nationalities and the discouraging phrase I got was: "Give us these conditions in our countries and we will be happy". Although we may lament these things, and we definitely have something to lament and grumble about, when that situation is thrown up against the horrible picture we had in Europe for some ten or 15 years past, what we would be able to talk about at San Francisco or elsewhere in connection with the North would pale into insignificance with the horrors and deprivations that people have come through.
That does not mean that the point may not be raised. I wonder if the present time is the time to raise it. I am not speaking here of the international situation, but of the situation at home. Supposing it were put to the test and we gave our people in the Six Counties their chance to come down here, and we say to the I.R.A. men: "You will get away from the Civil Offences Act in the North and you will get the Offences Against the State Act here." Perhaps I might put, as was put by another Deputy, a more concrete case. Suppose we say: "You can leave Belfast Gaol and come to Portlaoighise." Suppose we say to Catholics: "You will not suffer any longer as Catholics, but unless you come as Fianna Fáil supporters you may as well be back in the North." Suppose we say: "Your standard of living in the North is rated at so many points; down here you will step down so many points; will you come in?" Or suppose we say to the people not of our view with regard to the Irish language: "It is not compulsory up there, but it will be when you come down here." What are we offering even our own people? To these people, of course, we are thinking of nationality and nothing else. We are offering them the re-integration of the territory and re-association with us. Is that enough?
