The United Nations

on the World Today

THE Palais de Chaillot looks out across the Seine, past the Eiffel Tower and the Champ de Mars towards Montparnasse. To the east is the dome of Les In valid es, and far beyond, the towers of Notre Dame. A visitor standing on the broad stone terrace of the Palais can see most of Paris stretched out before him — Paris with its tree-lined streets and parks, its spires and domes and towers, its river, golden in the light of an autumn sun.

For delegates to the third session of the United Nations General Assembly it was a tar cry from the old bombsight factory at Lake Success and the recovered swampland of Flushing Meadow. The magnificence of i be modern Palais seemed more in keeping with the splendid aims of the Charter. Put some remarked that the Passy Wing, in which the committee to discuss atomic energy met, was once the Musee de I’Homme, which set forth graphically man’s long progress from primeval slime to Hiroshima.

Paris this autumn was a restless, disturbed, bewildered, frightened city. The steep spiral of inflation, which a weak coalition government had been powerless to check, found its natural response in a wave of strikes under CGT (Confédération Générale du Travail) leadership. Headlines in the Paris press reflected graver concern with les conflits sociaux than with the proceedings of the United Nations. And in the cafés and on the streets the name De Gaulle took on more ominous meaning.

Put the uneasiness in Paris had deeper undertones of fear than could be accounted for by economic and political instability. For Paris is not only the capital of France: it is the capital of Western Europe. When the United Nations moved from Lake Success to Paris it moved closer to Berlin, closer to the line of the Elbe. And if there was far less panicky war talk than in the American press, there was a more basic fear of the great power that stretched out beyond the Elbe.

“We’re afraid of you.”

Delegates to gatherings of the United Nations have become hardened to the propaganda battle that characterizes the general debate. No one was surprised when Mr. Vishinsky of the Soviet Union opened up with a slashing attack on all aspects of American foreign policy, and Mr. Pevin, always a good rough-and-tumble fighter, retaliated with equally powerful blows.

But it was the speech of Belgium’s Prime Minister, Paul-Henri Spaak, that set the theme of this Assembly. In frank, untrammeled language, Spaak stated the case for the West. The Western nations believe in their democracy, in the principles of freedom of speech, of association, of conscience. To defend that democracy they signed the Brussels pact establishing the Western Union. Then, pushing aside his notes and turning to where the Russians were sitting, Spaak said: “The delegation of the U.S.S.R. must not seek complicated explanations of our policy. I will say, in terms which perhaps are cool ones, in terms which I believe that the small nations alone can employ, what is the basis of our policy. It is fear; the fear of you, the fear of your government, the fear of your policy.”

Tracing the territorial gains of the Soviet Union since the beginning of the war, he charged: “Your foreign policy is now more audacious and more ambitious than the foreign policy of the Tsars themselves.” He attacked the Russians for their sabotage of the United Nations: “Through the policy you have pursued you are forbidding us to seek our security and our salvation within the framework of this organization and making us seek it within the framework of a regional arrangement.”

Spaak ended with an appeal to the Soviet leaders to translate into action their oft-proclaimed devotion to the Charter and give their help in getting the United Nations off to a new start. He concluded: “It is not too late. But it is time.”

Bombs and armies

Atomic energy control, the first main item on the agenda, came to the Assembly because, after nearly three years of work, the Atomic Energy Commission had reached a dead end. The nine-nation majority on the Commission had agreed on a plan for atomic control—a plan embracing full international operation of all installations producing nuclear fuel. The Soviet Union and the Soviet Ukraine had rejected the plan as a disguised attempt at world domination by American capitalism, as a violation of national sovereignty guaranteed under the Charter. They proposed, instead, first the outlawing of the bomb and the destruction of existing stockpiles, and only then a loose system of international inspect ion.

General Andrew MeNaughton of Canada in the opening debate moved a resolution calling for Assembly approval of the majority atomic reports. Mr. Vishinsky, after launching the familiar Soviet attack against the “ American plan,”countered with a compromise resolution: two conventions should be signed and implemented simultaneously — one abolishing the bomb, the other establishing a control system.

At the outset, the Vishinsky proposal raised hopes that the Soviet position was moderating. Hut later speeches from the Russian and Ukrainian delegates showed that, on the crucial question of control, there had been no essential shift in position.

It was not surprising that the Western delegates were not seriously impressed by the olive branch Mr. Yishinsky brandished in his fist. What was finally adopted was a resolution approving the Commission’s majority reports and asking that it continue its work while the five permanent members, plus Canada, try to work out a basis for political agreement.

Mr. Vishinsky’s disarmament proposal was very precise. In addition to abolition of the atomic bomb, it recommended as a first step “ the reduction by one-third during one year of all present land, naval, and air forces.” Mr. Vishinsky would give no promises that he was prepared to link his scheme with an effective system of inspection. Instead, anticipating Western skepticism, he lashed out at the Western leaders for their bad faith. The terms of the disarmament plan had a nostalgic flavor of Litvinov, but the accent was pure Yishinsky.

These two key debates showed the utter impossibility of creating at this time a universal system of collective security, a world pool of power against any would-be aggressor.

The small nations plead for unity

In the Palais de Chaillot the smaller nations particularly were unhappy about the implied abandonment of the more inclusive aims of the United Nations. The newly elected President of the Assembly, Herbert Vere Evatt of Australia, protested that regional agreements could be no substitute for a strong United Nations. Regional pacts might act as useful barricades against, sudden attack: they were no defense against atomic war. Arms reduction without proper inspection might he absurd, but the arms race pointed to only one ultimate end. So in plenary session, committees, and subcommittees the small nations took up the plea to the powers: Compose your differences, find a compromise, pool your strength behind the United Nations.

The Berlin case, brought to the Security Council with all the stagecraft of a big-time drama, seemed for a while to give the smaller powers their wedge. For when the ease was opened, and a silent but very much present Mr. Vishinsky had adjusted his earphones and spread out a copy of Le Populaire before him, the Big Three spokesmen presented their charges against the Soviet Union with no suggestion as to how the Council could act to end the blockade.

The “Neutral Six" on the Council consulted together, agreed in general that the blockade was a threat to the peace, but fell, nevertheless, a responsibility to act as mediators. Dr. Juan Atilio Bramuglia of Argentina, Acting President of the Security Council, was commissioned to consult with Mr. Vishinsky and the Big Three complainants.

The result was a resolution putting no blame on the Soviet Union and proposing a carefully dated timetable for negotiations. Representing the unanimous agreement of the Six Neutrals and the Big Three from the West, and reasonable in its recommendations, the resolution appeared to be one that it would be difficult for Mr. Vishinsky to turn down. But the Soviet veto thwarted the small nations in their attempt to open the road to peace.

Palestine

One issue to come before the Assembly drew other than usual lines of division. That issue was Palestine. When the Assembly opened, the United Nations pale blue flag was at half mast. The murder of the UN mediator, Count Bernadotte, had roused more intense feelings among delegates than any other international happening since t he organizat ion was founded. For Count Bernadotte carried the confidence and respect of the great majority of the Assembly. Rightly or wrongly it was believed that if there was to be any settlement of this issue which had plagued the Middle East for more than a quarter of a century, Bernadotte would give the fairest counsel.

His murder by terrorists brought a quick, bitter resentment, part of which was, perhaps un justly, directed against the new provisional government of Israel that had failed to provide adequate protection. Had the Palestine case come at the top of the agenda, as originally planned, instead of in the fifth week of the session, there is little doubt that Bernadotte’s recommendations would have been acted on with little alteration. As it was, resentment had cooled down, other issues had loomed in more serious proportions, and both Arabs and Jews had strengthened their bargaining positions.

Two factors operated against a viable settlement. In the first place, after recognizing the existence of Israel as a historical fact in any Palestine solution, Bernadotte had proposed trading Galilee to the Jews for the Negeb to the Arabs. The Israeli, in fairly firm military possession of Galilee and in recent fighting having established strong positions in the Negeb, felt strategically safe in sitting tight. Moreover, having built up the Jewish population in Jerusalem, they were less favorably disposed towards internationalization of that city as Bernadotte had proposed.

The Arabs, on the other hand, having been defeated in the field and having lost out in their campaign against partition, had built up new support within the United Nations. Early voting in the Assembly showed the emergence of an alliance between ihe strong Latin American bloc and the Arab nations.

The cycle of fear

What this Assembly has been powerless to find is the means of cutting ihe vicious cycle of fear. For policies founded on fear do little to lessen fear, and offer few prospects of peace. The “inner security system” that is obviously well advanced provides no real security. The peoples of Western Europe, faced now by threat of Russian invasion, do not relish the prospect of “atomic liberation.”

Voices are beginning to be heard that plead for the lives of peoples rather than for the rights of governments and nations — voices demanding that war be eliminated rat her than controlled. Echoing Spaak they say: “It is not too late. But it is time.”