The Indonesian case before the U.N. Security Council simmered down. A Dutch representative described the American attitude: "At first, the U.S. reacted like a New England parent surprised by a young man trifling with his daughter's honor. Now the State Department's attitude has changed. It became: 'What are we going to do about the baby?' "
After pondering the U.N. cease-fire order for five days, the Dutch last week told the council that they would cease firing in Indonesia only in their own good time. In Java, that meant midnight, Dec. 31, 1948. In Sumatra it would take two or three days longer.
Russia's Yakov Malik, who has himself repeatedly told U.N. to go jump into Lake Success, was mightily indignant at The Netherlands' defiance of the council's authority. His similes were not up to Andrei Vishinsky's high standards, but he did his best. Cried Malik: "The Dutch reply is a cynical request by an aggressor for two or three days more to kill off his victims completely . . . Do the U.S. and Britain intend, like Pontius Pilate, to wash their hands of the matter?"
There were indeed some ablutionary gestures in the council. Britain, France and Belgium opposed any further action against The Netherlands for the present; the U.S. did not want to quarrel with its Western allies. The Dutch meanwhile announced that Prime Minister Willem Drees would personally go to Indonesia to settle the islands' future. The way things looked in Indonesia last week (see below), that was not impossible; but it would take some doing. India's Prime Minister Pandit Nehru last week called for a conference of 14 Asiatic and Middle Eastern nations to discuss ways & means of helping Indonesia's republicans. Burma's ex-Premier Ba Maw announced that a Burmese expeditionary force (including 100 women) would leave shortly for Indonesia to fight the Dutch. An official spokesman, however, threw cold water on that idea. Said he: "We have our own lawlessness to stamp out."
In Paris, the gloom surrounding the council's final sessions at the Palais de Chaillot inspired yet another figure of speech, less homespun than the Hollander's simile about the New England domestic problem. The scene, said one British delegate, was like Haydn's Farewell Symphony (in which the musicians leave the orchestra pit one by one until only two violins and the conductor are left). "The speeches started in crescendo. Then people began slipping away one by one. At the end there was no one left and nothing to say."
The council adjourned, to meet again at Lake Success this week. Some of its members boarded the Queen Mary at Cherbourg and promptly got stuck for twelve hours in a mudbank. That was a simile come to life—and a lot more accurate than the ones the diplomats thought up.