Essay on “ One World” Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.
One World
The present generation lives under the international system based on the belief in world unity, which will eventually enable the world to organise its affairs from the viewpoint of international peace. This is an important achievement of the twentieth century. The United Nations is endeavoring to prove this fact. This, however, does not mean, that political world unity already exists or that we can have anything like world government either immediately or in the near future. It, however, does not mean that 185 nations subscribe to the principles enshrined in the United Nations’ Charter which stipulates that all international problems must be dealt with peacefully through a common organisation. These nations have in writing, if not in spirit, renounced war and aggression. Vague outlines of a possible world system have thus been dimly laid down. The United Nations, which is a symbol of this world system, is an institution which works splendidly to make the world system a success and to keep on improving upon it to the ultimate goal of world unity.
The idea of one world is not new in the history. At least two conceptions of it have emerged from time to time. One is primarily religious. The belief that men are spiritual children of one God, destined in time to unite in a single fellowship under a common and generally accepted system of morals and values, was the driving force behind different religious movements—like Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Islam, or Christianity. The second concept was secular, that of world empire. Many races and conquerors aspired to achieve it. In the thirteenth century, for example, the Mongol conqueror Changez Khan declared that the entire earth had been given to him to rule and any opposition to him was not a defence but rebellion. Hitler, in this century, had more or less envisaged a similar ambition of a world empire.
The remarkable fact about the twentieth century is that in our times the assumption of division of the world among different nations is universally accepted. But it is held that this division should someday be ended and an area of unity is not an impossible dream. But now men are increasingly inclined to the view that unless the dream of one world reaches a measure of fulfillment, there can be no viable basis of human life. There have been suggestions, although with different contents, of world confederation during this century. The forces compelling a growing degree of world unity are irresistible and they are moving with cataractal speeds. Governments may resist these forces for a time but, in doing so, they risk disruption or rather world’s ultimate annihilation.
The most easily understandable force is the sheer shrinkage of the earth, not in diameter, but by the speed of jet planes with which human beings move about now-a-days. Communications have improved very fast. Men can, if they wish, communicate from’ anywhere to anywhere within a matter of seconds. Photographs (4 events in New Delhi are telegraphed at once to newspapers in the United States and other countries beyond the seven seas. The radio stations of most national capitals pour forth a steady stream of broadcasts beamed to the people of all countries. All people, save the most primitive, live more or less in the presence of each other and with a modicum of knowledge about each other. This knowledge is all too little and frequently not good. Yet it is there. Ideas move equally fast. Modern man’s capacity to give and distribute information is now unlimited.
Another force, and the most effective, arises out of the sudden use of scientific knowledge. This has set in motion a whole wave of cognate currents. Perhaps the first of these currents was medical, the discovery that the spread of communicable diseases might be checked. Nations work together as germs and viruses are not deterred by frontiers. Fundamental medical principles are universal.
They take little notice of races and religions and they have almost nothing to do with politics, nationalities or flags. Doctors talk more or less the same language the world over. They put an end to yellow fever and smallpox during the nineteenth century, brought pneumonia under control and conquered malaria. Recent achievements, including the transplantation of heart, kidney or other parts of human body, are matters of universal knowledge, demanding universal co-operation.
Science in other fields is also rapidly developing. Astronomy, mathematics, biology and other sciences are similar in all countries. When their principles are applied, it is generally felt that their application requires cooperation by many nations. Transmission of electrical impulses by radio, for example, giving rise to radio communications was rapidly expanded in second and third decades of this century. Thus, in 1927, rules were made for distribution of wavelengths, so that air could be used to mutual advantage without its becoming a vast confusion. Cairo Convention assigned frequencies to various countries. Today Telecommunication Union is there as part of the United Nations.
The United Nations also has other branches of international cooperation in different fields. UNESCO is designed to spread education and improve educational standards; the World Health Organisation is designed to combat diseases on a worldwide scale; the Food and Agriculture Organisation deals with production and distribution of food in and to areas where hunger is a problem. The International Labour Organisation is designed to improve the conditions of labour, provisions of adequate living wages, protection of workers against diseases and injury throughout the world. Thus gradually a set of international agencies dealing with problems of international nature has come into existence. Some of these can make worldwide decisions, though they may have no final authority. They can do this, because their decisions are in some measure self-enforced.
While the United Nations works within limitations, it does play an effective role in taking steps towards the world unity. Its Security Council is the standing committee of the five Great Powers, although now it has ten more countries on it, elected every two years. The General Assembly comprises an Annual Meeting of representatives of all the 185 nations, presently members of the J.N.O. It is a sort of World Annual Congress and the decisions are taken by vote. In theory a vote of the General Assembly expresses the world opinion or rights or wrongs of any situation threatening a breach of the peace and of measures to be taken to restore peace or forestall possible wars.
The prospect of rapprochement on major international issues between Great Powers greatly augments the purpose of world unity or ultimate world government. Already, for the first time in history nations, great and small, have convinced themselves against the possibility of military victories of previous ages. The Omni destructibility of any future war is an effective deterrent against its outbreak. At the most, the world can be held to a series of “little” or “limited” wars which will not spread. To risk any bigger war means to risk extinction of human race. To maintain life means to move towards a system of global peace and order. To achieve this, there has been a slow and steady, though disorderly and unsatisfactory, but nevertheless viable progress towards the creation of a world order.
In this atomic era, war has become useless as an instrument of resolving differences between nations, because atom bomb has obliterated the formerly valid distinction between the combatants and non-combatants, front and the rear, victor and the vanquished. As the fear of war grows and man realises the urgency of a stable peace, the individual nations will gradually realise the value of peaceful co-existence and shed their nationalistic jealousy, fear and aspirations to a great extent. Once this begins, the dream of a `World State’ will cease to be a dream and become reality.