A Turn of the Road

The United Nations, once dismissed as that debating society on the East River, last week saved the Congo from collapse. With order breaking down, with Belgian paratroopers and mutinous Congolese troops at deadly loggerheads, the U.N. swiftly put together a force that stemmed the slide toward chaos. It was the U.N.'s finest hour, the greatest accomplishment in its short, 15-year history.

The man chiefly responsible for converting the U.N. from an ineffectual sounding board into an effective force for international order is Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, 55. Son of a Swedish Prime Minister and scion of one of Sweden's most famous families, sandy-haired Dag Hammarskjold is one of the world's most self-effacing men. To a post in which the confidence of others counts for everything, this poetry-loving economist (he was chairman of the Bank of Sweden at 36) brings icy impartiality and impenetrable discretion.

Presence Established. Inheriting the job of Secretary-General from Norway's Trygve Lie, Hammarskjold has become perhaps the world's most skillful diplomat. When East and West were glowering in immobilized anger, Hammarskjold quietly slipped into Peking in 1955 and negotiated the release of 15 captive U.S. flyers. When the British, French and Israelis attacked Egypt in 1956 and were told to retreat by the U.S., Hammarskjold organized the first world police force to keep order in the Middle East. Never making statements from which he would have to retreat, never committing others to public positions that they could not defend, Hammarskjold has cautiously moved behind a cloud of equivocal words to win an Arab-Israeli truce that has lasted four years. By establishing a representative as a "U.N. presence" in Laos, he stifled Communist infiltration from North Viet Nam.

When the explosion came in the Congo, Hammarskjold was ready. He had just been round the continent making the indispensable contacts of confidence with the new leaders. At the request of the new Congo government, he had prepared a program of "technical assistance.' The man he appointed to get it started was Michigan-born Under Secretary Ralph Bunche, a colored man who could offer such assistance most gracefully. Bunche was on the job in Leopoldville when things blew up.

Power & Light. In the face of Congolese Premier Patrice Lumumba's wild shouts for help from Peking and Moscow, Hammarskjold quietly took charge. He did not wait for any nation to ask for a meeting of the Security Council; instead, using his authority under the charter's Article 99 for the first time, he called the Security Council into emergency session on his own motion. Obviously, if the great powers were allowed to send troops to the Congo, the cold war would be extended to the Congo. His recommendation: the U.N. force should be drawn primarily from "sister African nations." But to provide the "element of universality essential to any U.N. operation," he suggested that neutrals and other nations not involved in the cold war should take part. For transport and food he was prepared to call on any and all of the U.N.'s 83 members, and the U.S.'s Henry Cabot Lodge gave all-out support.

At 3:22 a.m., the council passed the resolution authorizing Hammarskjold to send military aid. At 3:30, Hammarskjold was in his office and set to work. Phones started jangling in foreign offices all around the world.

In a matter of hours, Hammarskjold had pledges of troops from Ghana, Guinea, Morocco, Tunisia and Ethiopia; the first Ghanaian detachment was in Leopoldville within 24 hours. From Sweden, Ireland, Liberia and the Mali Federation, he got promises of enough more troops to swell the U.N. force to 12,000 men by the end of the month. From Jerusalem, Hammarskjold dispatched lean-jawed Swedish Major General Carl Carlsson von Horn, 47, U.N. Truce Enforcement Chief along the Arab-Israeli borders, to take com mand in the Congo. To meet an impending public-health disaster created by the departure of all the Belgian doctors, Hammarskjold called on the World Health Organization and the International Red Cross to "stage a crash operation." From 10 capitals he got pledges of emergency food supplies, and from Washington, Moscow and London, he obtained promises to provide the planes to deliver the supplies. From East and West he summoned veterans of other U.N. enterprises to help keep the docks open, the water pure, the lights lit, the trains running.

Rare Eloquence. Hammarskjold confronted a second major crisis when Premier Lumumba served an "ultimatum," threatening that he would call in Russian troops if the U.N. did not get the Belgians out of the Congo at once. Hammarskjold offered a careful, sober report on what the U.N. police force had achieved in a brief five days and what it hoped to achieve in the immediate future. Despite Belgian charges and Congo countercharges, it was Hammarskjold's level-voiced account that carried the most weight. In the course of the action, Hammarskjold had the satisfaction of seeing the Soviet Union cast its first vote in favor of a U.N. military force. With rarely indulged eloquence, the Secretary-General observed: "We are at a turn of the road where our attitude will be of decisive significance, I believe, not only for the future of this organization but also for the future of Africa. And Africa may well in present circumstances mean the world."

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