SECRETARY-GENERAL A DON QUIXOTE IN THE CAUSE OF PEACE

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27471, 4 October 1954, Page 10

SECRETARY-GENERAL A DON QUIXOTE IN THE CAUSE OF PEACE

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As another General Assembly opens it is not without profit and instruction —sometimes a compelling sym pathy— to read Mr Trygve Lies revelations of his se . ven .. 7 ea L s nit ed Secretary-General of the Unitea Nations The chief impression they give™ of Mr Lie tilting at the wmamills in a perhaps exalted c J >nC^, p t l i ° n of his high office; but the note of disillusionment is unmistakable as one watches him contrive his undoing between the upper and nether zones of the cold war. For Mr Lie. a “ < £. du i® to his lights, was neve . r ajra'd to take sides in the cause of P eace - "“5 in this company he could be most in As C an e historical document his book adds curiously little to what could be found in the mountains of Unitea Nations paper, though those who regard the organisation as the prototype of the new “open diplomacy will be surprised by some of his backstage confidences. More illuminating examples could be drawn from the normal traffic of the corridors; but here Mr Lie had no place. It was in his eyrie at the Manhattan headquarters, or previously in the bomb-sight factory at Lake Success, that he sought to exert his influence on the leaders or delegations. Sometimes, he was ready to take a decision at the conference table out of his concern- for the United Nations view; as the cleavage between east and west, deepened he went direct to the Governments with often ingenious and sometimes brave proposals in an effort to stem the tide. And, on his own showing, there were precious few occasions when he succeeded. Entrenched Positions No-one knows better than Mr Lie that the Great Powers and, indeed, most of the . smaller Powers come into the councils of the United Nations with prepared and usually concerted positions, which may be .modified to some extent by the frictions of debate. Although the Charter has not been beyond some vigorous stretching, it was not likely that these positions would be influenced by the secretariat, and in the capitals Mr Lie merely found them more deeply entrenched. He was constantly attempting to introduce into the charged arena a United Nations political factor, as something above the sum of its membership; and, if Mr Lie was often exasperated with the Great Powers, they on occasion could be equally exasperated with him. The United Nations may well lack a sense of humour, but it is not always the solemn place that Mr Lie’s self-absorbed study makes it. Only he, from his central position, could have written this book; yet as the procession of statesmen and diplomatists passed, one feels that he has missed a rare opportunity of portraying the real stuff of the organisation. Amid all its personalities through the seven years (and 60 delegations could not be without some colour and life) the only figure to emerge to size is Mr Lie himself—impulsive and often shrewd, but like the most stubborn men capable of a sudden about-face. “The world wants peace” was his slogan and obsession; but his encounters have a strangely flat and remote air, a suggestion of intangibles, just as the United Nations is remote. Describing his visit to London in 1950 with his 10-point peace memorandum, he writes: “Mr Attlee was pleasant and attentive but had little to say. ... Mr Attlee nodded in agreement, or seeming agreement. He thought there might be much in what I said.” Conception of Duties

The essence of Mr Lie’s reminiscences is his conception of his duties as Secretary-General, on whom the Charter conferred “world political responsibilities which no individual, no representative of a single nation ever had before.” He was certainly given more initiative than anything known by the League of Nations (he regards Sir Eric Drummond as a classicist in the international field), but some might demur at his assessment of his duties and exercise of them, whatever his idealism and devotion to the United Nations cause. On his election at the first Assembly in London he sought a middle course. He would take a pragmatic and open-minded way: “I would listen to all my advisers but be directed by none.” However, the first winds of the cold war sharpened Mr Lie’s political instinct, seated in his wide experience of Government office m Norway. In the succession of international crises he is always, some-

times unwittingly, the politician jpi i dom the administrator or civil ' and, such is man’s ingratitude, h e J” I creasely became a symbol of east-wiX ' dissension rather than its exerciser 1 This process was inevitable O nr a Mr Lie left the control room to taka f command on the bridge, alreadly hnth. ' disputed by the Great Powers; it one thing to contend with them and i quite another to give counsel as Ser. I retary-General. No-one could h av 2 g had better intentions, yet this record shows vividly what the loss of detach, ment can mean. From being “Mos* cow’s man” in the eyes of the United States for his dogged advocacy of p e . king’s claim to the Chinese seat—a* advocacy abandoned in disgust when Chinese Communists crossed the Yalu —he reached a point where Russia** veto was cast against an extension of his term and the United States openly threatened to use the veto against any other candidate. Resort was had t© the Assembly; and for two years he remained persona non grata to the Communist States, an impossible situation, described by Mr Lie with sorrow and anger. By now he had lost his independent position as Secretary-General and as he says, had become a “political football” in the Korean imbroglio. Mr Lie states that he still stands by his denunciation of Communist aggressionbut Russia as a member State would hardly love him for it. His sudden resignation, offered in the interests of ’ Great-Power harmony—of which there was no sign—was characteriMically impulsive. The secretariat was beset by the witch hunts, and Mr Lie bowing, in the opinion of many, to American feeling, discharged a number of its members, who would now be described by Senator McCarthy as “fifth-amendment Communists.” There were more human reasons for his retirement from the fray. “I was fed up,” he writes. “I knew the signs—my irritation at the Soviet needling my feeling that the permanent delegates generally were losing stature... it was time for a change.” What Might Have Been It is largely a story of what might harve been. -Mr Lae is convinced that had even a small force been placed at the disposal of the Security Council under article 43 much might have been avoided; equally, had Peking been granted the Chinese seat there would almost certainly have been no war in Korea. It is also evident that he was far more reticent at his press conferences than was supposed. President Truman, speaking on the Potsdam conference, once told him that he would have granted Russia a loan of 6,000,000,000 dollars had he not had a “slap in the face.” When Mr Lie told Stalin of this during his “peace mission” the Generalissimo said that it was too late; Russia now needed trade, not money, “though if the dollars or credit came along . . and it was made clear to him that both Stalin and Mr Molotov regarded his peace memorandum as an “Anglo-Saxon” document. When the Acheson plan gave added powers to the Assembly, General MacArthur, then at the height of the Korean campaign, wrote to the Secre-tary-General urging that standing forces be raised under the United Nations command. He indicated his own willingness to command them. Through the book there is a recurring theme of irritation with, and dften open criticism of, the British position in many of these problems. Mr Lie during the day? of the last Labour Government always maintained that Britain could play a more conciliatory part, and in private he did not conceal his view that Bevin “was not a United Nations man.” One now gets the impression there was more than met the eye in the rivalry between these former trades union leaders. Mr Lie, always the politician, describes how during the Palestine invasion he had sent an emissary to London in an effort to soften the British attitude. “Sir Stafford Gripps, I knew, was already leading a group of his colleagues into open attacks on Bevin’s Palestine position”—and the emissary had seen Sir Stafford Cripps first. The Foreign Secretary not unnaturally wished to know' why. Mr Lie clearly feels that his special position was not sufficiently recognised by Britain—and would be doubly nettled by this after his war years in London. Neither Sir Alexander Cadogan nor a close friend like Sir Gladwyn Jebb escapes his barb; they were always having to say “no” to him. He is more indulgent towards the Americans; and the New York headquarters into which Mr Lie put so much energy and zeal will remember him as a Secretary-General who attempted the impossible.