THE U. N.'S HAMMARSKJOLD

...The effectiveness of the U.N.'s present approach to the Egyptian crisis, which has been largely shaped by Hammarskjold, is doubted by many...

...It becomes a necessity in a job wheie saving face is important, where sparring for time is often obligatory because failure cannot be admitted, and where he must probe for openings in situations that have been dumped into his lap because they seem hopeless...

...On his emergenc Middle East mission last spring he tried to salvage the peace of that area by lifting the cease-fire pro-visions out of the Armistice Agree ments between Israel and the Arab states and transforming them into agreements between himself and the nations of the area...

...Bokhari was at first a great favorite of Hammarskjold's, but the relationship seems to have cooled somewhat...

...He once compared his role to that of a judge or marriage-counsellor in a divorce case who heart both parties, gets to understand the fears, suspicions, and hurts of both sides, and uses his superior knowledge to promote reconciliation...

...Our representatives, therefore, were obliged to search for a formula that would keep the projected agency at arm's length from the U.N...

...staff members...

...He smokes a good deal and switches intermittently from pipes to small cigars...

...Ahmed Bokhari, who is head of the department of public information, is a brilliant, witty, Cambridge-educated Pakistanian, a poet as well as a passionate spokesman for the newly emerging peoples of Asia and Africa...

...This also had the effect of converting the U.N...

...Hammarskjold's personal relations with delegates are of necessity mostly guided by political expediency...

...During the Guatemalan crisis he did not hesitate to criticize the United States for some of the things it did in the U.N...

...without running afoul of American fears, Hammarskjold proposed that the line be through the Secretary-General's office on an administrative level...

...When Hammarskjold came into office the U.N...

...JOSEPH P. LASH covers the United Nations for the New York Post...

...who perhaps is in a better position to judge than any single delegate...

...Waste, overlapping, and bureaucracy are endemic in international organizations where considerations of regional and national representation have to be balanced against those of merit and efficiency...

...His career in Sweden, while brilliant, had been that of the highly competent civil servant...

...His defenders consider such accusations outrageous...

...French Foreign Minister Pineau came out of a meeting with Hammarskjold on the lat-ter's talks with Egyptian President Nasser complaining that he had been led through a semantic labyrinth...

...headquarters...

...His mission to Peiping was a success only because it served Pei-ping's purposes to release the American airmen as a way of beginning direct talks with the U.S...

...He showed the great powers the U.N...

...But Hammarskjold's "Swedish-English," as one diplomat dubbed his metaphysical sinuosities, is only part methodology...

...As one delegate remarked, "The Secretary-General, unlike the Pope, will now have divisions...

...at that time...

...He started out as an economist, becoming in his early '30s Undersecretary of the Treasury and chairman of the Bank of Sweden...

...It also can on occasion exasperate diplomats pressed by superiors at home for a clear-cut picture of what is going on...

...Hammarskjold has done a good job of combating these organizational evils...

...But Hammarskjold's advance billing did him less than justice...

...Irish Foreign Minister Liam Cos-grave stated the dilemma: "This Assembly appears more apt to put pressure on countries that pay some heed to its resolutions than to consider the most flagrantly evil actions of powers which seem impervious to public opinion...

...I do not suppose," he added, "that there is anyone among the delegations of the free world that does not feel a painful sense of inadequacy and failure...

...He is an enemy of bureaucratic privilege...

...The impression persists, nevertheless, of a lonely, intellectual, restless figure...

...He made it clear that he would insist on the largest possible construction of the Secretary-General's role and powers...

...In the current Egyptian crisis he undertook to cut through difficulties by making disputed issues concerning the organization and scope of the U.N...

...stemming from the speed, urgency, and effectiveness with which it was able to act in the Middle East in contrast to the impotence of its moves on behalf of Hungary...

...Speeches and U.N...

...He dresses well but not elegantly and is given to bow ties and loafers...

...At 51 he remains a bachelor...

...It also is the way his mind is cast...

...A closer study of his record would have revealed a man of passion and spirit...

...A case in point concerned the negotiations for a link to be established between the United Nations and the Atoms for Peace Agency...

...He sought to do this by developing the executive powers of the Secretary General's office...

...Surrounding him are a group of aides with whom he has developed an easy, cordial relationship...

...Bel-aunde of Peru worked closely with him on the admission of new members...

...None of this seemed auspicious to those who felt the U. N. needed someone capable of voicing humanity's aspirations for social justice and world organization as much as it needed a brilliant administrator...

...His wiry figure gives the impression of great ruggedness and endurance...

...Perhaps the most important institutional projection of the Secretary-General's peacemaking role is the United Nations Emergency Force...

...Moves are already under way in the General Assembly to establish the U.N.E.F...

...Hammarskjold is always working with and through delegations to realize his purposes...

...Until the records of these events, including Hammarskjold's personal correspondence with Egyptian President Nasser and Israeli Premier Ben-Gurion are disclosed, it is impossible to assess the wisdom of his approach...

...for his chief...

...So insistent has he been on asserting the Secretary-General's full prerogatives in the organization that some delegates have been heard to mutter that "he is taking too much on himself" and "he has to be cut down to size...

...Lie's concept of the job had been a political one...

...This was the creed, obviously, of a man not aloof from but very much involved in mankind's struggle toward world order...

...The General Assembly was put in the position of endorsing as an "act of faith" Hammarskjold's understandings with Nasser, understandings that Hammarskjold deliberately kept veiled in obscurity...

...as a per-manent agency...

...There is also Alfred Katzin, a South African, who functioned as a trouble-shooter under Lie and has continued in that role under Hammarskjold...

...Hammarskjold's confidence in this newcomer was demonstrated recently when he assigned deSeynes the job of supervising the U.N.'s humanitarian activities in Hungary...

...That is indicated by his choice of reading (Joyce, Eliot, Proust, and Rilke), his predilection for avant-garde painting, his university studies in mathematical economics...

...who perhaps can advise...

...this seemed a legitimate proposal, but to diplomats who disliked Hammarskjold it became a basis for attacking him as an empire builder...

...Lester Pearson of Canada took the lead in the Assembly in setting up the U.N...

...The Middle East policy he was in the process of developing last spring and summer collapsed with the British-French-Israeli attack on Egypt...

...A new addition to the inner circle is a French economist and follower of Mendes-France, Philippe deSeynes, who is in charge of economic and social affairs...

...The U. N.'s Hammarskjold by JOSEPH P. LASH TIAKEN ON an introductory tour of United Nations buildings in 1953, the newly chosen Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold, was asked, as is the custom in the high-domed Assembly hall, of what the two abstract Leger murals on the side walls reminded him...

...He promoted the concept of "quiet diplomacy...

...He also moved deliberately to fill the peacemaking vacuum created by the impotence of the Security Council, the Military Staff Committee, and the Collective Measures Committee...

...On a disquieting number of world issues the great powers were bypassing the world organization...

...From the first, Hammarskjold accepted the fact that the Secretary-Generalship was "a political job" and that "administration is just a tool put at my command...

...He has a good reputation as an administrator over what he likes to call "this house," which includes the 38-story slab of glass and marble and an organization of some 4,000 individuals...

...The cross-section of a muscle" was Hammarskjold's reaction...

...In an effort to tie the agency into the U.N...

...This was a blow to the U.N., not only because the organization becomes more meaningful and authoritative to people in the underdeveloped countries the more it develops services on an operational level, but also because the control features of the agency may some day become the nucleus of a control system in a comprehensive disarmament program...

...It is of course too early to say what his place will be in the history of mankind's search for a way to abolish war...

...This crisis of conscience is not Hammarskjold's exclusive or major responsibility, but he must inevitably be associated with the U.N.'s failure to resolve the dilemma basic to it— if, in fact, it remains unresolved...

...His downfall came when he ran afoul of Stalin in promoting a United Nations point of view...

...The abstruse quality of this man's mind has often since then been the despair of reporters looking for an easy headline...

...His colleagues comment with admiration on the speed and audacity of some of his decisions during the Suez crisis...

...Cordier is a former Hoosier history professor, a cheerful, homespun character described as "brainy but not an intellectual...

...They include Ilya Tchernyshev, a friendly, good looking Russian, formerly a Tass man...

...Although Tchernyshev, holds the title of Undersecretary General, he seems to have symbolic rather than operating functions...

...When he was drafted for the U.N...

...This con* ception of his job shapes Ham-parskjold's day-to-day relations with the hundreds of diplomats assigned to U.N...

...They add that "it does not skip any steps in the process," by which they mean all alternatives are weighed...

...As the comment suggested, the man who had been plucked from the Swedish civil service to preside over the troubled destinies of the U.N...

...greater powers than the League...

...As an administrator he deals with problems such as coordination, job classification, budget appropriation, and economy with the zest and assurance of an expert in public administration...

...To the same question, President Eisenhower had replied "rabbits' ears" and Trygve Lie "scrambled eggs...

...Hammarskjold's obscurity is partly a matter of diplomatic methodology...

...had atrophied alarmingly...

...A. sandy-haired, medium sized man pith a high forehead and cheeks that give the impression that he has walnuts in his mouth, Hammarskjold is nonetheless considered good looking...

...The fears about Hammarskjold stemmed from his background, training, and personality...

...He proved this again in the current crisis, which put him in opposition to Britain and France, countries for which, as a cultivated European, he has a deep feeling...

...It was indicative of the moral authority he had acquired that the Assembly was willing to do this, although there were dissenters...

...His relations with his staff are good...

...If he becomes a lion, they say, when he puts on the Secretary-General's hat, it is not because he seeks personal power but because of a reasoned conviction that enhancement of the role of Secretary-General is one way of building the moral authority and institutional power of the U.N...

...Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr„ and India's V. K. Krishna Menon, yet it is known he does not have too high an opinion of Lodge's abilities and is believed to dislike Menon ever since Menon tried to grab the credit for Peiping's release of the American fliers jailed as spies...

...currently he is handling the U.N.E.F...

...Describing his personal creed, Ham-marskjold has said that "from generations of soldiers and government officials on my father's side I inherited a belief that no life was more satisfactory than one of selfless service to your country or humanity . . . From scholars and clergymen on my mother's side I inherited a belief that, in the very radical sense of the Gospels, all men were equals as children of God and should be made and treated by us as our masters in God...

...They know he is a modest man personally, almost to the point of self-abnegation...

...The founders of the U.N...

...that he sees the U.N.E.F...

...Currently he is Hammarskjold's top man in the job of clearing the Suez Canal...

...Above all there is a deep sense of moral uneasiness in the U.N...

...Weekends he takes off alone to a small country place near Brewster, New York, where he can satisfy his mtellectual interests and where walks |mrough foothills must serve as in unsatisfactory substitute for the mountain climbing he loves...

...The Secretary-General, he has said, should be someone who will talk to delegations and pass on to other delegations not their confidences but the conclusions he has drawn from them...

...Circumstances and Hammarskjold's planning have linked this Force closely with Hammarskjold's office...

...This is a significant development and one unforeseen in the Charter...

...It was a career marked by knowledge of how to get things done rather than by identification with causes or parties...

...Emergency Force a matter of an understanding between himself and President Nasser...

...In 1953 when Hammarskjold was advanced by the British to succeed Trygve Lie, there were fears the Secretary-General would again become what he had been in the League of Nations—a highly efficient administrator and unobtrusive conciliator...

...truce observation machinery in Palestine into an instrument of the Secretary General's rather than of the parties to the armistice...

...Then he appeared on the cafeteria line awaiting his turn, tray in hand, with the rank and file U.N...

...Often the Scandinavian bloc is the instrument he uses...

...India and Yugoslavia frequently help him out...

...was a flexible instrument that could be adapted to their needs...

...wanted to make something more out of the post in line with their efforts to give the U.N...

...Dinner parties at his fastidiously furnished Park Avenue apartment are lively affairs where good food is served by a Swedish butler, and Hammarskjold, a skilled conversationalist, takes the talk wherever he wishes...

...job he was serving in the top civil service position in the foreign ministry...

...It was serving neither as an instrument for collective security nor as a center for negotiation and conciliation...

...not as a collective security force designed to impose solutions, but as a "fire brigade" and an instrument of conciliation...

...The conciliation and mediation functions are primary with the Secretary-General...

...At the moment he is working closely with U.S...

...It is symptomatic of Hammarskjold's approach to the U.N...

...Cordier sits at the left of the president in the Assembly hall and guides him through the intricacies of Assembly procedure...

...To complete the portrait it should be added that he is a man of real courage...

...This, however, became a problem when Senator John Bricker threatened to fight the project in the Senate if it were placed under the U.N...

...They wanted the Secretary-General to exercise political leadership, to embody a United Nations view as distinct from the 50 or 60-odd national views emanating from delegation representations, no matter how world-minded...

...They all testify to a mind which they claim "works like lightning...

...Police Force...

...Another member of the inner circle is Andrew Cordier, Hammarskjold's executive assistant...

...is above all an intellectual of the most unabashed eggheadedness...

...The learned Dr...

...Hammarskjold undertook to change this situation...

...papers he usually drafts himself at high speed...

...Hammarskjold, when he is faced with a difficult problem, likes to talk out loud and try out his ideas on his associates...

...It is conceded that he does not give his friendship easily, but when he does it is said to be a generous, rewarding relationship...

...He proved this was the case during the Suez crisis when for several days on end he worked around the clock...

...The neutrality and detachment that are second-habit with well-trained civil servants were reinforced in Hammarskjold's case by Sweden's foreign policy of non-entanglement, a policy inaugurated by his father as Sweden's premier during World War I. The price of such a policy is often the suppression of justified moral anger and passion...

...The other Undersecretary General, Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Bunche, is worked harder by Hammarskjold...

...President Eisenhower originally broached the idea of an atoms agency at a U. N. Assembly and proposed that the agency be placed under U. N. auspices...

...Because his relations with delegates have to be guided by expediency, some regard him as a cold man, incapable of entering into easy, warm relationships...

...One of the first things he did was to abolish the practice of reserving an elevator for the Secretary-General...

...To friends of the U.N...