• The Need for Earthwide Unity
    The Watchtower—1971 | May 15

    • 8, 9. Outline how nations strive for unity at certain times.

      8 On a larger scale, nations will often band together in a unified action when they are threatened by a common foe. Thus it was that in 1899 and in 1907 two peace conferences were held in The Hague, Netherlands, the first attended by twenty-six nations and the second by forty-four. Many of these nations were at war in 1914! To try to prevent an occurrence of another great war like that which covered the earth in 1914-1918, the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 was to regulate the armaments of Germany. Came 1936, and Nazi Germany took over the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone under the Versailles treaty, and ignored the military restrictions.

      9 In 1928 the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact was signed by sixty-two nations. Its lofty purpose was to outlaw war “as an instrument of national policy.” Came 1939, and the start of World War II, and before that great war was finished most of those sixty-two nations participated in that holocaust.

      10-12. What further acts of unity does history show have occurred?

      10 The Soviet Union signed a nonaggression agreement with the countries of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Finland and Romania. Not long afterward the Soviet Union took over all or part of these countries.

      11 In 1939 Russia and Germany signed what became known as the famous “Stalin-Hitler” nonaggression pact. Some two years later these two nations were at war on the battlefield butchering one another.

      12 During World War II, the United States, England and Russia, along with other nations, cooperated closely together against the common enemy, the Axis Nations led by Germany and including Japan. Their banding together for survival was short-lived thereafter when Russia took a separate course bent on conquest. And in the interim the enemies of the United States and England, of World War II, notably Germany, Italy and Japan, have now become their allies, and the common foe in many respects comes to be Communist Russia.

      13. (a) What do these efforts of the nations prove? (b) How do we know that unity for a selfish purpose is not something new?

      13 All of this goes to prove but one thing: The unity of these nations and their common efforts are only for a selfish purpose, the furtherance of an aim, or a national goal. Once their ends have been served, the nations are not interested in maintaining the unity and oneness with their neighbors. A survey made of the history of mankind from 1481 B.C.E., when Egypt was the dominant world power, down to the end of World War II, a period of time amounting to about 3,426 years, shows there were more than 3,000 years of war and only 268 years of peace. During that time some 8,000 international peace agreements or treaties were made and broken. Since 1945 there have continued to be peace treaties, alliances and pacts made between and among nations, but all with a selfish end in view, not a desire to live in unity and peace with one’s neighbor.