Town Meeting of Two Worlds

Sun and rain chased each other over the San Francisco hills on the day the nations convened to write the U.N. Charter. The bandleader, who was on the sunny side, played The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise. But cynics sneered: "Another League of Nations."

Last week, on the second anniversary of the Charter,* U.N.'s record was still befogged by the optimists and the cynics. Many of the optimists had actually joined the cynics. One clear-eyed Dutchman at San Francisco had been afraid of that. The Netherlands' Eelco van Kleffens had warned: "The world expects too much. . . . Make this clear, lest we defeat our purpose by giving the impression that we are doing more than we are."

No Force. As a matter of fact, U.N. had done about as well as such realists as Van Kleffens thought it would. Despite warnings that U.N. was not world government, the man in the street from San Francisco's Embarcadero to Calcutta's Chowringhee focused his attention on the international police force that was supposed to prevent aggression. On its second birthday, U.N. showed no sign of becoming a supersovereignty.

Last week, when U.S. Delegate Warren Austin warned that in Bulgaria, Albania and Yugoslavia U.N. might need force to pursue its investigation of Greek border violations, it was painfully apparent that U.N. had no force to use; the international police force was still not in being. So long as Russia insisted that it should be made up of equal contributions of troops from each of the Big Five, it was not likely to come into being; under the Soviet plan the U.S., Russian and British shares could be no larger than China's.

Another point for the cynics was that no real progress had been made in its most important project: atomic control. Still another: Russia had used the lethal veto ten times to block action in the Security Council.

On the other hand, U.N. still commanded the respect of statesmen because it was a forum for mustering world opinion. The organization's high point had come in April 1946, when it made the Red Army get out of Persia. Thus, thanks largely to U.N. and its imposing moral force, Persia had a Government free of Russian domination.

It was not beyond possibility that the violations of Greece's frontiers could be stopped in a similar way. Moreover, U.N. was making progress on a host of social questions, ranging from opium control to a list of the Rights of Man.

Mechanically, U.N. worked. It was using up document paper at the rate of 2,000 tons a year, and 22,000 phone calls were going through its switchboards every day. Last week, U.N. technicians demonstrated how fast their radio teletype is: a query to the U.N. office in Geneva brought a flash right back: "Having a heat wave. . . . Lake Geneva looks most romantic under a summer moon."

The U.S. paid most attention to the U.N. anniversary last week. Secretary Marshall called on U.S. citizens to join "in every appropriate manner" in the celebration of Charter Day. Thereupon, Marshall himself paid a 30-minute visit to Lake Success, shook hands all around, signed an agreement on U.N. rights & privileges at its future site in Manhattan. In New York City, Mayor William O'Dwyer called on the citizens to join in prayer for U.N. In the Bound Brook, NJ. area, 7,856 people signed a scroll declaring their support of the Charter.

No Millennium. U.N. distributed anniversary material to radio stations in 54 lands and in 21 languages. One disappointment : nobody at Lake Success could be found to put the program into Pushtu for the Afghan man-in-the-street.

On Charter Day itself, U.N. broadcast brief, cautious messages from leading statesmen.

President Truman: "[The people of the U.S.] will not be discouraged by temporary setback or delay."

Prime Minister Attlee: "We must not pay too much attention to the controversial discussions in the Security Council."

Premier Ramadier: "The years are too short for humanity to have been able yet to take a decisive step toward happiness. . . ."

Generalissimo Chiang: "I do not suggest that the millennium is in sight."

Andrei Gromyko (subbing for Stalin): "The period of two years . . . is a very short one. . . . It probably will be better if we do not try to evaluate. . . ."

No Unity. The anniversary commentators avoided saying that U.N. has been split for two years between the Russians on the one hand and the U.S. on the other. U.N. seemed, in fact, a good deal like a Town Meeting of Two Worlds. And even if the U.S. and Russia were to settle their differences, U.N.'s really rock-bottom problem remained. Chicago's Robert Maynard Hutchins had stated it well two years ago. He said: "A world state can arise and endure only on the solid foundations of a world community. No such community exists. . . . The only hope is to increase the rate of moral progress tremendously, to increase it beyond anything we have ever dreamed of. . . ."

From that point, U.N. had moved neither forward nor back.

* Last week was also the 28th anniversary of the signing of the Versailles Treaty which created the League of Nations. On the League's second birthday, 50,000 turned out in London to cheer it, although Lloyd George had just warned: "You must not run a thing like this too hard. . . . Every failure at this stage is a ruinous one. It is like the fall of an infant; it may get a broken spine and limp for the rest of its days."

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