COLD WAR DEFROSTER

...Lie has been a resourceful bargainer ever since, and today as Secretary General of the United Nations his goal is the greatest prize of them all—nothing less than peace itself...

...Few men from the West do that these days...

...At about the same time he was expounding it, Moscow put out a feeler (through a New York Times dispatch) indicating a willingness to negotiate...

...The world's "little people," for whom Trygve Lie had become chief lobbyist, were also hopeful...

...There were tears on the faces of the crowd...

...The defeatists now have to "show cause" for their fatalism...

...He is neither a diabolically deceptive agent of the Kremlin nor an innocent, soft-headed, appeasing babe-in-the-woods...

...During the Berlin blockade crisis...

...Actually, the United States has not been adamant on this question—we'll not use the veto, that is, on the crucial Soviet demand that Red China be admitted to the UN—and admission seems not impossible...

...This grass-roots optimism appears to have been more realistic than the pundits' pessimism...

...The real Trygve Lie is a happy contrast to either of the two images presented to the public by hostile commentators...

...The Kremlin expressed willingness to negotiate on the crucial East-West problems...

...He proved himself a shrewd bargainer who could wangle a hard-bitten fishmonger into knocking a few kroner off the price of a barrel of herring...

...Me has traveled widely since, as a relief and reconstruction worker in 16 European countries, and as a special correspond' ent in Turkey, Palestine, India, China, and Japan, He has written for the Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, Time, and Newsweek...

...If the China issue is not solved in the next few weeks, Russia probably will not participate when the UN Assembly meets in September...

...Herbert V. Evatt had appealed repeatedly for negotiations...

...It was not to promote surrender, but to contemplate these many sides, that he planned what the Christian Science Monitor has called "one of history's most notable pilgrimages in search of peace...

...When he fights for negotiation of the most crucial differences today, therefore...

...Lie welcomed Churchill's proposal with the statement that he favored great power negotiations "all the time and on all levels—the top level, the middle level, and the lower level—inside the UN and outside the UN...

...Known as "a guy who responds to people," Lie gets on well with the wide assortment of UN delegates and frequently goes directly to them to talk matters over, just as he did when he decided it was time to talk man-to-man to Stalin as well as to the leaders of the West...

...Nevertheless, persistence paid off...

...Perhaps contemplation of these facts led Lie last December to comment that the world had reached the point "for a step-to-step resumption of real negotiation between both sides...

...Stalin could have slammed the door...

...now, at 55, he has had 45 years' experience with the modestly socialistic Norwegian Labor Party...

...A politician even since, Lie has refuted disparagement of local politics with the remark that he came out of it—and may one day go back to it...

...But lack of such a campaign also suggests that the Russian may really be in the mood to talk...

...John Rankin of Mississippi went all the way and claimed Lie was a Communist...

...This is the tone of quotations I have seen in papers from Argentina and Australia, Colombia and Czechoslovkia, India and Mexico, and throughout all Europe...

...This in effect would end the organization...

...However, it wasn't too difficult to understand the Administration's lukewarmness towards Lie's Moscow trip on several counts...

...He was once on the Oslo city council...

...Lie has not the slightest intention of 'appeasing' Russia in the sense of persuading the Western powers to pay a solely Russian-dictated price for renewed peace negotiation," wrote William R. Frye, the Monitor's UN correspondent...

...But much of the British and American press was skeptical...

...Lie's statements in Russia were so cagey that the Soviet press could make no claim of UN support against "warmongers...

...The State Department was wary, with considerable reason...

...Three thousand of the UN staff and visitors, including many of the "little people" of this country, were out to hail his mission when Lie returned...

...Today, any "negotiated peace" in the cold war is viewed as almost traitorous...

...A strident Moscow "peace offensive," if planned for the London conference, was spiked...

...Faulty as it is, the UN remains a forum for both sides in the cold war...

...For a while they got the usual treatment—a double stiff-arm of charges that they were "unrealistic" and "appeasers...

...Worse, the McCarthys had produced in Acheson the feeling that he must prove his red-blooded, chest-thumping patriotism...

...Lie and Dr...

...The UN leader is a big genial fellow whose weight has been estimated all the way from 220 to 250 pounds...

...in the Security Council in early 1946, Lie reported this reaction: "I kept looking from one face to another and saying to myself, 'Where are the great men, where are the statesmen, where are the people with vision who will save this thing?' " By 1950, he must have decided he would try to fill the role himself...

...Four nations—Britain, Norway, Yugo-slovia, and India have voted to replace the Chiang delegates with the spokesmen for Communist China Two more votes, probably soon to be forthcoming from Egypt and France, are- necessary...

...In his teens, Lie campaigned for a socialist teacher, Johan Evje, who was like a father to him...

...Negotiation, he felt, was not the same as concession, though the words seemed identical in the West's dictionary...

...Too many Congressmen, blind to the ideological temptations for the world's dispossessed, were under the dangerous illusion that peace might have a cheap price tag...

...He started young...

...II Wisely restrained, Lie himself has said it will take two or three months for more dramatic results— if any—to be forthcoming...

...At best, conservative American papers damned Lie with faint hopes...

...Lie is struggling for the very hope that there will be a table where "enemies" can sit down to talk together in the future...

...Perhaps...

...Unfortunately (since it might appear to the uninformed that Lie has pro-Soviet desires), most press reporting has emphasized his discussions of the possibility of breaking the UN deadlock...

...In most of the rest of the world, however, the press expressed hope, sympathy, and good wishes...

...But after seeing the personal bickering ROBERT ROOT, executive editor of Woridover Press, has been studying and reporting world affairs for nearly a decade and a half, beginning in 1937 when a Pulitzer travel scholarship took him to Europe, including the Balkans and Russia, for a year...

...When James Byrnes welcomed the new Secretary General to the United States, the then Secretary of State tried to emphasize the potential significance of Lie's position by referring to him as "the most powerful man in the world...

...Sen...

...Lie, son of a carpenter who wandered away when Trygve was small, got a practical education in dealing with Russians when he was a youngster...

...There had been no real diplomatic intercourse between East and West for two years...

...In a sense, Winston Churchill was following this lead when several weeks later he proposed top-level discussion of atomic control and the underlying problem of reaching a live-and-let-live agreement between Russia and the West...

...The sad result was that the Government, in spite of growing American power, was moving from a position of "no negotiation except from strength" to "no negotiation period...

...He was one of that world-wide socialist group, including Ernest Bevin and Norman Thomas and Kurt Schumacher, that Stalinists habitually find infinitely more objectionable than capitalists...

...Russia put out a trial balloon which resulted in the quiet Jessup-Malik negotiations that ended that crisis and brought what the West still calls its greatest victory of the cold war...

...For what it is worth, the famous French journalist, Genevieve Tabouis, wrote that Schuman was probably telling Lie that France would not oppose such representation...

...But there is a considerable portion of humanitarian idealism in him too...

...Because of the Arabs' recent shift eastwards, Egypt might be easy...

...By "doing something," Lie helped dissipate the feeling that the cold war had reached an impasse at which it must turn hot...

...This is the basic Lie philosophy...

...To anyone who knows there is a difference—and a deep difference —between a Communist and a Socialist, such talk is ridiculous...

...Above everything else the UN stands for the negotiation and conciliation of differences...

...Behind all the aims of his trip, of course, is the ultimate goal of a just and honorable peace...

...Fortunately, Lie's favorite proverb is: "A snuffbox has many sides...

...He was choked with emotion at their tribute and almost broke down...

...Once he spent a week-end driving from delegate to delegate to get their views on a lively issue...

...Stalin had given many an indication that agreements were for him mere Machiavellian steps to wider power...

...In France, three million war veterans sent Lie a unanimously adopted resolution of support...

...Already, Lie has several accomplishments to his credit: • He not only pierced the iron curtain, but got a warm welcome on the other side...

...His realism is that of the politician who has fought up all the way from the ward level...

...One radio commentator, remarking on Lie's recent peace-seeking trip to Moscow, referred darkly to the fact that the UN official "seems to get along well with Stalin...

...We have made it clear that while we will continue to vote against the admission of Red China, we would not invoke our veto power if a majority agreed to accept her...

...You do not know how many thousands and thousands of mothers wrote letters to me, how many groups sent me flowers," Lie reported on his return...

...Up and down the backs of people all over the world, Trygve Lie's imagination and daring had sent not more dread tremors of cold-war chill but thrilled shivers of hope that the world would yet find a way to honorable peace...

...Trygve Lie has been characterized by those who know him well as an "old-fashioned Social Democrat...

...It was typical of Lie that he took off on his recent trip in the face of bitter criticism and predicted failure, for he is a man of great patience and iron nerves...

...William F. Knowland of California sneeringly dismissed him as an ap-peaser...

...One cynical, hard-boiled character who spends a good deal of time at Lake Success said that shivers went down his own back...

...Russian, Swedish, and Finnish workmen stayed at the Lie boarding house, and it became quite a center for the Labor Party...

...Such was the hope that the onetime Norwegian labor leader inspired...

...and they support him...

...And after he had spoken, women ran up to kiss his hand...

...Six years ago any suggestion of a more imaginative approach to Axis defeat was damned as appeasement, though calmer judgment today indicates that a less rigidly negative course might have shortened the war and greatly strengthened the hope for building a democratic Germany...

...Lie bravely supports the dreams of the world's masses for something better than deadlock and conflict...

...The world would be a lot better today if there had been more real negotiations among the great powers during the last three years...

...Those who favor only greater armament and rigid rejection of all negotiation are liable to forget that this peace, and not a bloody victory, is also their own professed goal...

...Without it, the gulf between East and West would become as hopelessly unbridgeable as many think it already is...

...The United States' new tough, inflexible policy of "total diplomacy" is like that earlier tough, inflexible policy, "unconditional surrender," its first cousin...