Weights & Measures

On short notice, and unshaven on his arrival, U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold last week dropped in on Israel for what he insisted was a "personal visit." Since the Secretary-General had made a tour of the Middle East less than three months ago, and was not expected to return again until October, something was obviously up. For eight hours he talked with testy Premier David Ben-Gurion. Hammarskjold wanted reassurances that B-G was not about to break the peace. The U.N. mediator had been concerned by B-G's recent threat to U.N. Truce Supervisor Major General Burns to do something drastic if Jordan misbehaved. B-G had shaken a Bible under Burns's nose and quoted Deuteronomy to him: "Thou shall not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small; thou shalt not have in thy house divers measures, a great and a small; a perfect and just weight shalt thou have; a perfect and just measure."

Hammarskjold apparently was reassured: his talk with Ben-Gurion, they both said, had been "full and fruitful." Then he moved on to Jordan and Egypt to see if by any chance the Arabs might also be in a fruitful mood.

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