Book Reviews : The United Nations and the Maintenance of International Peace and Security. By LELAND M. GOODRICH and ANNE P. SIMONS. (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution. 1955. Pp. xiii, 709. $6.00.)

• Date: 01 March 1956
• Author: George V. Wolfe
• Published date: 01 March 1956
• DOI: 10.1177/106591295600900114
• Subject Matter: Articles

BOOK REVIEWS
The United Nations and the Maintenance of International Peace and
Security. By LELAND M. GOODRICH and ANNE P. SIMONS. (Washington,
D.C.: The Brookings Institution. 1955. Pp. xiii, 709. $6.00.)
The present volume is the first of seven in the Brookings Institution’s
series of studies on the United Nations. The other six volumes are sched-
uled for publication by the end of 1956.
The book under review is primarily concerned with the operations of
the principal organs of the United Nations -
the Security Council, the
General Assembly, and, to a lesser extent, the International Court of
Justice -
during the eight-year period from January, 1946, to December,
1953, with but an occasional brief reference to developments in 1954. The
study is organized in six parts. The first sketches the framework of the
San Francisco Charter, major factors in the postwar world which have in-
fluenced the development of the United Nations, and its actual record
regarding the maintenance of peace and security. Part Two deals with the
initial consideration of questions by each organ - such matters as the
participation of non-members in the deliberations of the Security Council
and the General Assembly, the domestic jurisdiction clause of Article 2 (7)
of the Charter, and the establishing of fact-finding bodies by the Security
Council and the General Assembly are ably discussed. Parts Three, Four,
and Five consider, respectively, methods of peaceful settlement and adjust-
ment ; action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace,
and acts of aggression; and the regulation of armaments. The final part of
the study contains the authors’ conclusions. Among these, perhaps, the
most significant are the following. First, &dquo;there is little in the experience of
the United Nations ... to justify the view that the Charter is a pre-atomic
document in the sense that a radically different United Nations would have
been organized if at the time of the San Francisco...