UNITED NATIONS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 77, Issue 6974, 6 October 1948, Page 3

UNITED NATIONS

PARLIAMENT OF MEN AGENT OF THE PEOPLE Well, it’s happened, and you’re there—or let us imagine that it has. Someone has insisted on looking after the children, the farm, the machinery, the office—on taking over your work, in fact. Off you fly on a trip to the Old Country, dropping down on the way at New York. An obliging second cousin who turns up in that city offers to pilot you out to Long Island, to see a little of the United Nations at work. So there you are, at Flushing Meadows (a good mile from la Guardia Airport), walking through the grounds where the last World’s Fair was held, said Mr H. Williams, chief of the European Section, Radio Division, United Nations Secretariat, in a recent broadcast talk. The one Fair building left had latterly been accommodating skating rinks. Then two years ago, (to the natural dismay of the skaters), the City of New York offered to have it converted into a temporary meeting place for the General Assembly of the United Nations. Why temporary? Because United Nations, like many of us, has had an acute housing problem to solve. After long search and debate, a surprise gift of 17 acres in New York City (on the East River) was accepted as the site for the permanent headquarters. This land has now been cleared and building will start as soon as financial arrangements are completed. But, meanwhile, the General Assembly meets at Flushing Meadows, where you are, while most other bodies, including the Councils and the Secretariat, work half an hour further out on Long Island in premises leased from the Sperry Gyroscope Company—which we shall see later on. » It’s a sunny day at Flushing Meadows. A fountain is playing, and a- few United Nations security guards in grey-blue uniforms are directing late visitors. But what intrigues you most (as you walk up from the car park) is the lively show of colour where the flags of the 58 states now members of the United Nations, are rippling in the breeze—all colours and combinations of colours flying from a circle of tall white flagpoles. “Fancy all those countries!” you exclaim. “Yes”, says the cousin, “and fancy all those countries, in spite of their different ways, binding themselves to work together for peace, and by and large beginning to do it”. You pause to pick out the New Zealand flag and the few others you’re sure of. Then you shield your eyes from the sun to look up at a new flag fly- j ing from the Assembly building itself. I It is a light fresh blue, carrying in white a projection of the world resting in olive branches, the flag of the United Nations Everyman’s other flag, so to speak, which Incidentally Everyman will soon be able to see, now that more are being made. Simultaneous Interpretation Presentjy you are inside the Assembly Hall, with a few hundred other members of the public. A neighbour nods towards the delegate speaking from the rostrum and whispers: “He’s talking Spanish”. Then the cousin hands you a small, black bakelite box, says quietly, “English on point 2” and helps to adjust your headphones. You turn the knob to point 2, and, sure enough, you hear a voice speaking in English—the voice of the simultaneous interpreter keeping half a sentence behind the original, like his colleagues translating into French, and Russian.

The scene is one to remember—the lofty hall with a large United Nations emblem at the end facing you and three men at a high table beneath it. In the centre is the President of the Assembly. On the right is the Sec-retary-General of the United Nations, Trygve Lie, and on the left his Executive Assistant, Mr Andrew Cordier, the man chiefly responsible to Mr Lie for organising each Assembly. Facing them, at the back, are the public seats where you are and the press gallery above, where press and radio correspondents are listeningover their headphones, doodling, and making notes for their reports. Finally, immediately below and in front of the speaker are the representatives to the General Assembly, probably about 250 men and perhaps 20 women present, sitting at the tables marked Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia and so on.

What does the General Assembly do, you wonder? Well, it is the closest approach yet to Tennyson’s “Parliament of Man”. It meets in regular session in September of each year, for about two months, to receive reports from all other United Nations bodies and from the Specialised Agencies (the International Labour Organisation and so on) —in a word, to examine and advance the work of the United Nations in the whole astonishingly wide range of its responsibilities. The machinery for keeping the peace, for promoting world trade and protecting minorities, or else the control of narcotic drugs and the plight of tens of millions of undernourished children. It will note that the support given to the “United Nations Appeal for Children” by New Zealand and very many other countries has been excellent. All these matters and many more are studied by the Assembly, which then recommends a line of action to other United Nations organs or to member states. Each nation has one vote—decisions are made by a simple majority or, for the most important questions, a two-thirds majority. Back in the hall, the representative of Magellan is talking about health, and you prick your ears up again. Briefly he commends the report of the World Health Organisation on stamping out the cholera epidemic in Egypt, a .good example of what only an international body can achieve. As soon as the seriousness of the outbreak was realised, the World Health Organisation had quantities of anticholera serum and other medical supplies flown to Egypt from the United States, the Soviet Union, China and elswhere—and soon the epidemic had been brought under control. The people netlr you look impressed, and rightly so. All-round co-operation by governments and experts led to effective action, just as it regularly does in the other specialised agencies—the Food and Agricultural Organisation, Unesco, the International Civil Aviation Organisation, and so on. ( Continued on Page 4)