Reason For Doubt

The Western democracies are quick to blame the failure of the Soviet Union to abide by decisions of the United Nations for the ineffectiveness of that body. Last week, however, the United Kingdom gave indications that it would ignore a resolution of the Security Council urging U.N. members to cease all arms shipments to the Union of South Africa.

Thanks, incidentally, to the United States, the final resolution was a watered-down version of the original request by the African bloc for a total economic boycott of the increasingly vicious apartheid government of Prime Minister Verwoerd. If the democracies are divided over even this mild action, African doubts of Western sincerety can only be strengthened, and justifiably so.