THE. G. S.
P., H.
"It is only men of ardent minds who are fit for difficult tasks." The New York newspapers called him "Dag," but no one else dared to address the Secretary General of the United Nations by...
...Eventually he was forced into a "deal" with the Casablanca powers...
...While he was using them to give the Secretary functions he never was intended to have, he educated them in their wise use...
...For eight years the lonesome man, aloof on the 38th floor of the East River palace, who had been hired to run the technical apparatus of the world diplomatic meeting place, was everything the United Nations may ever -PALMERSTON stand for...
...The details may be controversial and the result dubious, but the principle of a UN force—as used in Sinai and in the Congo—was established...
...In an age of mass communications he had to operate on a stage where the primadonnas of propaganda rhetoric were running an uninhibited show—and often had to help them down from their self-imposed pedestals...
...the more difficult his position became in his later years, the firmer did he grasp the truth of his Quixotism...
...Never before had the United Nations started military action...
...He even went 'farther: his action against Lumumba and his action against Tshombe constituted direct intervention by the UN in the internal affairs of a country...
...In this venture he encountered the wrath of Khrushchev...
...to please a hundred masters and to be bigger than all of them...
...he could not hold together the UN force in the Congo, and could not impose his policies on aides who still were controlled by the governments which had "loaned" them...
...The Charter does not say that the UN should, or even is permitted, to do any of these things...
...Here is real tragedy — a terrible hubris which perverted the original aim into the pursuit of opposite means, and a fall which seems so logical a denouement that—contrary to the stereotype most used in his eulogies—one is tempted to speak of his timely death...
...nor is it necessarily a bad thing that Hammarskjold, after giving offense to the Russians and thereby earning the applause of the U.S...
...instead of separating the combatants, its troops became the instrument of one side in a civil war...
...BUT THE UNCOMMITTED nations made poor use of the opportunity which Hammarskjold offered them...
...the province was standing in the way of unifying the Congo...
...The New York newspapers called him "Dag," but no one else dared to address the Secretary General of the United Nations by any but his father's name...
...We are concerned, however, and deeply moved by the dialectics of power which struck back at Hammarskjold in this episode...
...His SYSTEMATIC effort to strengthen the voice and weight of the small, uncommitted nations received involuntary help from the frequent stalemates in the Security Council where the big power veto eventually defeated its purpose...
...He also created the first international police forces under international command...
...became their shield and sword...
...The Secretariat itself under him became—from a refuge for New Deal and Popular Front survivors— the nucleus of an international civil service whose members have forgotten which country they came from...
...DAG HAMMARSKJOLD was a man of old, aristocratic Europe, but in his vision he was a man of tomorrow...
...He hoped that in the long run this development, despite its initial unpleasantness, would free the Secretary from big power dictation, and the United Nations from being the cockpit of big power antagonisms...
...It happened that after such an inconclusive Council meeting the G.S...
...His diplomatic methods were "quiet," in his own word, which was a polite synonym for secret...
...the small nations now could make the UN cause their cause, and the G.S...
...More lonely than ever, he now was trying to force on the reluctant Africans the solution which he held was right, not only for Africa, but for the United Nations...
...This is what counted for Hammarskjold...
...it is in line with our policy that the UN should take steps to stamp out these vestiges of reaction...
...By assuming these responsibilities, Hammarskjold filled the indifferent form of the UN with content and direction...
...The membership of nations all but doubled and nearly realized the Secretary's principle of "universality," shifting the power balance in the Assembly from the bigger, older, more advanced nations to the smaller, younger, less developed countries...
...In referring to him, diplomats, personnel, newspapermen, and underlings knowingly said "the G.S...
...simply would announce what he was going to do, with or without much of a mandate, and the big powers, afraid of the responsibility, were glad that he assumed the role which they eventually came to begrudge him...
...to win power without starting out from power...
...Not the specific defeat which Hammarskjold had inflicted on Soviet imperialism in the Congo, but rather its principle—the emergence of a powerful new force, this threat of a law above the nations, this prospect of a bulwark defending small nations —brought Khrushchev's shoe on the table...
...We are not concerned here with the question of right or wrong...
...press, now became unpopular with that same press...
...In defending Hammarskjold, Madame Bandaranaike, prime minister of Ceylon, said: "The UN had no choice...
...His work was to reconcile the irreconcilables...
...They accepted his help as coming to them because of their past suffering, but not as a program on which to build a new world...
...To make them stronger for the role he had assigned to them, the G. S. created an economic underpinning which at the same time armed the Secretariat with some sinews of war— money to spend for projects of industrial development...
...He could not persuade Nasser to allow the passage of Israeli ships through the Canal...
...He may have lost the ground under one foot, but he never the lost the stars from his eye's glance...
...after a few years he was filled with a sense of mission which sometimes led him into righteousness...
...His vision went far beyond his mandate and he construed the Charter, the resolutions of the Security Council and his job in broader terms than the founders dared write into the articles...
...We also suspect that its actions were engineered by foreign interests...
...He came to his job with nothing but one of the best minds available among suitably neutral diplomats...
...in order to buy their continued support for his fartherreaching plans, he had to conduct a policy which took him even farther away from his original conceptions...
...Whenever their short-term interests or views differed from the interest of the world organization, they deserted him...
...Thus he gave the small nations, which of themselves have little power, an opportunity to impose their moral pressure for causes often transcending their narrow interests...
...or reverently "He...
...to organize a world which wanted to live in turmoil...
Vol. 8 • September 1961 • No. 4
