CONNECTICUT: Fabulous & Fantastic

The loving-cup tempest over the world capital seethed and bubbled. One group of irate citizens banded together into a Committee for the Preservation of Greenwich—keep UNO out. Other citizens formed a smaller Greenwich Citizens Committee—bring UNO in. The Stamford Hills Association screamed like a porker that sees the knife. Some 10,000 other Stamford citizens signed petitions of delight.

Suggestions flew like criss-crossing rockets. Connecticut’s Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce said sadly: “It’s unfortunate UNO couldn’t have picked a place where it would be more welcome.” The New York Times dug up the fact, and printed it as a broad hint, that “Mr. Roosevelt felt that the Azores would be an ideal place for a world capital.”

The irreverent New York Daily News suggested: “Why not put the UNO world capital in the northwest corner of Mexico . . . somewhere in the neighborhood of the famous Mexican towns of Tijuana, Agua Caliente, Mexicali (Mexicali Rose, I Love You), and Ensenada? . . . [This] would be close to Hollywood, through whose portals pass the most beautiful blondes, brunettes and redheads. The younger and handsomer of the UNO male secretaries could spend alternate weekends in Hollywood and Mexico, entertaining and being entertained. . . .

“Santa Anita, California’s famous race track, would be near by; and who knows but what, with all that UNO salary money in circulation in the area, gambling at Tijuana and Agua Caliente might stage a glorious revival. . . .”

Cried East Chester’s Councilman William C. Stohldrier: UNO would be a “world espionage center in the United States.”

The Legal Mind. Among the 5,000 New York-Connecticut residents who would be evicted from their pleasant properties by the world capital were numerous lawyers, most of whom seemed busy last week hunting for a loophole. The whole idea of giving up U.S. soil for an international zone, they said hopefully, might be unconstitutional.

In Washington, where State Department lawyers were scratching their heads, it was conceded that UNO offered plenty of legal problems—but constitutionality was not one of them. The Government planned, by treaty, simply to “assign” the world capital area to UNO—without ceding the territory or relinquishing sovereignty over it. UNO could buy up the property directly from its owners (as the State Department wistfully hoped it would), or ask the Government to seize it by right of eminent domain.

But there the problem only began. Who would furnish a police system, public utilities, schools and health departments? What kind of taxes, if any, would UNO have to pay on the land? What would happen if a UNO delegate wanted to get divorced, or take out a hunting license?

City or Campus? In London, U.S. Delegate Arthur H. Vandenberg, who figured that the UNO committee had brought all its troubles on itself, rumbled: “Any suggestion that this organization needs anything like 45 square miles of high-priced area for its headquarters is fabulous and fantastic.” Instead of spending up to $70,000,000 on land and buildings, why not settle for something the size of “a comfortable college campus?”

Another question had to be answered: where would UNO meet in the interim? The selection committee had blithely settled on New York as temporary headquarters, but there was no certainty that New York could accommodate UNO. Atlantic City and San Francisco were eager and able to furnish the space. So was Boston. But there UNO ran into another problem—Russia’s Delegate Georgii F. Saksin had blackballed Massachusetts as no fit place for UNO after Superior Court Judge John Swift’s recent blast: “Godless Russia has torn the Atlantic Charter to tatters and enslaved millions of our fellow Catholics.”

State Department officials began to wonder if turning a whole island over to UNO might not be a wonderful idea.