Book Review: Le rôle des organisations internationales en matière de prêts et d'emprunts
| Published date | 01 October 1959 |
| DOI | 10.1177/004711785900101205 |
| Date | 01 October 1959 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
not asociety in which one should expect there to be astrong development
of
international law, why
the"
institutionalised
moral
pressure"
of
U.N.
organs should neither be exaggerated
nor
ignored, and when he uses the
analogy
of
government conciliation machinery to explain the limits within
which U.N.'s pacific settlement procedures work,
or
conveys to us the signi-
ficance
of
including items on the agenda
of
the
General Assembly, and says
afew sound words
on
the value
of
seemingly ineffective debates and resolu-
tions-as,
also, when he notes where
the"
veto"
tends
to
matter, and where
it does
not
really represent
the"
broadside which cripples innocent interna-
tional traffickers".
It
is
the sum
of
these elucidations, rather
than
anyone
ot
them,
that
gives the
book
its
flavour-the
constancy
of
its good sense
..
On the debit side, which every
short
study
must
somewhere have, it
IS
fair to say that the pattern
of
change in the role
of
the
U.N.
brought
about
by its expanding
membership-bringing
with
it
ideas, attitudes, interests,
and aspirations from newly enfranchised, non-Western
quarters-does
not
appear
clearly enough,
nor
is its full significance examined as awhole.
Yet, in astudy
of
this kind, with its
somewhat"
sociological"
approach,
one would have expected some special
treatment
of
this mid-twentieth
century phenomenon.
The
effect
of
the pressures
of
these new hopes and
fears is recorded
at
various appropriate points
throughout
the book, when
each organ
is
in
turn
examined;
but
there is little bringing together
of
these
disparate
developments-of
the failure
of
the grand design
that
lay behind
the
"Uniting
for
Peace"
Resolution,
of
the growing importance
of
the
Secretary General in particular and the organisation in general in iti
mediatory role,
of
the fact
that"
threats to the
peace"
have
become increas-
ingly items in an
"anti-colonialist"
struggle and not in the
convention~1
..
cold war
",
of
the new importance given
to
the
work
of
the TrusteeshiP
Council,
Fourth
Committee, and Committee
on
Information
on
Non-Self-
Governing Territories, and
of
the emergence
of
Technical Assistance and
Economic Aid to Underdeveloped Countries as supremely
important
func-
tions
of
the United
Nations
and all the Agencies.
The
able student
maY
gather these items together, and see a
common
force behind them, but
he
might justifiably have expected help from the
author.
Of
course, the
chapter arrangement, so convenient for other purposes,
may
have accen-
tuated the difficulty
of
assessing these various ideas and pressures as a
whole. But Mr. Nicholas does seem to miss
an
opportunity
to
recover
when he comes to his final chapter;
for
there, under the
title"
The
U.N.
and its
Members"
he could have thrust home his lesson that the U.N.
is
to an
important
extent"
what member states think it is
",
by giving
US
something
of
the flavour
of
the thoughts
of
the new and numerous
membe~S,
and
of
the actions to which these thoughts have already led, and may
J~
future lead. But he confines himself, albeit most interestingly, to the attl'
tudes
of
the Big Three. Apity.
This, however, is
not
agrateful note on which to end, and should
be
twisted into an oblique
compliment:
it
is
because
what
Mr. Nicholas
haS
given us is such consistently good fare that we ungraciously ask
for
more.
Alan
de
Rusett.
Le role des orxanisations Intemstlonales en matiere de prets et d'empruJN'i·
Problcmes
juridiques-Jean
Salmon. Stevens &Sons, Ltd.
£2
2s.
This is yet
another
first prizewinner (for 1957) in the
annual
competiti.on
of
the
European
centre
of
the Carnegie Endowment.
The
author,
aBelgian
lawyer, LL.D.
of
Brussels University, wrote this book for afurther
doctor's degree
at
the Law Faculty
of
the University
of
Paris under
th~
supervision
of
Professor Paul Reuter. His
main
theme is to describe an
analyse the methods
of
eight international organisations in procuring the
necessary financial means for carrying
out
their task
or
in helping
oth~rs
either to survive financially
or
to fulfil their own duties, in
the
main.
640
To continue reading
Request your trial