THE UNRRA CONFERENCE

An international conference of forty-four nations was convened on November 10, 1943, at Atlantic City to formulate the program and organization of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). Since I was at that time doing wartime duty four days a week in the State Department as deputy director in charge of liberated areas in the Office of Foreign Economic Coordination, I was chosen to be a member of the U.S. delegation to that conference. It was headed by the assistant secretary of state (for economic matters), Dean Acheson, later to become secretary of state and an increasingly powerful figure in the world of diplomacy and politics.

The headquarters of the conference was at the Claridge Hotel, the newest on the Boardwalk. Offices and rooms of the administrative officers were also at the Claridge, but many of the delegations and the support staff were housed elsewhere. All nations then actively engaged in supporting the war against Nazi Germany had been invited to Atlantic City, and most of them, including our war-time ally Russia, participated. The war, of course, was in full swing and the outcome yet in doubt. Nevertheless, it seemed necessary to begin planning for the relief of the invaded nations after they were liberated. We were in Atlantic City three weeks, and the resulting organization was widely hailed as an important step in planning for the future and for the rehabilitation of areas devastated by the war.

Dean Acheson was made the chairman of the conference, and Herbert Lehman, who had recently left the office of governor of New York and joined the State Department as director of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation Operations, was elected director general. The choice of Lehman was a popular one with the delegate nations because he was well known and noted for his humane and generous instincts. Although sometimes labeled a poor administrator, he was undeniably distinguished, a man of great ability and, I think, an ideal choice for the position of director general. In that role he carried on the great tradition that had been established by Herbert Hoover in directing relief for Europe following World War I, but Lehman’s task was much more important and much more difficult since he had to work with an international organization.

A good deal of political maneuvering and debate attended the formation of the working machinery of the organization. It was dimly realized that, since this was the first of the international organizations to be formed for functioning after World War II, it would probably furnish precedent and pattern for the others and particularly for the United Nations organization itself, which the allied leadership had already begun to dream of and plan for. The spirit of the occasion was partially revealed in the presentation of the delegates, as I wrote at the time in my notes on the conference:

Over and over again, the speeches voiced determination to make the program work and to cooperate without reservation to that end. Underneath was the realization that internal political problems were involved for most of the countries—for the receiving countries, problems arising out of the certainty that the people will expect more than their leaders can get for them; for the contributing countries, problems occasioned by the fact that the people will resent further or continued restrictions of their own supplies in order to be able to make their contribution. So there is an understanding on the part of all the representatives that genuine cooperation is essential to the building of an international organization that will help absorb some of the internal pressures.

I was assigned to cover three subcommittees of the First Committee, “Organization and Administration,” and was made directly responsible for one as the American representative on the conference subcommittee that fashioned the formula for apportioning UNRRA’S expenses. This was a hot issue, of course, with every country hoping to be allocated as small a percentage as possible since each would be assessed likewise for the cost of the relief, to be paid either in currency or in kind. The Latin Americans were especially reluctant to accept the formula that was proposed, but they finally did so,¹ and the formula adopted there was incorporated in essentially the same form in the organization of the United Nations at San Francisco. For many years it remained practically unchanged as the formula for assessing the cost of running the United Nations organization and some of its specialized agencies. Although the subject matter was not one of great ideological importance, I found this diplomatic exercise broadening and interesting, revealing the nuances of international relationships and character as expressed in the representatives’ reaction to the obligation of paying for the cost of an international humanitarian relief agency.

Many of the nations were represented by relatively young figures, then unknown, who were destined to become men of national and international importance. I recall several but shall mention only a few. Jan Masaryk of Czechoslovakia made an indelible impression on me. He was a delightful, charming, witty, and talented man who would have been outstanding in any group. Later he was to have a tragic end when a Communist coup d’etat drove him to what was alleged to be suicide but was felt by many to be murder at the hands of the Communists. Here I first came to know Lester B. “Mike” Pearson of Canada, who took a leading role in the UN for some years, heading several Canadian delegations to the UN after it began functioning in the postwar world and later becoming prime minister of Canada and a world figure. He was always a delightful companion, and we frequently met for a friendly Scotch in the late afternoon. Also I saw the distinguished Sir Girja Bajpai, who was then agent general of India in Washington, D.C. Since India was still a colony of Great Britain, he could not have the title of ambassador, but he was nevertheless a figure of truly ambassadorial prestige and influence. He was Oxford-educated, eloquently articulate, and impeccably groomed. He was an impressive man, for whom I had great admiration. Another memorable figure was Edward G. Miller, Jr., one of Dean Acheson’s two top aides and a specialist on Latin American affairs. He was long active in the eastern intellectual establishment as a lawyer and, from time to time, was a member of other important national and international committees and commissions. I had already met Jean Monnet in Washington, but here I saw more of him. He became one of the greatest international leaders in the postwar world and the eloquent and successful exponent of the European community. He was a man of great vision and extraordinary talent. At this conference also I first met Paul-Henri Spaak, Belgium’s foreign minister, later to be president of the UN and a dominant figure in international activities for a long time following World War II. Here also I met Carlos Romulo, whom I mention later.

Andrei Gromyko, the U.S.S.R. ambassador to the United States, served as head of the Russian delegation until a delegation arrived directly from Moscow. I had been at meetings with him from time to time in Washington but came to know something of him at this conference. Always guarded in his contacts, he was a man who could be completely charming when socially relaxed. (He prided himself on the quality of the dry martinis he mixed.) Later I was to see a great deal of him when I served on the American delegation to the UN and he was head of the Russian delegation.

Attendance at the UNRRA conference was an excellent experience for me, uninitiated as I was in international conferences. Not only did I learn how things could be accomplished in an international gathering, but my acquaintanceship was widened, particularly among international personalities. In addition, there was the satisfaction of participating in an organization that seemed destined to become a very important postwar agency for relief, rehabilitation, and healing the wounds of war.

Some of the behind-the-scenes activities lent color to our experiences. I recorded several in my notes, one of which is possibly helpful in its glimpse of the Russian mode of operating:

An amusing incident occurred toward the end of one of the afternoon sessions, when the member from Czechoslovakia arose to suggest that the council express appreciation for the work done and the results achieved at the Moscow conference by Mr. Hull, Mr. Molotov, and Mr. Eden. The day previous, the member from Honduras had proposed that greetings and congratulations be sent to Mr. Hull, who had just returned to Washington from Moscow. (The Russians were disturbed by the omission of Mr. Molotov from the statement and, as a consequence, had brought pressure upon the Czechs to present another proposal, which would include him.) The issue was delicate because of the tension between the Poles and the Russians. Mr. Acheson handled the situation admirably by directing, when the Czech had concluded, that there be entered on the record the statements made by the Honduran and the Czech and the fact that they represented the sentiments of the council. He thereby avoided the embarrassment of a vote.

Later, Masaryk told me the story, in his inimitable style, of his participation in the occurrence. He said that Gromyko, the Russian ambassador, who always looks as though he had eaten a very large sour pickle, came to him and asked if he would not undertake to introduce a resolution thanking Mr. Molotov. Masaryk objected slightly, saying that the member from Honduras had opened the subject and asking, “Why not let him rise and mention all three powers?” Gromyko replied, “Honduras??? Honduras??? It is a very small country.”

Masaryk also told me that he always did his best, in talking with the Russians, to keep reference to the Allies’ small losses out of the conversation. In that connection, he said that a day or so before Gromyko had made a remark about “the Italian campaign of two miles,” referring, of course, to the distance the American troops had gained that day.

A further observation about the Russians in my notes will be recognized by anyone now experienced in the field as standard practice for U.S.S.R. delegates:

The Russians are personally charming and are surprisingly young for representatives of a country in which all the young men are supposed to be in the army. Most of the delegation appear not to exceed their middle thirties, and many seem even younger. They are the least talented linguistically of any of the groups and have had to use interpreters rather extensively. I am of the opinion that, politically, they are not yet skilled. They certainly do not understand the give and take of the legislative process; they have had no experience in making those minor adjustments that smooth the progress of debate and yet at the same time do not affect vital principles. When they come into a meeting, they come instructed on certain points, even though the instruction, as revealed by their conversation, indicates an improper understanding of the point at issue, making their objection invalid. Nevertheless, they do not alter their position. This does not render them helpful partners in committee deliberations and thus does not enhance their popularity with their colleagues. The Russian delegation is the only one of which this is true. All the others appear to understand committee and legislative deliberations and to be skillful in participation in them. Part of the inadequacy may grow out of the difficulty with the language. The Russians’ enemies, however, insist that they use interpreters even when they do understand, to give them greater protection and longer time for thought. The feeling between the Russians and the Poles is intense and manifests itself at every turn.

The work of the Conference was widely acclaimed in the press at the time and the record of UNRRA in the postwar world fulfilled most of the dreams and ambitions that were held for it at the meeting in Atlantic City. It may be of interest to learn how I viewed the results of the conference at the time:

As the conference completes its work, there is agreement on all sides that a practical and comprehensive machinery has been devised. If the executive work is as good as the legislative, the success of UNRRA is assured. Likewise, the essential wisdom of the move becomes evident. A system is provided by which the resources of the entire world are mobilized for most effective use wherever needed and the burden of sacrifice is distributed. What is even more significant, countries are given an opportunity to work together toward an immediate practical objective and in so doing may learn how easy it is to cooperate in international programs. An organization dealing solely with principles and policy would find it more difficult to function in the beginning, just as any group finds it more difficult to deal with the abstract than with the concrete and the immediate.

Another feature of UNRRA that to me is significant is that relief policies and programs are kept under the jurisdiction of each of the recipient countries involved. There is no patronizing benevolence, no opportunity for well-intentioned but misguided persons of missionary zeal to try to reform and remake countries by performing good-will activities in connection with relief. Individual mores and outlooks will be adequately protected under the system as organized. In my judgment, this is one of the important respects, perhaps, in which this effort differs from the last, and it represents a triumph for our State Department’s policy of nonintervention in the business and affairs of other countries. It represents likewise the practice of the department of avoiding the old game of power politics, the sophisticated interpretation of meddling in the affairs of other countries.

In organizations, persons find an opportunity to express themselves and receive the stimulation to put forth their best efforts. Countries react in the same way. This truth was aptly stated by the member of the council from Canada in the evening session of the fifth plenary meeting. “The will of nations,” he said, “like the will of peoples, is best aroused and expressed through the workings of responsible and representative organs.” Hence, UNRRA probably will stimulate even invaded countries to take a more active part in making their surpluses, wherever they have such surpluses, available for the needs of others. All in all, events, coupled with knowledge of human reactions, augur well for the future.

If one might judge by this conference, he can be led to the belief that international cooperation does not present as many difficulties as might be expected. I am impressed by the fact that the points of similarity and agreement here are greater than the points of dissimilarity and disagreement. Much has been said in the past about the difficulties of legislation in international affairs because of differences in backgrounds, ideals, and languages, which influence our thinking. These differences are more apparent when we see people in their own settings than when we see them in a common setting. In my judgment, this group would have seemed perfectly at home in London, Paris, New York, Indianapolis, Buenos Aires.

The closing session was impressive. It had been well organized by the steering committee and the program arranged and presented to the council in closed session. Unity and harmony were the dominant notes. The feeling was genuine. Various countries had been defeated in proposals that they had advanced during the session but had accepted their defeat gracefully. The conference was a triumph for the democratic process, which involves giving and taking in good spirit. It demonstrated beyond question the feasibility of international deliberative assemblies where there is a determination on the part of all persons to achieve a common purpose. Any international problem could be settled under such circumstances—settled as wisely as the capabilities of the assembled delegates would permit, just as is the case with any legislative body.

The cynic might say that this was an idealistic expression of a naive person, but, even in light of the experience of the past thirty-five years, I still believe in the truth of this conclusion.

My next work with the United Nations came about as a result of my service as chairman of the American Council on Education and is therefore recounted in that section. Suffice it to mention here that I was a consultant at the San Francisco Conference in 1945 and later participated in several UNESCO-related bodies.

SERVICE WITH THE UNITED NATIONS

From the beginning of the UN it has been the policy of the United States government to select representatives to each session of the General Assembly from various walks of life. The thought was that lay representation on our delegation would promote better public understanding of the aims and purposes of the UN. These men and women in turn were given the backup services of professional international civil servants and diplomats. In the early summer of 1957, I was invited by Secretary John Foster Dulles to meet with him to discuss the possibility of my becoming a delegate to the Twelfth Session of the United Nations General Assembly, to be convened in September. As I had been present at San Francisco and had had several international assignments since then, I found the idea exciting, but I told him that I would have to consult with the Indiana University Board of Trustees. The trustees generously granted me permission to undertake this assignment, so from early September until nearly the end of December I served as a member of the U.S. delegation. In this instance again, I attempted to carry on part of my responsibilities at home, a plan that in retrospect I am not sure was wise. It meant that I spent five days in New York and Saturday and Sunday in Bloomington, trying during the weekend to deal with all of the university’s problems that needed my attention. I could not have followed such a schedule except for the fact that I had a remarkable team of colleagues who carried on admirably all week and who were ready for consultation and conference over the weekend. Yet managing the two jobs, even though done imperfectly, was an exhausting experience and I probably did not perform my university work as well as I should have on the one hand, nor gain as much from the UN experience as I otherwise might have on the other.

The U.S. delegation was headed by Henry Cabot Lodge, the United States ambassador and permanent representative to the UN. There were five delegates and five deputies on the American team. In addition to Ambassador Lodge and me, the delegates were George Meany and two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Honorable A. S. J. Carnahan, and the Honorable Walter H. Judd. It was the custom to alternate between the Senate and the House; one year the House had two members in the delegation and the next year the Senate had two. The deputies were Ambassador James J. Wadsworth, Philip Klutznick (who recently was appointed secretary of commerce in the Carter cabinet), Genoa Washington, Mary Pillsbury Lord, and Irene Dunne.

My deputy was Irene Dunne, the distinguished actress and movie star from California. She was originally a Hoosier, having been born in Madison, Indiana, and I found her a delightful colleague. Although she had not been active in movies in recent years, she was well known to the delegates from abroad because they had seen and admired her pictures. She was a woman of great charm and intellect who had been active in President Eisenhower’s campaign in California and whose husband, Francis D. Griffin, had been a successful dental surgeon in California but was said to have become in more recent years a prosperous real-estate operator. An admirable husband, he accompanied Miss Dunne to New York and was with her on every social occasion, attempting whenever possible to guard her against overexertion. Although in quite good health, she was a bit fragile. She was a delight to have as a member of our delegation.

Each delegate who lived outside New York was housed in a suite in the Vanderbilt Hotel not far from the office building in which the headquarters of the American delegation was then located. Ambassador Lodge resided in the top-floor suite of the Waldorf Towers, which for many years has served as the embassy residence for U.S. ambassadors to the UN. It was here that he frequently entertained and carried on the usual social functions associated with an ambassadorial post.

For the first week of the session Secretary Dulles was in New York and met with us. It was customary for the delegation to assemble each morning at nine with the secretary, Cabot Lodge, and our advisers and, after the first week, with Cabot Lodge as the presiding officer of the meeting. During that meeting, which typically lasted about an hour, we were briefed upon the issues that were likely to arise during the day’s session and were given instructions about what the United States’ position would be on the issues and questions. Also, the workload for the day was assigned then. These sessions were especially interesting during the week or ten days in which the secretary was on hand, for he attempted to share with us as much as possible the broad outlines of American policies. At these morning sessions, in addition to any instructions required for that day’s work in the General Assembly, we were given reports on special problems that had arisen in the past twenty-four hours and were assigned to the day’s social functions.

The custom was for each country to give a reception for the delegates from the other countries. Representatives of minor countries could afford to miss some of these affairs but the United States, because of its prominence, was expected to be represented at every official social gathering as well as to be present in force at any reception or social function hosted by the United States. Part of the morning routine, therefore, was a review of the list of parties to be given that evening and a call for volunteers to attend them. As a rule all of us received written invitations to each affair, but it was not expected that every member of the delegation would appear, except in a few instances. The congressmen were usually quite busy and a bit blasé about social events. Since George Meany lived in New York and had his own active office to run, he was generally too busy to attend the evening affairs. Miss Dunne was in great demand, but she was always such a popular figure at receptions that they were very wearing experiences for her, and she felt that she could appear only infrequently. Mary Lord, who carried on an active social program of her own, entertaining delegates at her Park Avenue apartment, would usually be unavailable. Thus frequently Cabot Lodge would look over at me and say something like, “Herman, you’re a university president and accustomed to standing in line. You go.” As a consequence, at the end of a long and exhausting day in the General Assembly, I found myself nearly every evening with an assignment to attend from one to three receptions. These would be huge receptions held in hotels, ballrooms, in the reception areas of the UN, or at those embassies of the UN members that were located in New York. Mercifully, transportation was provided and, starting about six o’clock, I would go from one affair to another, in each instance staying long enough and working through the crowd sufficiently to make sure the host and others knew that the United States was represented there. Then I was off to the next one, following the same procedure, and finally after the third, which would end about ten, I would be driven to the Oyster Bar in the Grand Central Station, where I would have oyster stew before going on down to the Vanderbilt and falling in bed exhausted. Hand shaking, conversation, and representation left no time for food or drink during the social affairs. On these occasions one frequently could pick up bits of useful information to report to our delegation the next morning, and so the affairs were useful, not only in getting the delegates acquainted with each other, but also in providing a means for informal communication. Occasionally the cocktail reception routine was broken by an assignment to attend a black tie dinner given by an important organization in one of the New York hotels that was of a nature to require the attendance of some member of the U.S. delegation.

Each delegate with his alternate was given a regular committee assignment and sometimes special, ad hoc committee assignments for shorter periods of time, but my particular assignment for the whole of the session was Committee IV, which dealt with trusteeships including non-self-governing territories. Also I was one of five delegates appointed to serve on the Special Political Committee, which helped to share the work of the First Committee. The First Committee was concerned with political and security affairs, including the regulation of armaments, and thus had more work than could be done by a single committee. But for the most part my duties were connected with the Fourth Committee, which had on its agenda for the session particular items: the treatment of Indian and Pakistan minorities in the Union of South Africa; the whole question of southwest Africa, a question still very much in the arena; the future of French Togoland; the boundary dispute between Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland, an issue that is somewhat active yet; and, above all else, the African territories’ severance of their colonial ties with Europe and the creation of independent states.

Work that went on in the Fourth Committee eventuated over time in the creation of several of the smaller African states. The pressure for liberation and independence was enormous, and during the 1950s and early 1960s country after country severed its colonial ties, redefined its borders, and became members of the UN. We realized at the time that a number of these new so-called countries were in each case simply the territory of a particular ethnic or tribal group. The former national lines had been drawn arbitrarily by European conquerers in the last century without regard to homogeneous populations. Moreover, many of these units were quite small, and there was a question in some quarters whether these countries could be both economically and politically viable once they acquired independence. Yet the pressure for independence, supported by world opinion, was so strong that nothing was likely to halt the creation of the new countries. Now, in retrospect, it can be clearly seen that we have a number of nonviable units in Africa as well as in Oceania and elsewhere in the world. In time these units may find it desirable to regroup by confederation or some other method into larger units that will be economically and politically viable.

To return to the morning briefing—after it was over, we went off to our several assignments at the UN headquarters building, taking our seats with our delegation when there was a plenary session, but more frequently taking our assigned seats in the particular committee session scheduled for the day. In addition to participating in the work of the committees, we occasionally had to speak for the United States in the Great Council Chamber of the UN on some issue growing out of a committee recommendation to a plenary session. I had that experience on one occasion and found it awesome and nerve-racking. However, there was one advantage. We did not have to write our own speeches on such occasions. The official positions of the United States were arrived at by a procedure that began with a discussion among our delegates in their morning session. There we received as background the information that the delegates had picked up from speeches in their respective committees. This information was forwarded to Washington where the official position of the United States was formulated and where a speech was written to be presented by the assigned delegate on the committee or in the plenary session. This was the manner of proceeding for all the important policy questions. Of course, on minor questions we were free to speak within the limits of what we knew policy to be, but for the most part policy was formulated in Washington and sent to us daily, which was as it should have been. Otherwise the United States government’s position could not have been consistent and would certainly have been puzzling, to say the least.

The work of my own committee was extremely interesting because of the very nature of the material, the topics with which we dealt, and the problems and questions to which we were asked to address ourselves. It was made delightful as well by the fact that our presiding officer was Than at Khoman of Thailand, ambassador to the United States and a member of the Thai delegation. He later became world famous as the foreign minister of Thailand. Having become a good friend, he came to Bloomington to visit from time to time, occasionally to speak or simply to play golf and later to see his beautiful daughter, Thavida, when she was a student at Indiana University. I have valued his friendship through all the years since those UN days. Khoman’s secretary and adviser was Hans Wieschhoff, formerly of the University of Pennsylvania, an authority on the problems of Africa particularly and consequently a valuable resource in directing our deliberations.² He too became a fast friend. I made many friends among the delegates on that committee, and soon a good deal of camaraderie developed among us; we became a sort of special fraternity with loyalty to the Fourth Committee and to each other. This made our deliberations easier, especially when we were dealing with delicate problems.

At the beginning of the session controversy arose over who would be elected president of the General Assembly. Sir Leslie Munro, New Zealand’s ambassador to the United States and permanent representative to the UN, was chosen president and served admirably. The secretary general of the UN, a distinguished Swedish scholar-diplomat, Dag Hammarskjold, was very impressive in his role. I soon became acquainted with him and had the privilege of dining with him at his apartment from time to time. On those occasions he loved to talk about academic and intellectual subjects as a relief from the day-to-day problems of the UN. Four years after this session he was killed in an airplane accident on a UN mission in Africa. He was accompanied on that occasion by Hans Wieschhoff, whose daughter was then at Indiana University, and it was my sad duty to tell Virginia that her father, whom she adored, had just died in a tragic accident along with the secretary general.

Always at the right hand of the secretary general as executive assistant and under secretary was a remarkable Hoosier, Andrew Cordier, who for many years had been a professor at Manchester College in the fields of history and political science and who had also taught concurrently most of that time at Indiana University’s Fort Wayne extension center. During his active career as a teacher in Indiana, Cordier had been one of the leading voices throughout the state in the promotion of international cooperation. He had made hundreds and hundreds of speeches at luncheon clubs, women’s clubs, and the like on the subject of international relations. He first entered the national political scene by becoming a speech writer, along with Ross Bartley, for Alfred Landon during Landon’s unsuccessful bid for the presidency, but from that task he went on to serve as a technical expert with the U.S. delegation to the San Francisco Conference for the formation of the UN and continued with the UN until he reached retirement age. Then he became dean of the new Graduate School of International Affairs at Columbia University and later served two years as president of the university. When we met at the UN I had known and admired him for many years. He was gracious and helpful to me during my UN service. It was comforting to me to see his lively and interesting presence on the platform next to the secretary general at every plenary session. He was the man to whom the secretary general and the presiding officer turned for parliamentary advice or for the answer to some question of fact. He knew more about the UN than any other individual and played a major role in holding the organization together and keeping it alive during its formative years.

To return from this tangent—as delegates we had an enormous amount of work to do. I have already mentioned the day-after-day attendance at meetings frequently lasting for hours and the exhausting round of social affairs. Moreover, the social side of the assignment called for entertaining groups of U.S. citizens from all over the country who came to visit the UN. Their visits frequently required that some members of the U.S. delegation meet them in one of the rooms in the UN building set aside for such a purpose and explain to them the work of the current session. I remember speaking to several groups from Indiana and to one from Louisville. I suppose we were assigned to this chore according to the nature of the group.

Being a delegate required a tremendous amount of study. Prior to the opening session heavy documentation had been prepared for our understanding and for background on the major issues that were expected to arise. Documentation continued to flow to us from Washington and from the UN Secretariat daily during the session. Just to keep up with the paperwork would have been a hard, full-time job, but reading had to be crowded in with everything else. Fortunately we had a very able team of career State Department advisers, for the most part young men who were bright, alert, and well versed in all the technicalities of the questions before us. I grew to respect and admire them. One for whom I formed a special liking was Thomas Bartlett. During the session he confided in me his desire to become a college president. He had already won his Ph.D. degree and had reputable scholarly credentials. In due course he was able to achieve his ambition when he was chosen president of the American University in Cairo, and I had the privilege of being one of his trustees during part of his tenure there. He resigned from that position to succeed President Everett Case at Colgate University, where he had a successful career in educational administration. The diplomatic service suffered from his defection to education, but education has gained greatly.

Of the U.S. delegation I found each member interesting and worthwhile. It was my first opportunity to observe George Meany at close range, for whom I formed great respect. I developed affection and admiration for Mary Lord, with whom I worked in a variety of causes until her death in 1978. She was one of the most public-spirited and interesting women of our generation. It was a privilege to be associated with Philip Klutznick, a remarkable business leader from Chicago who has given much of his time to public service and to major responsibilities in B’nai B’rith. I formed an excellent opinion of Henry Cabot Lodge. He is a man of intellect, courage, and great ability. As chairman he was incisive and articulate. All in all he gave us excellent leadership and spoke on the principal occasions for the United States’ interest in a courageous manner. He was then at the center of the controversy (the cold war) we were having with the Russians.

The Russians were housed in a handsome mansion on Park Avenue and entertained frequently. Andrei Gromyko was the head of the Russian delegation at that time. Since we had known each other slightly in Washington during the war, he would always recognize me when I went through the receiving line. He had given two parties and at each of them I had been the single UN delegate to appear. On the third occasion, as I went down the line, Gromyko, obviously conscious that the rest of the delegation had cut the previous two parties, looked at me with a somewhat sardonic twinkle in his eye and said, “You here again?” As he was normally an impassive man, I chuckled to myself and related the experience to Cabot Lodge and the delegation the next morning for their amusement. In addition to the formal sessions, the formal meetings of the committees and subcommittees, and the plenary sessions, and in addition to the formal social affairs, a great deal of business was transacted by the delegates in the Delegates’ Lounge outside the General Assembly chambers. In this respect, the UN is similar to the U.S. Congress or, I suppose, to legislative bodies anyplace in the world. It was necessary to spend some time in the Delegates’ Lounge in informal conversation over a cup of coffee or a drink to iron out some misunderstanding in a committee discussion or to gather information that would be useful for the next committee session and in this way advance one’s work.

There were only 82 members of the UN at the Twelfth Session in contrast to the 150 or so members at the present. Nevertheless, the annual meetings of the General Assembly attracted to New York the leading world figures of the day: kings, queens, prime ministers, top journalists, intellectuals, representatives of various international organizations—all made their appearance in the UN, either in the corridors or in formal sessions during the weeks that the General Assembly met. Every day was a colorful scene regardless of what was going on. The delegates themselves were for the most part men and women of prominence in their own countries. Some countries followed our policy of having lay delegates, some followed the policy of having only professionals, but all countries whether or not they had professionals as official delegates had some of their principal statesmen there for all or part of the Twelfth Session. The opening statement for the United States at the General Assembly is made by the president or the secretary of state. Frequently the heads of state of other countries came to New York to make their delegations’ opening statements for the session, each enunciating the aims, purposes, and ambitions that his or her country held for that session. This provided a rare opportunity to see the great and near-great of the world in action, to hear them speak, and frequently to meet them.

I found my contact with many of the delegates stimulating and interesting, men such as Prince Wan of Thailand, tall, handsome, distinguished in appearance, warm and humane, universally recognized for his wisdom and experience. He perfectly illustrated the fact that small countries could make an uncommon contribution to the work of an international body by reason of the quality of their representation. In other words, it is not necessary to represent a major country to make an important contribution to world thinking. General Carlos Romulo of the Philippines, an old friend of mine, was also an active and influential figure among the delegates. After many years of diplomacy, he served as president of the University of the Philippines but is now again in public service as his country’s secretary of foreign affairs. He is one of the most durable of the statesmen of the World War II period.

A great deal of color and drama is present at a session of the General Assembly: the beautiful building in which the work is carried on; the cosmopolitan group of delegates representing now every conceivable corner of the globe, many of them very colorful and distinguished people, with their staffs; the appearance of top leadership on significant occasions. I remember the queen of England, speaking for the United Kingdom at the Twelfth Session, as did the king of Morocco for his nation. All of this imparts a sense of drama and importance, and inspires awe. The five months were provocative, enlightening, and exciting, but also very strenuous. I became convinced from my inside view that the reporting of the work of the UN is very inadequate and that therefore only the few people who have the opportunity to see the internal workings come to understand something of the UN’s nature. It is not a perfect instrument; as it is a relatively new agency still, anything like perfection would be miraculous. The only power that it actually has is the power of persuasion through world opinion, and we have seen such power effective on several occasions, though ineffective on others. I gained increasing respect for the UN as I became more familiar with it. It certainly facilitates quiet personal diplomacy along with public debate. I honestly believe that, given time and the support of the nations of the world, it can do much to build a peaceful and better world community.

With Karl Detzer, distinguished Hoosier author, just before he is awarded an honorary LL.D. degree by President John Ryan at Commencement, Fort Wayne campus, 1979.

Peter Fraenkel saw Mother and me off to Europe on the Queen Elizabeth, July, 1963.

At the board meeting of the International Association of Universities at the University of Moscow, 1964.

Members of Mortar Board with Mother, who was made an honorary member in 1964.

I still enjoy playing Santa Claus after a third of a century—and the suit still fits!

As surrogate for President Joseph Sutton, Commencement, Southeast campus, 1969.

At a chilly Little 500 race.

Congratulating Thomas D. Clark on completion of his history of Indiana University.

A pleasant privilege of my chancellorship is the reception of distinguished visitors, here the ambassador from Mali.

Hosting the Shenyang Acrobatic Troupe in Indianapolis, 1972.

A summer’s walk to work, with a pedometer registering the mileage.

A haircut at the Student Union Barbershop, 1980.

Lay delegates are rarely reappointed to the delegation of the UN. Perhaps it was unfair to Indiana University for me to have undertaken this assignment at a very dynamic period in the life of the institution; it would certainly not have been fair to my vice-presidential and other administrative colleagues to have extended this burden on them for a second year. Moreover, this service in a strict sense violated a principle enunciated by the university’s trustees that I should take on outside duties only if they were concerned with education. However, because of the special nature of this invitation, the trustees had been quite agreeable to my serving.

I maintained contact with Dag Hammarskjold until his death and active personal contact with Andy Cordier until his death recently, and throughout the years with Thanat Khoman. I also kept in touch with others with whom I had made friends there. My only other official work for the UN, however, came when the secretary general, Dag Hammarskjold, asked me to join what was designated as the Committee of Experts on the Review of the Activities and Organization of the Secretariat and to make recommendations as to how the UN Secretariat might function more effectively. This work began on May 17, 1960, and continued till 1961.

COMMITTEE OF EXPERTS TO REVIEW ACTIVITIES AND
ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT

Considerable criticism of the UN arose among member governments during the 1950s. The Russians, the English, and the Americans were especially critical of the lack of efficiency of its operation and its cost to member governments. As a consequence the Fourteenth Session of the General Assembly passed a resolution on December 5, 1959, requesting the secretary general “to appoint a committee of experts composed of six persons,” later made eight, “with broad and practical experience in various aspects of administration, chosen with due regard to geographical distribution in consultation with the respective Governments, to work together with the Secretary-General in reviewing the activities and organization of the Secretariat of the United Nations with a view to effecting or proposing further measures designed to insure maximum economy and efficiency” in the work of the organization and especially the Secretariat.³ The committee was to report to the secretary general, and it was expected that the committee would have provisional recommendations ready for the next session (the Fifteenth) of the UN General Assembly, and the final recommendations were to be made to the Sixteenth Session.

The four countries that sponsored the resolution—the U.S.S.R., the United Arab Republic, the United Kingdom, and the United States—were asked to send representatives, as were Colombia, France, Ghana, and India. Several months after the resolution was adopted, Andrew Cordier phoned and notified me that the State Department had submitted four names from which the committee member representing the U.S. would be selected and that I was one of them. Cordier hoped that I would be selected and, in that event, that I would accept. In due course Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, after consulting with our State Department and particularly with Cabot Lodge, invited me to join the group. I did so reluctantly because I was already committed to attend the third general conference of the International Association of Universities in Mexico City during early September and, following that, preparations were necessary for the Indiana General Assembly session from January to March.

The committee made an interim report on schedule to the Fifteenth Session of the United Nations General Assembly. However, at that session a new element was injected into our work. The Russians made an all-out attack on the Secretariat, its location, and the structure of the UN. Nikita Khrushchev, speaking for the Russians, declared that the single post of secretary general had outlived its usefulness and that the executive body of the UN should be made up of three persons: one representing the military blocs of the Western powers, one coming from the socialist states, and one from the neutralist countries. The Russians further recommended the UN should be moved to another location—perhaps Switzerland, Austria, or even the U.S.S.R. Our interim report helped to relieve some of the pressure for an immediate response to Khrushchev’s call for change, but this new turn of events entailed an expansion of the committee’s study and report for final action.

With our charge broadened, I felt I could not afford to give the resulting increased amount of time to the work of the committee and thus resigned in February, 1961. My replacement was L. M. Goodrich, professor of International Organization and Administration at Columbia University, who was an expert on the Charter of the United Nations and therefore admirably competent to deal with the newly raised questions on the structure itself, an entirely different matter from what our original charge had been, namely, the efficiency and operation of the Secretariat in its existing form. Other representatives also felt they had to resign at that time, but some original members continued, and a final report was made to the Sixteenth Session. I should add that the change in the nature of the work of the committee would have made it undesirable for me to continue to serve, even if I had had the time. I was completely out of sympathy with the Soviet recommendations and I could not have been an impartial participant.

For a year or two I maintained some personal contacts with the Secretariat and with members of the permanent delegations by stopping in occasionally at the Delegates’ Lounge and the General Assembly as long as the doorkeepers recognized me and thought I belonged there. But after a time my visits dwindled and then ceased. I doubt that I could find a doorkeeper who would recognize me now.

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1. An account in my notes made at the time about the Latin American participation is pertinent:

“The Latinos display the same lack of seriousness of purpose in an international conference that they do in civic affairs at home. They are full of speeches and of elaborate phrases of cooperation, but, unlike the other delegates, are likely to spend most of the night in the bar and consequently to miss the early morning sessions. Dean tells the amazing story of how the highest-ranking Latino, a Cuban who is second to Batista, ‘lined up’ the Latinos on the financial plan. He called them all into a room one day and said, ‘Now, we are Latinos together. When matters of principle and expressions of cooperation and so on are of concern, we like to walk in the front door with the greatest display, very obviously and ostentatiously, and make pretty speeches. But when anybody speaks of paying anything, we all run out the back door. Now, if we “belly-ache” all week, we won’t get anything adopted, we won’t have any plan at all, and we will go home with nothing. I don’t think my country will pay the one percent called for by the present proposal—in fact, I don’t have any idea that it will or can—but I am going to recommend it, and I want you all to do the same.’

“The value of the good neighbor policy is thus demonstrated in a most striking fashion. Each of the little Central and South American countries has a vote, and, by and large, all of them follow the United States out of gratitude for and interest and confidence in our intentions toward them. As we go into an era in which there will be more and more international organizations dealing with matters of grave concern to us, the vital significance of the good-neighbor policy becomes more apparent. The eighteen votes represented by these countries are invaluable to us in our position in the world.”

2. H. A. Wieschhoff was the acting director of the Department of Trusteeship and Information from the Non-Self-Governing Territories. He was listed as one of two secretaries of the Fourth Committee.

3. Resolution adopted by the General Assembly [on the report of the Fifth Committee (a/ 4336)] on December 5, 1959.