Ram or Windbag?

Though few U.S. citizens, perhaps, confuse UNESCO with Nabisco, not many could tell you what UNESCO is.

Parisians might do better. Paris welcomed an international art show, a film festival, concerts and scientific exhibits, all dedicated to UNESCO Month. In Paris last week the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization was getting ready for its first meeting.

But not even the delegates to the Paris conference could say for sure what UNESCO was all about until after they had decided on a director-general, an 18-man executive board and a plan of action. If the optimists were right, UNESCO might become a battering ram, capable of knocking down national barriers to international understanding. If the cynics were right, UNESCO would be just another grandiose 20th Century balloon, with a big cheer at the ascension but in the end just a bag of wind. One basic drawback: Soviet Russia so far has not joined.

Each member nation will be represented at Paris by five delegates, who will vote as a unit. For its team the U.S. had picked a team of first-stringers, headed by William Benton, Assistant Secretary of State.* Behind them is a 90-man U.S. commission of educators, scientists and cultural leaders who help map out strategy.

What would UNESCO do and how would it do it? The boldest U.S. proposal was a worldwide United Nations radio network (cost: $250,000,000). By broadcasting loudly across national boundaries, it might help destroy state monopolies of the news.

The U.S. delegation will also press for:

P: A conference to rewrite the world's textbooks, so that old, ultranationalistic misunderstandings would not be passed on to schoolkids.

P: International exchange of students, teachers, artists, scientists.

P: International agreements to end restrictive copyrights, censorship, etc.

P: A study of the causes of national misunderstandings.

P: A worldwide war against illiteracy.

Observed one member of the U.S. team: "One of the most hopeful results may be that in setting standards for the world we will raise our own."

*Archibald MacLeish, poet and ex-Librarian of Congress; George D. Stoddard, president of the University of Illinois; Arthur H. Compton, chancellor of Washington University (St. Louis); Anne O'Hare McCormick of the New York Times. Alternates: Chester Bowles, ex-OPA Administrator; Milton Eisenhower, president of Kansas State College; Charles S. Johnson, president-elect of Fisk University (see below); George N. Shuster, president of Hunter College; Anna Rosenberg of OWMR.

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