UNITED NATIONS: Historic Flushing

Symbols of a prewar era that now seems as remote as the Gay Nineties, the Trylon & Perisphere are gone. But the World’s Fair site at Flushing, N.Y. remains. There next week (Oct. 23) the U.N.’s 51 nations will open the first meeting of the General Assembly in the U.S.

Each nation may send five representatives and five alternates. With their camp followers they will total some 2,000 souls; Manhattan hotelmen feared their already jammed buildings would burst. It was encouraging that Russia was fielding its first team, led by Molotov and Vishinsky.

Minister of State Philip Noel-Baker will be calling signals for Britain, Foreign Minister Bidault for France, ex-Senator Warren Austin of Vermont for the U.S. Bevin and Byrnes will show up later, when the Council of Foreign Ministers takes up treaty recommendations handed on from Paris (see above).

The Assembly—which is U.N.’s policymaker, supervisor and purse-holder—already has more than 50 subjects on its provisional agenda, from the Soviet demand for an accounting of all Allied troops in non-enemy countries to a proposed international children’s fund (which U.N.’s Economic & Social Council had unanimously approved as “a noble goal”). Other problems: election of new members, choice of a permanent U.N. site, what to do with Franco Spain, a Russian-backed move for compulsory repatriation of refugees. Before he is through, many a delegate will look longingly around the Fair site for the vanished Aquacade, kootch dancers—and parachute jump.