Birthday

It was a lovely party. Trygve Lie had journeyed all the way to San Francisco straight from a shining Yale commencement, where he had been made an honorary doctor of laws. On the stage of the Opera House (its sets much quieter than a year ago when U.N. was founded there) he made a speech in which he declared that, despite what had happened during the past year, it was by no means necessary to take a gloomy view of world cooperation. Mayor Roger D. Lapham and the audience beamed happily. Lie's address was embedded in a garland of music, including the Polonaise Militaire in A Major, and the Song of Free Nations set to Mark Van Doren's Song of One World. At U.N.'s first session in San Francisco it had been Lover Come Back to Me and The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise.

The world was still waiting as the boys assembled for a round of Security Council games in New York. Australia's Evatt wanted to keep the Spanish issue on the Council agenda, simultaneously stating that the Assembly had a right to take it up if it felt so inclined. Russia's Gromyko (who wanted to avoid the Assembly, where Russia might be easily outvoted) vetoed this resolution. Evatt said that Gromyko had no right to veto it. Gromyko said that he did so. The Council decided 8-to-2 that Gromyko could not use the veto, but Gromyko vetoed the decision. If this practice stuck, the veto's application would be unlimited, and any of the five veto powers would be its own judge as to when it could be used.

At a Foreign Policy Association dinner at New York's Waldorf-Astoria (stuffed tomato Gabriel with crab meat, petite marmite Henri IV. breast of chicken with mushrooms on sugar-cured ham, frozen souffle Alaska, strawberry sauce), newly appointed U.S. Security Council delegate Senator Warren Robinson Austin said that peace could be consolidated only if the purposes and principles of U.N. were made living motives in the souls of men.

After Gromyko had vetoed the Council's ruling that he could not use the veto, Evatt tried to get a guarantee of the Assembly's right to take up the Spanish issue when it convenes in September. Gromyko vetoed that, too.

Sir Alexander Cadogan, speaking to Britain over the BBC, reported that the veto in the Council had been used several times in a manner which had appeared to many as an obstruction of the general intentions of the other Council members (the speech had been recorded the day before, but it fitted anyway) and that this sort of thing would not do. But, he reminded his listeners, " 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world," and promised the future to those ". . . strong in will to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

Only a handful of bored spectators remained in the Council gallery. They were startled by heart-rending screams from a back staircase. Marines investigated, found two cats in a fight. The session ended after six hours. Only positive action recorded was a resolution keeping Spain on the agenda--without mentioning any controversial issues.

All over a world which U.N. was supposed to keep in a state of minimum security, plain people felt like uninvited guests at U.N.'s lovely birthday party. They wanted a little of the blessed cake of peace that the Charter and all the speeches promised. But veto-bound U.N. could find no way of slicing it for the hungry.

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