THE NATION: The Home of Hope?

To the U.S. this week will come six representatives of the United Nations Organization to select the site of UNO’s permanent home.

Among the dozen or more places they will visit will be a big stone-and-stucco house set in the rolling, rocky hills of New York’s Dutchess County, overlooking the Hudson River valley. There the first act of the envoys will probably be the placing of flowers on a grave in the center of a hedge-boxed rose garden.

This site, the Hyde Park home of the man who had done much to make UNO possible, seamed the probable first choice. In London last week the UNO Interim Committee had narrowed down the possible sites to about 15, all within a radius of 85 miles of New York City or within 60 miles of Boston. Among them were Princeton, N.J., and such historic Massachusetts towns as Concord, Marblehead, Quincy, Dedham. Whatever the site, Congress will have to agree to surrender sovereignty over it.

The Hyde Park site would seem to fill the bill. It is within easy reach, over fine highways, of the nation’s metropolis. In its 1,200 scenic acres there is room to spare for the necessary buildings.

The selectors may choose as many as six tentative sites, and make the final decision later in London. But logic and sentiment pointed heavily to the home, in life and in death, of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.