THE NEW NAME FOR PEACE

...Close students of the problem, however, are tending to conclude that the business of mobilizing internal resources is onerous and unpopular...

...Finally, it is for the parents to decide, with full knowledge of the matter, on the number of their children, taking into account their responsibilities toward God, themselves, the children they have already brought into the world, and the community to which they belong...

...Kenya maintains some of the trappings of democracy but in Jomo Kenyatta has a leader of unquestioned authority...

...THhree million human beings die every year of starvation—and perhaps as many as five million more die of diseases traceable to their condition of perpetual hunger...

...It is unacceptable that citizens with abundant incomes from the resources and activity of their country should transfer a considerable part of this income abroad purely for their own advantage...

...Prices of goods produced by the poor countries—food, fiber, and raw materials—have gone down, while the price of goods produced by the rich countries—manufactured and processed goods, which the poor countries must purchase—have gone up...

...Any business," he says, "that doesn't put three per cent into market expansion is going to go broke sooner or later...

...Most Communist nations and some military dictatorships have shown remarkable records of development...

...Ignorance and preventable disease, brief lives never lived to anything approaching capacity, also go hand in hand with the condition of poverty in which two-thirds of the human race lives— unnecessarily...

...Although the peace of the world, as they think, may be dependent on finding a better way than Communism or other forms of dictatorship for the impoverished two-thirds of the world's people to achieve economic development—we are so distracted by war and preparation for war, that a serious search has not yet been attempted...

...The Pope acknowledged this problem at considerable length in his encyclical...

...Development demands bold transformation, innovations that go deep...

...Indeed, one hardly thinks of Eastern Europe as "underdeveloped" any more, and certainly not the Soviet Union...

...We must make haste," says Pope Paul...

...If," said the Pontiff, "the new name for peace is development, who would not wish to labor for it with all his powers...

...At stake, he said, are "the very life of poor nations, civil peace in developing countries, and world peace itself...

...Third, a rate of population increase that tends to absorb most or all of the increased production...

...After pointing out that "Prices which are 'freely' set in the market can produce unfair results," the Pontiff admonished the wealthy nations to establish "a certain equality of opportunity" by international agreements "regulating certain prices . . . guaranteeing certain types of production . . . supporting certain new industries...

...Not a few experts in this field name the war in Vietnam as the greatest single factor in the failure of the Decade of Development to produce hoped-for results...

...The Pope's prescription is reform, world cooperation, and a world development fund "to be made up of part of the money spent on arms...

...The more one studies population trends the less valid such simplistic conclusions appear...

...The United States spends many times more for destruction in Vietnam than for constructive economic purposes in the world as a whole...

...and the rich have a duty to help them achieve it...

...he saw the President, all right, but Mr...

...Pope Paul clearly is seeking an alternative to Communism in rigorous reform...

...The nations chosen were Pakistan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Kenya, all of which have received massive outside aid and have strong, authoritarian governments...

...The Economist calls the poor nations, today, "the unsung victims of the end of the cold war...

...The resources are there...

...There are, of course, other rich nations, but most such aid has come from the United States, which generates more than half of the new capital in the world...

...Hoffman estimates the world now spends about 150 billion dollars a year on war and preparation for war...

...It is the rich who have become richer...

...Unfortunately, the flow of capital from the rich nations to the poor nations has stagnated, in large measure because fear of Russian Communism is lessening...

...This amount agrees generally with the sum cited by Professor Emile Benoit of Columbia University and Harold Lu-bell of the Agency for International Development, who arrive at a figure of 133 billion dollars from statistics which are two or three years old, and precede the escalation of the war in Vietnam...

...He calls on all men of goodwill to join in the world crusade to raise the poor nations from poverty...

...Johnson spent the entire time talking—about the war in Vietnam...

...A Communist apparatus can do it...

...so can some non-Communist dictatorships, given large-scale outside economic aid...

...The U.N...

...The argument that the United States achieved economic development by relatively uncontrolled capitalism does not seem to appeal to His Holiness...

...Japan achieved a spectacular breakthrough— under an American military dictatorship...

...But the burden of Pope Paul's appeal is an overall moral imperative— that all men, everywhere, divert their energies and resources from making war to the constructive task of lifting the two-thirds of the human race from the poverty which is now its lot...

...Warmly greeted by United Nations Secretary General U Thant, the Pope's observations on the state of mankind are consistent with the findings of the various United Nations agencies which have been trying —with indifferent success—to alleviate the world's poverty...

...In the Socialist [Communist] countries," Philippe de Seynes, United Nations Under-Secretary for Economic and Social Affairs, told a General Assembly committee recently, ". . . the situation is characterized by the full use of resources, notable increases in industrial production, and a better performance in the field of agricultural production...

...Pope Paul saw free trade among equals as a desirable goal but until the trading nations approached equality, the free-market principle did not satisfy "the demands of social justice...

...Too many are suffering, and the distance is growing that separates the progress of some and the stagnation, not to say the regression, of others...

...The Economist of London recently pointed to some non-Communist examples of developmental progress...

...For one thing, development in the United States and Northern Europe— in another era and setting—took about two hundred years...

...Louis Post-Dispatch...

...From that moment the temptation is great to check the demographic increase by means of radical measures...

...He indicated how bold and how deep he meant in two examples that are particularly applicable to the Latin nations in our own hemisphere: "If certain landed estates impede the general prosperity because they are extensive, unused, or poorly used, or because they bring hardship to peoples or are detrimental to the interests of the country, the common good sometimes demands their expropriation...

...Against this background Pope Paul VI has challenged our capacity for justice and compassion in an encyclical, "On the Development of Peoples," addressed to "the Bishops, Priests, Religious, the Faithful, and to All Men of Goodwill...

...In brief, the Pope said, "The world is sick...

...Hoffman remembers when Henry Ford raised the wages of his factory workers from $2 to $5 a day: "Everybody said he was trying to break the country...

...If Pope Paul's encyclical had done nothing else, it will prove to be of immense importance if it succeeds in forcing us to look squarely at the tragedy of world poverty in all its cosmic proportions...

...The rich will be the first to benefit," says the Pope...

...The 1960s were proposed to be the Decade of Development, a designation voiced by President Kennedy when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly in September, 1961...

...Urgent reforms should be undertaken without delay...

...The lever of "stopping Communism" to get Congressional appropriations for foreign economic aid has become less and less effective...

...We want to be clearly understood," he says...

...DONALD GRANT is United Nations correspondent for the St...

...This may, indeed, be the ultimate historical irony of our era...

...It was taken up by the Assembly and decorated with splendid words in a resolution proclaiming the Decade of Development...

...Only it has not worked out that way...

...At this writing it is unclear whether the logic of the Pope's observations on population will carry the church to a real reconsideration of its opposition to practical birth control methods...

...The cost of economic development in the United States was high enough, remembering our robber barons and our sweatshops...

...If better relations with the Soviet Union have tended to dry up American aid to the poor countries, this tendency has been reinforced, ironically, by worsening U.S...

...It is the same appeal heard in the United Nations many times—made by U Thant, by Paul Hoffman and others...

...But he had a simple answer, a very simple answer—'Yes, but I need customers.' " Hoffman said that this logic has not yet occurred to the more advanced countries...

...Otherwise their continued greed will certainly call down upon them the judgment of God and the wrath of the poor, with consequences no one can foretell...

...In general, it is the poor nations with the most democratic social systems which have the worst records in mobilizing their resources...

...Its illness consists less in the unproductive monopolization of resources by a small number of men than in the lack of brotherhood among individuals and peoples...

...What the Pope and Paul Hoffman seem to be suggesting is that if we in the rich nations cared enough, and would help enough, a better way might be found...

...The world's poor, the Pope seems to be saying, have a right, as human beings, to a better lot...

...Few United Nations experts wish to say this in public, but there is a growing private consensus that a rapid rate of development may be achieved only at the price of suspending democratic practices...

...Reduced to its simplest terms, the failure of the Decade of Development can be attributed to three factors: First, the inability of the poor nations to mobilize effectively their available resources under existing social systems...

...In all this they must follow the demands of their own conscience enlightened by God's law authentically interpreted, and sustained by confidence in Him...

...Hoffman believes that if a mere seven and a half billion dollars of this could be added to the capital flow to the poor nations it would begin moving them toward economic development...

...The Papal encyclical did much more than point a finger at a problem, however...

...Second, an inadequate flow of capital and skills from the rich countries to the poor countries...

...There is always a self-comforting tendency by the rich to blame the troubles of the poor on the fact that they have so many children...

...Paul Hoffman and Pope Paul agree, for different but not contradictory reasons, that providing such capital is in the self-interests of the rich nations...

...And with few exceptions the other rich nations have done less well proportionately for the world's poor than has the United States...

...The present situation must be faced with courage, and the injustices linked with it must be fought against and overcome...

...Starvation, in a world which can produce enough food for all, is only one dimension of the tragedy...

...Then, subtracting a portion of this which they say may have been of some economic benefit, they arrive at a rock-bottom figure of 114 billion dollars a year that is being diverted from economic development to destruction...

...The star success story is Taiwan, which has the most ruthless dictatorship of all—and has enjoyed the greatest quantity of American aid per capita...

...In the words of Paul G. Hoffman, the American industrialist who is Administrator of the United Nations Development Program: "We can say without any question that as far as physical resources are concerned, and the potentials of human resources, there is no excuse for poverty in the world today...

...Where the inalienable right to marriage and procreation is lacking, human dignity has ceased to exist...

...The contrast with democratic India is obvious and disturbing...

...By no means are all dictatorships able to show such developmental results...

...official was unable to get a hearing...

...The others are military or quasi-military dictatorships...

...In arguing the case for internal mobilization of resources and the increased flow of capital to the underdeveloped nations, Pope Paul does not neglect the population problem...

...it took place slowly, and under favorable conditions...

...Not only are the world's poor comparatively worse off today than they were at the beginning of the decade, but in not a few instances they are poorer in absolute terms...

...What we need to do is to make some good customers out of these billions of people who are so poor they are living at a subsistence level...

...China's problems are vastly greater, but Peking seems to be getting on with the job, despite the political upheavals inside that giant nation and the difficulties which beset its external relations...

...Although Communism is little mentioned, even indirectly—and indeed Pope Paul has made a punishing attack on free-market, unplanned capitalism—the encyclical is profoundly in opposition to Communism...

...Perhaps it is useful to quote this section of the encyclical in its entirety: "It is true that too frequently an accelerated demographic increase adds its own difficulties to the problems of development: The size of the population increases more rapidly than available resources, and things are found to have reached apparently an impasse...

...It is, however, a fact that population increases are outstripping food production in Latin America, India, and perhaps elsewhere...

...But today's world cannot tolerate such a leisurely pace...

...relations with Communism in Southeast Asia...

...This is the greatest preventable tragedy in the world today, not excluding the war in Vietnam...

...It is a masterly combination of moral injunction and pragmatic analysis...

...One United Nations official not long ago went to Washington to try to convince President Johnson that the United States should make a larger effort to help the underdeveloped nations overcome their poverty...

...Development was somewhat more rapid in the Soviet Union —and the cost was higher...

...Furthermore, the flow of capital where it is needed most has been impeded by pricing tendencies in the free-market world...

...Neither the Pope, nor Paul Hoffman, nor anyone else, however, has as yet demonstrated that a poor nation may achieve rapid economic development without mobilizing its own resources with a rigorousness that excludes the kind of permissive democracy which we Americans—rightly, I think—consider the most desirable society in which to live...

...It is certain that public authorities can intervene, within the limit of their competence, by favoring the availability of appropriate information and by adopting suitable measures, provided that these be in conformity with the moral law and that they respect the rightful freedom of married couples...

...At the same time, Pope Paul is clear about the alternatives—progress and reform, or violence and revolution...

...There seems to have been an increase in consumption...