are doing to write new chapters in that story and how we emerge from this climactic period in which we sense we now live. Our commitments are deeply rooted in our own history, a history which links us in aspiration to the great body of mankind. If we move ahead with these shared commitments, we shall not lack company, for men at their best are builders of free commonwealths and a peaceful world community.

Part II

THE UNITED NATIONS, SPECIALIZED AGENCIES, AND DEVELOPMENTS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW

A. United States Participation in the United Nations

11. "OUR COUNTRY'S PRIDE SHOULD BE THAT WE STOOD BY THE UNITED NATIONS, THE MEETINGHOUSE OF THE FAMILY OF MAN, IN ITS TIME OF HARDEST TRIAL": Address by the U.S. Representative at the U.N. (Stevenson) Before the San Francisco Chapter of the American Association for the United Nations, October 24, 1961 (Excerpts) 1

1

In April 1945, toward the end of humanity's most terrible war, but before any man had seen the atomic age, the architects of peace met here in San Francisco to complete the design of a new dwelling house for the family of man. I was here during those golden weeks. And no one who was will ever forget them. It was a beginning. It was the morning-fresh with the hope of a new day.

In 2 months we finished our work and the charter of the United Nations was signed, with suitable pomp, on June 25th in the Opera House. By October 24th the necessary ratifications by two-thirds of the signatory states had been received. In war-weary London we celebrated-we who were assigned the job of transforming the charter of San Francisco into a working organization—just 16 years ago today!

On this 16th anniversary, what is the report? The house is crowded: 101 members; every room is full, and more are coming!

The house is battered. It resounds endlessly with family quarrels. There are cracks in the walls, and inside the cold winds of war and danger and strife from every quarter of the globe rattle the doors and windows. And, as is usual in such cases, quite a number of the tenants are behind on the rent.

1U.S.-U.N. press release 3810, Oct. 23, 1961 (text as printed in the Department of State Bulletin, Nov. 13, 1961, pp. 783-790).

But the house is still standing. Through the cold war it has stood, and the Korean war; through the communizing of mainland China; through the revolutionary surges of national independence; through the terror of Hungary and the shock of Suez and the worse shock of the Congo; and through the ever-mounting perils of the race in nuclear arms.

Its collapse has been called imminent any number of times. It "couldn't survive" the Soviet abuse of the veto-but it did, and learned how to act by majority rule. It "couldn't survive" the strains of colonial struggles and the birth of new nations-but it did, and in the U.N.'s halls the old rulers and the old subjects sit side by side with equal privileges.

Then last year people said that Mr. Khrushchev's shoe-pounding and his attack on the office of Secretary-General would surely be the end-but that has been going on for 13 months, and though we have lost the brilliant and brave Dag Hammarskjold, the United Nations is still there.

And those of us who attended the funeral of Dag Hammarskjold in that ancient cathedral in Uppsala and walked between the walls of reverent humanity through the crowded streets of that old town will never forget him, as we will never forget the San Francisco conference. This may be no time for words of triumph, but it is most certainly a time for words and deeds of hope.

There is no need for me to tell you that the United Nations has entered a period of severe strain. The great questions of our timedisarmament, the ending of the colonial era, economic growth, justice for the oppressed-all these are still high on the agenda of the General Assembly. But time and again these great issues, which the U.N. was built to deal with, must be laid aside long enough for the members to cope with the multiple crises which threaten the very existence of the Organization. There are fires all over town, but now there is fire in the firehouse.

This is no time for panic or dismay. It is a time for seeing with clear eyes what the crises are, what underlies them, and what must be done to meet them.

The first crisis of the U.N. is the one most in the headlines: the choice of a new interim Secretary-General.

The second crisis is financial-and scarcely less acute. The Organization is only beginning to face it.

But there is another problem about which I am concerned, and which I would like to share with you. That is the problem of being sure that, through all the difficulties which we shall face, America's essential role of leadership in the United Nations will have the indispensable and patient backing of public opinion.

I am not worried about the voices of all-out fanaticism in this country. There are always pitiful little groups of people among us, people

with some inner compulsion to hate. To them the true meaning of democracy will forever be a closed book, and in their ears the voice of dissent will always sound like the voice of the enemy. The United Nations has nothing to hope from them.

I am thinking rather of the much broader range of Americans whose instincts are deeply democratic, who have been proud to help their country carry its worldwide burdens, but who now, after 16 years of cold war and frustration, are honestly worried lest the United Nations be turned against us and even, perhaps, be delivered into the hands of its Communist enemies.

To these Americans let me say with the greatest earnestness: I share your frustrations, but I do not share your fears. I believe we must be prepared for many troubles. But as long as we of the United States continue as active leaders in the United Nations, and continue to be faithful to our purposes, I have no fear that the Organization will be turned against us.

Still less do I fear that it will ever pass under the domination of communism, whose philosophy of power and intolerance is utterly alien to the United Nations spirit.

I must say it is not surprising that these fears about the U.N. should arise, considering the amount of alarming misinformation about what happens there. I still meet people, for instance, who insist that the United Nations action in support of a united, independent Congo fitted neatly into the plans of Soviet communism. Yet it was this same United Nations action which roused Mr. Khrushchev to such fury and caused him to bang his shoe in the General Assembly and to launch his all-out attack on the Secretary-General!

Then just recently I remember seeing in a magazine that with the death of Dag Hammarskjold the United Nations had passed under the power of none other than Nikita Khrushchev. When I see a report like that I must admit I blink a little. Can this be the same United Nations where I work-the same place where, in the past 2 weeks, the members have stood fast against Mr. Khrushchev's troika," have decided that Mr. Khrushchev's disarmament plan will have to wait its turn for debate, and have cried out in outrage against Mr. Khrushchev's 50-megaton terror explosion? Evidently this Mr. Khrushchev must be a man who likes to pass resolutions against himself!

I must say I admire the skill of those who, almost every day, concede anew to Moscow the final victory in the cold war. Evidently the United States is completely finished at the close of every working day, but somehow poor Uncle Sam manages to struggle to his feet by morning so that he can be finished off again the next day.

This confusion over who is doing what to whom makes me think of the schoolboy who came home with his face damaged and his clothes torn, and when his mother asked him how the fight had started he said, "It started when the other guy hit me back."

2 See post, doc. 16.

See post, doc. 555 and U.N. docs. A/PV.1018, p. 144, and A/C.1/SR. 1170, p. 37. 'See post, doc. 593.

Misapprehensions like these, I think, result partly from misinformation. But there is also something more fundamental which hinders many of us in our attempts to grasp the true meaning of the United Nations—and, indeed, the meaning of our situation in the modern world. I mean that pleasant illusion of omnipotence to which we Americans have clung for so long.

We Americans, to be sure, had different grounds for thinking ourselves omnipotent. We forswore conquest by military force, but we made ourselves believe that, when the Second World War was over, our heritage of democratic ideals, by its own magic, would quickly sweep the world. There is no doubt that this illusion helped to sustain us in the war. Certainly it was present at the birth of the United Nations, for which, some of us thought, no exploits of peace would be impossible.

From the first Soviet veto in 1946, blow after blow of reality fell upon this precious illusion. By now it is gone beyond recall. But the danger is that we may now swing the other way and that we may go from disillusion to despair, from an illusion of omnipotence to a myth of impotence.

Let me illustrate from experience at the United Nations.

It is said that the Soviet Union, by its veto power in the Security Council and by its bullying tactics in the General Assembly, can prevent the United Nations from acting without its consent. This is not true at all. The fact is that the Soviet Union has not been an effective participant in a single one of the major international operations sponsored by the United Nations in the past 16 years.

They do not belong to the World Bank, the Monetary Fund, the Food and Agriculture Organization, or the International Civil Aviation Organization.

They take no part in the humanitarian work which the United Nations does for refugees all over the world.

For 8 years they stayed away from the World Health Organization, which grew from strength to strength during their boycott.

They have contributed little but obstruction to the International Atomic Energy Agency and are now threatening to walk out of it altogether.

As for the world-famous United Nations Technical Assistance Program, and its new partner called the Special Fund, the Soviet contributions have been small, recent, and all in nonconvertible rubles.

In the field of United Nations peace and security operations the Soviet performance amounts to a good deal less than zero.

The United Nations action in Korea was taken without them, in spite of them, and in fact against the aggression which they had sponsored.

In the troubled Middle East they have paid nothing to maintain the Palestine refugees and nothing to the United Nations Emergency Force.

In the Congo they have paid not a ruble to the United Nations efforts; instead they financed a secession movement in Stanleyville