CONFERENCES: Socks

Two events promised to enliven the U.N.’s opening session at Lake Success (L.I.): 1) Russia’s stern-faced Delegate Andrei Gromyko had been caught smiling (see cut); 2) after a 5,500-mile journey, the Mongol delegates had arrived. The cause of Gromyko’s smile: U.S. comic strips. Occasion of the Mongols’ visit: the question of Outer Mongolia’s admission (together with Albania, Portugal, Eire, Iceland, Sweden, Afghanistan and Trans-Jordan) to the U.N. Result (after a stormy exchange between U.S. Delegate Herschel Vespasian Johnson and an unsmiling Gromyko) : three admissions (Afghanistan, Sweden, Iceland); the rest were rejected.

There was one other achievement: during the verbal storm a woman spectator began and finished knitting a pair of navy blue socks, size 11.

The three Mongol delegates showed no visible pain at the snub. Headed by Vice Prime Minister Youmzha Tsedenbal, they were encamped at Manhattan’s swank Hotel Plaza, where they showed an avid liking for Western ways by wolfing filet mignons. Communication with them was practically impossible, since they were carefully shepherded away from reporters by their Soviet escort (and interpreter), one Captain V. Krivoshekov. Their only recorded comment: Paris was the most beautiful city they had ever seen, “but so old. In Ulan Bator [Outer Mongolia’s capital], now, there is much building—something new popping up all the time.”