UNITED NATIONS: Omdurman to Flushing

From all over the world last week U.N. delegates, their families, assistants and secretaries poured into New York City by train, plane and luxury liner, for the opening of the Assembly at Flushing. More than 1,800 hotel reservations had to be made, canceled, adjusted and checked. There were questions galore. “Pakistan? Where’s Pakistan?” asked a suspicious clerk at the Hotel Barclay.

At the Arrival Section of the U.N. Transportation Service, telephones jangled and gushed out messages: “Tell so-&-so I won’t be at the apartment until later. He’ll find the key under the door mat. Tell him he’d better stop at a delicatessen on the way up.” The Chinese delegation was arriving at LaGuardia field, and an “Arrival” aide hurried out to meet them, only to find the plane landed and the dignitaries indistinguishably entangled with 55 welcoming Chinese. From another office in the Empire State Building, redheaded U.N. Protocol Chief Jehan de Noue darted constantly to LaGuardia to meet more distinguishable arrivals.

It’s on the Agenda. In Rockefeller Center, before the gilded statue of Prometheus, the American Association for the United Nations was industriously hammering together a set of flagpoles, loudspeakers and rostrums for the celebration of “United Nations Week.” Westchester County’s Tarrytown had somehow been appointed “model United Nations community,” and forthwith broke out in a rash of red-white-&-blue bunting. While 10,000 enthusiasts besieged the Secretariat for tickets to the great International Floor Show (only 30 visitors would be admitted the first day), Tarrytown’s Fire Department, the Girls’ Friendly Society, the Kiwanis Club of Bound Brook (N.J.) and Manhattan’s sleek Bryn Mawr and Vassar Clubs all planned bus trips to Flushing Meadow.

To console the millions who could not see the show, radio’s perennial wonder boy, Norman Corwin, turned a rosy spotlight on the proceedings with a new script entitled The Time Is Now! “What has the General Assembly in its two years done [about disarmament]?” shouted a voice of disembodied skepticism over the nation’s loudspeakers. “What will it do?” The reply came in tones of ringing triumph: “The answer is—it is on the agenda!”

Please Do Not Disturb. When the representatives of 55 nations and some 1,787,436,000 people finally took their places in the Hall at Flushing Meadow, there would be 62 items on the agenda, ranging from the adoption of a U.N. flag to the question of global prostitution. There would be all the old headaches—Palestine, Greece, the Indians in South Africa, disarmament, the veto, the Balkans —and a few new ones.

Many of the delegates whose job it is to find the answers, crept into town almost furtively. Headed by sly Andrei Vishinsky (Molotov is staying at home for a while), Russia’s sprawling delegation whisked off to its snuggery among the millionaires on Long Island’s north shore. Officials at U.N.’s Secretariat resolutely turned down reporters’ requests for a list of other delegates’ hotels. “There have been protests,” explained an official with a somewhat sly look, “particularly from the Arabs. Probably they don’t want to be disturbed.”

Amid the protective coloration of Manhattan’s midtown hotels, the polyglot parliamentarians became as invisible as so many native New Yorkers. There were some exceptions. At the Waldorf-Astoria, Saudi Arabia’s lean, bearded Prince Feisal could be seen plainly as he whispered with Iraq’s jumpy Fadhil Jamali, surrounded by a bodyguard packing gold swords and blue-steel .453. The Servant of God and Sword of Islam, Abdullah Saif, would cool his heels in luxurious comfort at the Sherry-Netherlands while the Assembly debated the admission of his tiny state of Yemen.

And at the Gotham a swarthy guest in white turban, striped flannel skirt and long, grey coat attracted some attention. He was mannerly, scholarly Sayed Saddiq El Mahdi, grandson of the famed Sudanese leader whose career came to an end at the hands of the British at Omdurman in 1898. Sayed was not strictly a delegate. He was in town to watch the Assembly handle Egypt’s case. Some day his own state might be in the same fix. Meanwhile, he was prepared to enjoy himself. “Before we came,” he told a reporter over a lemonade last week, “we thought America had one car for each four persons. Now we’re convinced there are four cars for each person.”

To an audience of 900 in the Waldorf-Astoria’s grand ballroom, grave Secretary of State George Catlett Marshall, chief of the 65-man U.S. delegation, cited a more accurate and less happy figure. “A recent survey,” he said, “revealed that one out of three people in the U.S. still does not know what the United Nations is or what it does.” He also called upon the U.N. General Assembly to devise means to protect the Greek people from Communist aggression. But he left them free to figure out how this is to be done.