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One night in October 1956, still in white tie and tails, Lodge hurried to the U.N. from the Metropolitan Opera House to call for an immediate Security Council meeting to deal with the Israeli invasion of Egypt. When Russia's Arkady Sobolev strode into the Security Council waving a wire-service report that Britain and France were threatening to invade Egypt, Lodge promptly added to his Israel-must-withdraw resolution a provision calling upon all U.N. members (i.e., Britain and France) to withhold assistance from Israel "as long as it has not complied with this resolution." Britain vetoed. During the painful weeks that followed, Lodge found himself voting with Sobolev against historic U.S. allies, had the task of working out the details of the British, French and Israeli withdrawals. "I forgot what sleep was like," he recalls.
Logic & Flattery. The debates and vote counts that make up the televisable drama of the U.N. add up to only a small part of Delegate Lodge's job. As in the U.S. Senate, most of the real persuading is done in private talks. More important than a flair for public speaking, the U.S.'s delegate to the U.N. must have a flair for private persuasion, whether through logic, browbeating, charm, force of personality, flattery, or any combination of these. Since he has to keep in mind not only tomorrow's vote but the possibly more important votes to be counted next week, next month, next year, he has to work incessantly at building up good will and avoiding hurt feelings. Says Lodge: "I walk on eggs some of the time."
Accordingly, much of Lodge's U.N. diplomacy is carried on through parties. He has to attend other delegations' parties, sometimes two or three a day, holds frequent gatherings of his own. Famous among U.N. delegations are Lodge's "sing fests," at which he lets go in a sonorous baritone in any of several languages, urges guests to let go, too. Even shy, reserved Secretary-General Hammarskjold has been known to join in a chorus. Lodge's favorite solo: a faintly bawdy ditty called She's a Personal Friend of Mine.
The Precious Asset. When Lodge first went to the U.N., the occasional lapses into aloofness that damaged his Senate career annoyed some of his fellow delegates. He was distant with his staffers, sometimes plunged ahead without advising them or seeking their advice. But Lodge has grown impressively during his five years at the U.N. Despite his early success, Cabot Lodge counts among the late bloomers, those who keep on growing at ages when many men's characters and opinions freeze into rigidity. Today, a mellowed, warmer, more tactful and more patient Cabot Lodge is a superlative operator in the U.N. mazes.
But the U.S.'s most valuable asset in the U.N. is not any individual; it is the fact that, in the struggle with the Soviet Union, the U.S. has a basic majority. The U.S. has never lost a vote in either the Security Council or the veto-free General Assembly in a head-on political contest with the Soviet Union. In the Security Council, the Russians have cast 85 vetoes; the U.S. has never cast any (other vetoes by permanent council members: France, four; Britain, two; China, one).