From Secretariat - cenit, Obi ee eC

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See age reer

QUESTION NO. 3. - ACCESS TO RAW MATERIALS
' AND MARKETS

 

What steps should be taken to provide
Inecessary access to raw materials and
ifreer commercial interchange between
jnations? What effect will the advance
of science have upon these problems?

 

 

The peoples of highly industrialized
countries realize that their national
economy depends upon a sure supply of
raw materials, upon safe markets. .
Countries have been willing to wage

war in order to obtain sure sources of
raw material, to assure themselves of
safe markets for their products. Must
war be resorted to in order that a
country may be. certain of access to raw
materials, in order to obtain markets?
Many people believe that through inter-
national agreement an. arrangement can
be made to. provide. necessary access to
raw materials and to assure reasonably
safe markets. But the people of some
countries say: "It is not sufficient
for those countries which control raw
materials to tell us we can buy those
raw materials. We do not have the money
for that. They should accept our
products in payment or should buy things
from us, so that we will have the money
to pay. However, what we really want
is the possibility to develop natural
resources and acquire raw materials
through investing our own. capital, using
our own currency, and. employing our own
man-power, and thus the only . thing for
us to do to insure our economic exis-
tence is to seize territory in which.
there are natural resources."

Any international agreement along these
lines will involve problems such as.
possession of colonies, administration
of colonies, access to colonial markets
and raw materials, tariffs and other
restrictions on trade, monopolization
of raw materials, some standard for |
measuring relative worth of.the cur-
rencies of all countries, economic ex-
pansion of undeveloped countries and
territories, and the opportunity to
make use of avenues of transportation -

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- on land, on sea, in the air. What
steps sould we be willing to have our
country, take along these lines?

‘Science is playing an important part

in solving this problem through invent-
ing and developing substitutes for many
raw materials. If some country has a
monopoly of some raw material, such as
nitrates, rubber, cotton, silk, etc.,
and exercises that monopoly in a self-
ish way, it is not necessary for other
countries to employ force or wage war
to obtain access to those raw materi-
als. Science steps in and provides a
substitute, makes it possible for that
raw material to be produced in some
other territory. That very fact also
causes countries having monopolies of
raw materials to hesitate to exercise
that monopoly in a selfish way. What
have we observed in our own classifi-
cations as to the effect of science
upon materials and markets? |

QUESTION NO. 4 - RIGHTS OF MINORITIES

 

What are the rights of minorities -
political, linguistic, racial, and
religious, and what recognition must

 

 

jin fairness be given them?

 

Minorities of some type exist in every
country. In some countries the pre-
dominant idea seems to be that no
minorities of any kind should be per-

, mitted and in those countries the ma-

jority, through. decrees, legislation
coercion, force, expulsion, persecu-
tion, transfer of populations, etc.
endeavors to wipe out minorities,

In other countries it is recognized
that the greatest virtue of a majority
is tolerance and in those countries —

certain rights of minorities are

guaranteed.

. In such countries political minorities

have the right to express their opin-
ions and to make efforts to win others
to their point of view, so that they.
can become a majority. ,

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