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| Pius XII Democracy and a Lasting Peace IntraText CT - Text |
ITS CONSTITUTION EXCLUDING UNJUST IMPOSITION
67. But only on one condition: namely that the peace settlement which should be strengthened and made more stable by mutual guarantees and, where necessary, economic sanctions and even armed intervention, should not give definite countenance to any injustice, does not imply any derogation of any right to the detriment of any nation (whether it be on the side of the victors, the vanquished, or the neutrals), and does not impose any perpetual burden, which can only be allowed for a time as reparation for war damages.
68. That any peoples, to whose Government -- or perhaps even partially to themselves -- the responsibility for the war is attributed, should have for a time to undergo the rigors of security measures until the bonds of mutual trust, violently broken, should be gradually welded together again, is quite understandable from a human point of view, and in practice will in all probability be inevitable.
69. Nevertheless, even these peoples must have a well-founded hope -- commensurate to their effective collaboration in the work of reconstruction -- of being able, together with the other states with equal consideration and with the same rights, to be associated with the great community of nations.
70. To deny them that hope would be the reverse of far-seeing wisdom, it would be to assume the grave responsibility of barring the way of a general liberation from all the disastrous consequences, material, moral and political, of the gigantic cataclysm which has shaken the poor family to its very foundations, but which, at the same time, has shown it the road to new goals.