UNITED NATIONS: Session Seven

Delegates to the seventh U.N. General Assembly gathered last week in New York and gaped like tourists at their spickly span new headquarters. Never have the technicians of peace been given a better workshop. The 18acres along Manhattan’s East River were a brilliant enclave of cubes and domes encased in glass and white stone, stocked with marvelously efficient gadgets and thick rugs. The Assembly’s own $12½ million hall, a low, sweeping building with vast high corridors and uncluttered lobbies, looked serene and orderly. The New York Times’s Anne O’Hare McCormick heard more than one onlooker murmur: “Let’s hope all of this will not go to waste.”

All week long Secretary of State Dean Acheson had wrestled over what to say to the new Assembly. A tough, frank speech might please the U.S. voters and help the Democratic ticket, a soft one might placate America’s nervous allies and please the Assembly. Acheson delayed his speech for a day, rewrote it six times. The result was a firm talk which seemed mild and said little new. Fellow delegates hailed it with words like “moderation and sanity.”

As Acheson talked, Russia’s Andrei Vishinsky followed the English text closely and three times underscored Acheson’s remarks. The underscorings: “The aggressor [in Korea] now counts for victory upon those of faint heart who would grow weary of the struggle . . . We shall fight on as long as is necessary to stop the aggression. We shall stop fighting when an armistice on just terms has been achieved . . . The Communists have so far rejected reasonable terms for an armistice.”

Two days later Vishinsky got to his feet and, in a monotone, for 75 minutes accused the U.S. of “bluster, blackmail and pressure” in Korea, retold the “germ warfare” tale, and charged that U.S. “billionaires” are bent on more & more bloodshed to swell their billions. Midway through, Acheson removed his earphones for a few minutes, and some delegates began leaving.

After hearing these profitless exchanges, delegates decided that not Korea but colonialism gave most promise of lively fights to come. The 13 anticolonial Arab-Asian powers, defeated in the last session, got together and succeeded in placing on the agenda a proposal to debate 1) France’s rule in Tunisia and Morocco, and 2) South Africa’s virulent racism. They won despite protests from France, Britain, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand that such debates constitute “meddling” in internal affairs. The U.S. haplessly reversed its stand of last year, opposed its European allies and joined the anti-colonials. Russia, seeing a fine chance to divide its enemies, was already on the anti-colonials’ side.