The Return

New Yorkers acted as if, overnight, the U.N. had been transformed into a giveaway quiz show. They trooped to Lake Success, jammed the Security Council chamber, the corridors and other conference rooms (where television sets relayed the proceedings a few feet away). Some 23,000 requests for tickets had to be turned down. Among those who came to see the Russians' return to U.N. was Margaret Truman, who squeezed into the press gallery with a party of six. "History," she said, "may be made here today."

Who Is Cruel? For most of the six months and 18 days while the Russians boycotted it, the Council had been an effective body. Members had bickered and procrastinated, but--freed of the Russian veto--they had again & again achieved basic agreement. When the North Koreans attacked, the Council took the most important action of its life (TIME, July 10), became the world's voice in denouncing the Communist aggressors.

The Russians decided that staying out of U.N. was doing them more harm than good. Last week, Russian Delegate Jacob Malik, a Russian career diplomat with a clean-cut, almost American-looking face, was back. It was Russia's turn to preside over the Council for a month, and Malik, through his first week in the chair, made the most of the chance.

The Russian had hardly seized the gavel when he pounced back to the issue over which he had walked out. The Nationalist Chinese delegate, Malik "ruled," had no right to sit in the Council, since he did not represent the Chinese people. When the U.S. and friends challenged this arbitrary ruling, Malik tried another tack. He submitted a provisional agenda which blandly ignored the rule of taking up unfinished business left over from the preceding session (a U.S. resolution condemning North Korean aggression). Malik proposed two items of his own: the seating of Communist China in the U.N., and "peaceful settlement" in Korea. His terms for "peaceful settlement" were immediate cease-fire and withdrawal of U.N. troops--i.e., the surrender of all Korea to its Communist aggressors.

Cried Malik: "American ruling circles . . . endeavor to base their whole policy towards other peoples on a dictatorship of domination and compulsion, which they camouflage with hypocritical references to democracy . . . By democracy they mean the natural and unlimited power of domination by a small, cruel and power-loving handful of millionaires . . ."

The U.S.'s veteran Warren Austin made a ripsnorting rebuttal. Shaking his forefinger and waving his arms, he disdained any deal or proposal by the aggressors, denounced the Russian for "slander . . . obvious and shameless travesties."

Who Attacked? Malik hammered away. The real aggressors in Korea, he cried, were the South Korean government and its American masters. They had first invaded North Korea. To prove U.S. instigation, he waved aloft a news picture of State Department Adviser John Foster Dulles with other American officials and South Korean army men in South Korean trenches.-"This picture shows," cried Malik, "that the aggression of the United States Government in Korea has been the result of a long-hatched plan . . . Hardly any member of the Security Council will contend that Mr. Dulles [was] in those trenches gathering violets."

Britain's Sir Gladwyn Jebb delivered the free world's telling reply. A brilliant career diplomat, a trusted counselor of Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and one of U.N.'s architects,* Sir Gladwyn had just taken over from Sir Alexander Cadogan as chief British delegate. Said he: "No amount of photographs of Mr. Dulles in a trench--and I only wish there had been more trenches--no suggestion that he himself first rushed across the frontier, no repetition of arguments which a child could refute . . . can obscure the patent fact that it was the North Korean troops who, in large numbers and heavily armed, crossed the frontier and overran the territory of a government which had been established by the United Nations."

The Briton caused Malik's face to redden as he derided "the queer, upside-down language . . . employed by U.S.S.R. propaganda . . . We really do seem to be living in a rather nightmarish Alice-in-Wonderland world . . ."

Peace or War? Then Malik virtually served an ultimatum. If the U.N. persists in "illegal" decisions on Korea (i.e., any decision not agreed to by Red Russia, Red China or Red Korea), grave consequences would follow. "The issue," he blustered, "is one of peace or war."

The Council was not intimidated. Four times it voted, and four times Malik was defeated. The Council approved the U.S.-sponsored agenda which would make North Korean aggression this week's first order of business.

* At Yalta in 1945, after Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill had agreed on San Francisco and April for the opening U.N. conference, there still remained an argument over the exact day. From the back of the room, Sir Gladwyn called: "Why not start April 25--that's my birthday." Amid laughter, the 25th was set.

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