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Athens, outwardly calm and even prosperous, was gripped by growing uneasiness. Late into the night, Athenians crowded open-air cafés, sipping Turkish coffee and talking about the still-falling drachma, the bad Government, the bad opposition, all the daily disasters. Few bothered to talk about U.N. Said one of them: "First we believed U.N. would end power politics. Now nobody is satisfied. The left feels that the Greek question is an internal problem, but U.N. disagrees. The right feels that the Greek question is an international problem, but Gromyko disagrees."
History's verdict on U.N. was still in the jury room, but a lot of the world's people were discouraged by what Gromyko's veto had done to it. Said a disabled veteran in Berlin: "The U.N. is a Punch & Judy show. The Americans ought to hit the Russians over the head, finally."
The Keynote. Yet an air of solid habit had begun to pervade U.N.'s halls. Faces grew familiar. Delegates had learned their way to conference rooms, bars and washrooms. Recently, when an ultra-orthodox Moslem member of the Egyptian delegation spread his prayer rug just off the press bar, nobody paid any attention (except a helpful British journalist who told the Moslem which way was east).
If nothing else, U.N. kept busy.
¶ ECOSOC (Economic & Social Council) was riding off in all directions. Its Narcotic Drugs Commission discussed the establishment of a commission to investigate the effects of the coca leaf-chewing habit, prevalent in some Latin American countries. Its Committee on One Day's Pay Proposal was proposing a committee to propose that all the world's citizens donate one day's pay for needy mothers & children. ECOSOC has 17 other commissions and subcommissions.
¶ UNSCOP (Palestine Commission) was holding closed meetings in Geneva.
¶ WHO (World Health Organization) was trying to be born, formally.
¶ UNESCO (designed to achieve peace by its influence on the minds of men) studied the jungles of the Amazon basin and other interesting matters.
¶ The Security Council Membership Committee was considering applications for admission by Eire, Portugal, Trans-Jordan, Italy and Austria (Russia was prepared to blackball all of them) and Albania, Outer Mongolia, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria (which would run into U.S. opposition). The only prospective member nobody wanted to sandbag was Yemen.
¶ The Security Council itself, apart from its performance on Greece, registered one achievement: following its stern injunction, the Dutch and Indonesians have concluded a truce (TIME, Aug. n) and the Indonesians announced they were ready to abide by a U.N. decision. The Security Council had been able to agree on action only because no primary Russian interest was involved.
The keynote as U.N. entered its third year was struck by Secretary-General Trygve Lie who last week issued his annual statement on the state of the United Nations. The keynote was a gloomy kind of optimism: