True there has been more talk of peace since 1945 than, I should think, at any other time in history. At least we hear more and read more about it be… - Lester B. Pearson

This was not enough for a minority now demanding much sterner action to meet the Nazi threat. At the head of this group was Winston Churchill. His prestige, however, after his stand during the abdication crisis [in late spring 1937] and his aggressive, bellicose speeches on the need for more arms, was at a low point. Not many listened to him yet. He was still considered an irresponsible failure and an unreliable character.

Nothing, I suppose, could better demonstrate than the Suez crisis the extent to which the United Nations had remained a central factor in our foreign policy. Our problem was, and is, one of long standing, how to bring about a creative peace and a security which will have a strong foundation. It remained my conviction that there could never be more than a second-best substitute for the UN in preserving the peace. Organizations such as NATO were necessary and desirable only because the UN was not effective as a security agency. UNEF was a step in the right direction in putting international force behind an international decision. The birth of that force had been sudden and had been surgical. The arrangements for the reception of the infant were rudimentary, and the midwives had no precedents or genuine experience to guide them.

Until the last great war, a general expectation of material improvement was an idea peculiar to Western man. Now war and its aftermath have made economic and social progress a political imperative in every quarter of the globe. If we ignore this, there will be no peace. There has been a widening of horizons to which in the West we have been perhaps too insensitive. Yet it is as important as the extension of our vision into outer space. Today continuing poverty and distress are a deeper and more important cause of international tensions, of the conditions that can produce war, than previously.