(See Cover)
From high in the dome of the General Assembly Building, bracelets of light beamed down upon the people below. From rows of windowed rooms in the fluted concave walls peered the camera eyes of the world. Against a starkly simple backdrop of the leaf-rimmed United Nations emblem, the Secretary-General of the U.N. and the newly elected Assembly President, Ireland's Frederick H. Boland, sat like somber judges at a high marbled desk, while before them, dwarfed by the cathedral-like immensity of the hall and by their own sense of impending history, the delegations of 96 nations of the planet noiselessly took their seats.
Not the pomp of ancient Rome or the jeweled brilliance of the great courts of France could shadow the moment; the eye of history could scarcely encompass the spectacle of so many potentates, Presidents and dictators. There sat Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, his pink skull fringed with white, his face now frozen as a death mask, now galvanized into full-muscled motion. Behind him, rust-haired Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia posed self-assured and well fed. Scattered across the green-carpeted room, the members of the satellite pack waited with dull docility, their reflexes string-tied to the master puppeteer: Rumania's Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Hungary's Janos Kadar, Byelorussia's Kirill Mazurov, Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov, Albania's Mehmet Shehu, Czechoslovakia's Antonin Novotny. Symbolically, Poland's Wladyslaw Gomulka, his frosty-white hair matted in an undisciplined shag, took his seat in a distant corner, tied to Khrushchev by ideology but less than the others by strings.
One after the other, the representatives of all nations assumed their positions, like figures from a child's geography book. Each was marked by his heritage and by the power of his own historical thrust. Each, by his ideological kinship or by his ostentatious neutralism, had a role to play in the world power struggle.
Something New. Now heard was a new sound, the unmistakable counterpoint of jungle drums: the throb of Africa. It first came through in the pavanlike procession in which the delegations of twelve new African nations* marched across the floor to take their places for the first time, each aware that his own nation, however young, inexperienced, poor or thumbnail-sized, is armed with a vote as meaningful as that of any of the great powers. And while U.N. votes are but feathers in the world balance of power, the world would read them as the visible talismans of cold war gains or losses.
The new members enlarged to 22 the number of African members of the U.N., upsetting all previous power alignments in the Assembly. Africa is something new, something unpredictable. That is why Nikita Khrushchev, with his imperious call to his Communist bloc to join him at the meeting, had journeyed to New York. That is why so many of the world leaders tagged along behind him. And that is why the President of the U.S., in the final four months of his power, put the prestige of his nation and the free world to the test in one of contemporary history's most dramatic confrontations.
On this battleground last week, the U.S. threw the hopes and plans of Khrushchev off balance for the world to see.