A UNO DIARY
By A DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT T would, of course, be grossly exaggerating to say that, as a result
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of what has happened during the past week, the United Nations has found its soul. It will be a long time, indeed, before any organism so amorphous as a gathering of the governmental repre- sentatives of fifty-one soverign nation-states will be able to acquire anything so immaterial. But it is not an exaggeration to say that within the past week, as a result of its handling of the Russo-Persian dispute, the Security Council of the United Nations has created around and within itself a sense of authority, of dignity and of corporate sensibility and responsibility which even the most optimistic would not have dared to predict seven short days ago. Last Friday morning the betting among the most experienced observers, working to League of Nations form, was round about so to r against the horse even reaching the starting-post. Few were prepared to believe that the Russo-Persian question would ever reach the Council's agenda, much less get to the first turn of active discussion. And many more were convinced that if the leading horse failed to start there would be no race—that if by one means or another the Persian appeal could be shelved or evaded, the Russian and Ukrainian charges against Britain on Greece and Indonesia would tactfully be declared non-starters. Imagine their surprise, therefore, when in thirty brisk minutes last Friday afternoon the Security Council—to change the metaphor abruptly—seized all three bulls by their collective horns and asserted itself competent and capable of throwing them one after the other. Imagine their even greater surprise on Monday afternoon when, after the week- end change of Prime Minister in Teheran had led everyone to believe that the Persian case would be withdrawn to be settled out of court, they found that the court sat and the case proceeded as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
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Incidentally, it is necessary here to record that there are among the visiting foreign delegations and foreign newspaper correspon- dents a lot of sorely-puzzled men. They are puzzled because they have all been brought up to believe, with the firmness of Divine revelation, that The Times is the voice of the British Government and the oracle of the British Foreign Office. A week ago last Wednesday they read in their Times' first leader a proposal for a barefaced diplomatic horse-trade. " The receipt of the Soviet and Ukrainian appeals," said The Times, "coincided with the resigna- tion of the Teheran Government which launched the Persian appeal. This change would seem to open up hopes of a withdrawal of the Persian appeal or of its reference to the three Powers ; and in that event a similar course might profitably be taken with the other appeals provoked by it. Such a step would appear to afford the most satisfactory way out of the present impasse." And then, little more than forty-eight hours later, they heard Mr. Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary, saying quite loudly and meaningfully in public meeting : " I am so tired of these charges by the Soviet Government made in private assembly that no one would be happier than I to see them brought out into the open to give the British Government the opportunity to clear its conduct." No wonder our visitors scratched their heads. As Uncle Remus might have said: " Times is changed, Massa. Times is sho'ly changed."
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The proceedings in the Security Council have naturally attracted the most interest and attention, and the, most publicity, during the past week. But there has been a great deal of less spectacular but no less solid achievement in the General. Assembly and its various committees. On Tuesday afternoon the Assembly adopted unanimously the reports of two of the Committees, by which it authorised the Economic and Social Council to set up a number of very important Commissions, including the Commission on Human Rights, a Narcotic Drugs Commission, an Economic and Employment Commission and a Demographic Commission. Com- mittee One on political and security matters has settled amicably the extremely contentious question of the language rules for the
organisation. Committee Four, on trusteeship, after a very compre- hensive discussion, seemed to be getting to grips at last with the complications involved in arranging for the conclusion of trusteeship agreements for non-self-governing territories as, a condition precedent to the setting up of the Trusteeship Council. Committee Five on administration and budget has dealt with a mass of detail affecting the administrative and financial aspects of forming and recruiting the Secretariat and getting the actual organisation functioning. Committee Three on social, humanitarian and cultural affairs has adopted the American version of the British resolution for greater support for UNRRA after a flaming speech by Mr. Sol Bloom had melted the reserve which some members had shown towards making further financial commitments to UNRRA's humanitarian efforts.
* * By the time these notes are in print the Security Council's nomination of Mr. Trygve Lie, the Norwegian Foreign Minister, as Secretary-General of the new organisation may have been formally confirmed by the Assembly, and " the biggest job in the world " may have found its man. The post deserves the description, for on the shoulders of the Secretary-General of the United Nations will lie as heavy a burden of political responsibility and executive autho- rity as has ever been put upon any single man in history. Mr. Lie is admirably suited for the task. He is honest, he is courageous, he is tactful, he is forceful. Beneath a bluff, genial, attractive exterior he conceals a hard-headed Norse shrewdness and common sense mixed with an adequate leavening of political acumen and diplomatic subtlety. Those in London who have come to know him well during the war years give to him the major credit for having kept the Norwegian Government's record so clean both of the internal squabbles and intrigues and the external embarrassments which defaced those of most of the other allied Governments in exile. His appointment will break one of the most serious bottle-necks in the setting up of the organisation—the recruitment of permanent staff for the Secretariat. All of the present staff serving the organisation has been working on a temporary basis, and it says much for their devotion and for the leadership of Mr. Gladwyn Jebb as Executive Secretary that the work has been so well done under such unsatis- factory conditions. Mr. Jebb has done an outstanding job in organising and directing this temporary staff, and it is to be hoped that he will be suitably rewarded for it either by the United Nations or by the British Government. * *
The row in the Assembly's General Committee over the applica- tion of the World Federation of Trade Unions for some form of recognition as part of the United Nations machinery, which has been simmering and bubbling for ten days, boiled,over properly late on Tuesday night. The original demands of the W.F.T.U. for represenfation in a consultative capacity in the Assembly, and for full representation in the Economic and Social Council with the right to vote, were somewhat scaled down after the W.F.T.U. spokesmen had talked with M. Spaak and a small sub-committee of the General Committee. Afterwards M. Spaak devised an ingenious compromise, which would have created a body of " permanent guests " of the Assembly, in which such organisations as the W.F.T.U. would have the right to sit as observers and occasionally to address the Assembly on matters in which they had direct con- cern. On Tuesday night Senator Tom Connally endeavoured to secure the same right for the American Federation of Labour, which immediately brought violent opposition from Mr. Gromyko, the Soviet representative. High words were exchanged, and there is no doubt that there will be more when the matter finally reaches debate in the full Assembly. Senator Connally's championship of the A.F. of L. is understandable, for the A.F. of L. is the conservative American labour organisation. It is not a member of the W.F.T.U., but its bitter rival, the radical C.I.O., is. The triangular battle which must ensue in the Assembly between the Russians, supporting the W.F.T.U., the British supporting the I.L.O., and the Americans. the A.F. of L., should be memorable.
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