Voice of Conscience

As the U.N.'s General Assembly reconvened at windswept Flushing Meadow last week, most of the corridor talk among delegates centered around one topic: the Atlantic Treaty. What worried U.N.ers most was whether it had weakened U.N. Some thought so. The Russians, whose press was hoarsely denouncing the pact as a threat to peace, were expected to raise a major row about it in the Assembly. Actually, as Australian Assembly President Herbert ("Doc") Evatt pointed out, the charter provides for regional defense pacts within U.N.'s general framework. The Atlantic pact presented the Russians with the fact of Western unity. It was hard to see how the alternative--Western weakness and division--would have strengthened U.N.'s councils.

Defensive Russians. Waiting for U.N. action were these major issues: the proposed admission to U.N. of Israel; the question of diplomatic relations with Franco Spain*; the Dutch-Indonesian dispute; and the disposition of the former Italian colonies. In the Political Committee, the Russians promptly made a grab for partial control of the Italian colonies. The U.S. (backed by Britain) wanted to give part of Eritrea to Ethiopia, proposed giving Britain U.N. trusteeship over Cyrenaica, and Italy trusteeship over Italian Somaliland. The U.S. and Britain, rasped Russia's Andrei Gromyko, were trying to divide up the colonies "as if they were sitting at a table drinking champagne." He demanded a joint U.N. trusteeship (in which the Russians would participate).

The Russians were suddenly put on the defensive when the

U.S., Australia and Bolivia jointly proposed an investigation into the question of human rights in Hungary and Bulgaria, including the trial and sentence of Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty.

The Oppressed Redskins. For more than an hour, Russia's bland, hulking Delegate Yakov A. Malik tried to keep the inquiry off the agenda. The case of the "Traitor Mindszenty," he argued, was of concern to Hungary only; the U.S. attempt to bring it before the Assembly was merely a move by the "ruling circles [of America] to boss other people around in their own homes." Moreover, cried Malik, the U.S. was trying to cover up its own sins of oppression, the trials of "political [Communist] leaders," the lynching of Negroes and the "pitiful plight" of the American Indians.

Unimpressed, the committee voted to put the Mindszenty case on the agenda. The Assembly, not continually hamstrung by veto,* was thus free to fulfill what was perhaps its most important function--to act as the voice of the world's conscience.

*Spain was also sounding out her chances of admission to the Atlantic pact. Three days after his Foreign Minister signed the pact in Washington, Portugal's dictator--and Spain's good neighbor-- Dr. Antonio de Oliveira Salazar declared that Spain's exclusion from the pact was a "geographical and strategical weakness" in the "Western front." *In the Security Council, Russia last week used her 30th veto to block the admission of Korea to U.N. membership.

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