Frustration at Lake Success
The United Nations Assembly pursues its course in an atmosphere of unabated controversy, due almost wholly to the intervention of one Russian delegate or another. M. Gromyko has been mainly to the fore. In an hour and a quarter's speech in opposition to the United States' proposal for the maintenance of a commission of the Assembly at Salonica to watch events on Greece's northern frontier he warned the Political Committee that to carry such a motion would be to imperil the United Nations' existence. On South West Africa he argued that the Charter requires South Africa to turn that area into trustee territory, which it manifestly does not. Meanwhile, Poland, which, for such purposes, is Russia under another name, asked the Assembly to declare that the European z6-Power Pact was an inadmissible attempt to by-pass the United Nations. One of the unfortunate results of the general situation is Czechoslovakia's refusal to allow herself to be elected, as she could and should have been, to the seat on the Security Council vacated through the expiry of Poland's term of office ; the conflict between her own enlightened outlook and what would be expected of her by Russia would obviously be intolerably acute. The attempt to put the Ukraine on instead found majority support but by no means universal favour, and after eight rounds of voting the necessary two-thirds majority was still not attained. That Canada should succeed to Australia's seat was inevitable and altogether satisfactory. The admission of Pakistan and the Yemen to membership of the United Nations lends emphasis to the fact that Eire and Portugal cannot get in because Russia opposes them and that five European ex-enemy States are in the same case because Russia adopts the attitude of " all or none."
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