Мoscow and Teheran
Thus by 1943 all the principal Allied nations were committed to outright victory and, thereafter, to
an attempt to create a world in which “men in all lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear
and want.” But the basis for a world organization had yet to be defined, and such a definition came at
the meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union in
October 1943. The United States Secretary of State, the venerable Cordell Hull, made the first flight
of his life to journey to Moscow for the conference. On October 30, the Moscow Declaration was signed
by Vyaches Molotov, Anthony Eden, Cordell Hull and Foo Ping Shen, the Chinese Ambassador to the Soviet
Union.
The Declaration pledged further joint action in dealing with the enemies’ surrender and, in clause 4,
proclaimed:
“That they [the Foreign Ministers] recognize the necessity of establishing at the earliest practicable
date a general international organization, based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all
peace-loving states, and open to membership by all such states, large and small, for the maintenance
of international peace and security.”
In December, two months after the four-power Declaration, Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, meeting for
the first time at Teheran, the capital of Iran, declared that they had worked out concerted plans for
final victory.
As to peace, the Declaration read:
“We are sure that our concord will win an enduring peace. We recognize fully the supreme
responsibility resting upon us and all the United Nations to make a peace which will command the
goodwill of the overwhelming mass of the peoples of the world and banish the scourge and terror of war
for many generations.”