Dag Hammarskjold - Lonely Leader of the U.N.

...But we have taken only the first steps, and they have often proved painful...

...And a Western diplomat has decribed him as "a master of calculated imprecision...

...John Perse and the prose of Flaubert invaluable antidotes to the soggy phraseology of U.N...

...The world "calculated" is important...

...It is not in the grand tradition of the British Foreign Office or the Quai d'Orsay, but it has been successful in averting for a century and a half Sweden's involvement in the wars which have racked Europe...

...On the contrary, he treats it as capable, when fully informed, of dealing responsibly with the great issues of the day...

...Perhaps the most significant key to Hammarskjold's approach may be found in his solid grounding in Swedish government and diplomacy, with which his family has been identified for generations...

...He has sometimes been called the prime minister of the Assembly, but the analogy fails because he can rely on the steadfast support of no party or coalition of parties, nor even, since Lester Pearson departed from the scene, on the services of an effective floor leader...

...On the contrary, they are the result of a training in diplomacy which, while not excluding altogether the use of the power of the press as an instrument of policy, still holds that the press more often retards than promotes solutions...

...You can take it for granted [of the other man] that in his eyes he has a good case . . . You must be able to reconstruct his world...

...In his relations with the staff as well as with nations, he early showed his diplomatic talent...

...He has traveled to the Middle East without either of the two traditional means of implementing policy in this area—force to threaten or bribes to corrupt...

...The Secretary-General believes it vital to avert clashes among the small powers not only for their own sakes but because, in this interdependent world, they may so quickly involve the great powers...

...In that setting we want to bring back our thoughts to great and simple truths...

...When the issue came up to him for review, Hammarskjold salvaged both economy and" principle by deciding that everyone, including himself, would fly tourist...

...An associate once remarked: "He can skate on ice of any thinness...

...by DAVID C. WILLIAMS Sir Winston Churchill, who had a . habit of rising above partisanship even in his post-war years of opposition, more than once took occasion to say that he found profound comfort in the knowledge that a first-rate mind like Sir Stafford Gripps' was brooding over Britain's affairs...

...bureaucracy decreed that all staff members below a certain grade should fly out tourist class...

...He told his press conference: "To my mind, yesterday was one of those days in the life of this organization when it showed its invaluable contribution to present policies in the international field and to present diplomacy . . . For those who sometimes like to sharpen their wits on the weaknesses of the organization, it is a day they should remember before starting all over again...

...The rise in the significance of the office of Secretary-General has paralleled (and to a large extent resulted from) the emergence of the General Assembly as the dominant element in the U.N., at the expense of the once-vaunted Security Council...

...Secretariat building, surrounded by his chosen elite, he has become almost as invisible to the first 37 floors as if he were floating in outer space...

...The result was a disappointment to the assembled journalists—an emergency session which the absence of any sense of emergency had deprived of all color, and which devoted itself mainly to hairsplitting words and phrases...

...It is significant that he has said: "We may well rejoice in having taken the first steps toward the esr tablishment of an international democracy of peoples, bringing all nations—irrespective of history, size, or wealth—together on an equal basis as partners in the vast venture of creating a true world community...

...His occasional sharp flashes of anger, however, suggest that he has won his composure only after a sharp inner struggle—in the process of dedication to his own particular priesthood, that of service to humanity, which he has himself declared "requires the sacrifice of all personal interests...

...There are grave and obvious risks in his assumption that the Arab nations are capable of distinguishing their real interests from their cherished passions, and of adjusting those interests in a process of peaceful change...

...Thus, she has contrived to put the great powers on their best behavior, often in spite of themselves...

...The staff association insisted, as a matter of principle, on the standing rule that U.N...

...There is a maturity of mind required of those who acquire new rights...

...Sweden has woven into her relations with them an intricate web of precedents, understandings, treaties^—breastworks of paper and sealing-wax, of course, but bulwarks which her neighbors could not attack without breaking with their own past...

...Certainly one cannot fruitfully begin the search with his press conferences, which are the delight and the despair of the journalists who cover the U.N...

...Hammarskjold sees the small and medium powers as important from another point of view as well—the restraining influence they can exert upon the great powers...

...When the President spoke, he was the first head of state to address himself to a dispute currently before the United Nations—a distinction which the Security Council, in all its stormy history, has yet to attain...

...personnel travel first class...

...He has shown his consideration for the staff in a number of small ways— from refurbishing their somewhat dingy lounge on the fifth floor to instituting an annual "Staff Day" at which he presides over the entertainments as an elegant if somewhat unbending master of ceremonies...

...But he does show a real respect for an understanding of the average small power delegation, a respect which, in turn, inspires so high a degree of trust in him that few take action without consulting him...

...He is a difficult man to define...

...And it was significant that he took a keen personal interest in the preparation of the "Meditation Room" in the U.N., saying on the occasion of its dedication: "We want to bring back in this room the stillness which we have lost in our streets and in our conference rooms, and to bring it back in a setting in which no noise would impinge upon our imagination...

...And the essence of Hammarskjold's role is to be found not in his relations with the great powers but with the medium and small ones who prevail in the Assembly...

...Some measure of his success—which he is discreet enough not to emphasize—is the fact that the U.N...

...But if the risks are great, the consequences of success would be even greater...

...Is Hammarskjold more than an icy intelligence housed in a body which (fortunately for the world, which thrusts burden after burden upon him) is sustained by the stamina of a mountain-climber...

...The solution must take into account the valid elements of his case, or else he will be back here again a year later...

...And he has manifested a considerable talent for this...

...He can ward off a tough question with an answer which makes sense in all directions at the same time...

...and in occasional conversation with selected fellow-intellectuals he seems to find life-giving peace in the midst of the whirlwind...

...It is all but forgotten by now how the debates in the Security Council used to exacerbate situations of strain, rather than relieve them...

...Professional optimist though he is, he nevertheless revealed something of the distress which the breakdown in disarmament negotiations must have caused him in a little-noted speech he delivered at Cambridge University in June: "We are on dangerous ground if we believe that any individual, any nation, or any ideology has a monopoly on Tightness, liberty, and human dignity...

...Emergency Force continues to be stationed on Egyptian territory, an intrusion on sovereignty which many nations less new and less prickly in their national pride might be reluctant to accept...

...Unlike some American critics of the General Assembly, he does not see it as an irresponsible and unrepresentative body, dominated by blocs with particular axes to grind...

...There is a maturity of mind required of those who give up rights...

...Before the recent special session of the General Assembly, Secretary of State Dulles was fulminating about "indirect aggression" and Nikita Khrushchev was threatening dire consequences if the American and British forces were not immediately withdrawn from the Middle East...

...Anyone who has examined the similar ways in which the Secretary-General has increased the influence of the United Nations and widened its scope will recognize that he has put this national training to good use...

...But in this torrent the edges of controversy tend to be blunted rather than sharpened...

...Some critics complain that he is dealing with the Arabs as if they were as reasonable as his own highly civilized compatriots...

...presence in their midst...

...Hammarskjold, the self-effacing civil servant, has ascended this Everest so quietly that we are only just beginning to realize that he is there...

...On the 38th floor of the U.N...

...By reading an hour every day (he finds the verse of St...

...Yet it made world history in two important respects...

...He believes that, if the Arabs can succeed in managing their own affairs, it will be to the advantage both of the Soviet Union and of the United States to the extent that it averts the risk of a major East-West clash in the area...

...Thus, he applied his own stated principle of negotiation...

...This has partly been good fortune, but partly the result of the deployment of diplomatic skills of a very special kind...

...He fences with them brilliantly, but rarely gives them an obvious handle for a headline...

...by listening to the music of Bach and Vivaldi ("they have a beautiful way of creating order in one's brain...

...Trygve Lie stormed the heights with the bluff determination of a veteran politician, and fell lamentably short...

...is of particular significance, because it is a common ground upon which they are compelled to meet...

...Administration, for which he earlier showed such a flair, may suffer in consequence...

...For reasons of economy, the U.N...

...There has always been implicit in this office the prospect that its holder could become one of the really major political figures of the world...

...When we fully recognize this and translate our insight into words and action, we may also be able to reestablish full human contact and communications across geographical and political boundaries, and to get out of a public debate which often seems to be inspired more by a wish to impress than by a will to understand and to be understood...

...in San Francisco...

...Whereas Stevenson arrives at positions on public issues after an inner conflict so obvious that it is almost painful, Hammarskjold's quick and subtle mind functions at a pace that has been compared with a jet plane "which is gone by the time you hear it...

...documents...

...It is an unfortunate fact that the very pressure of his duties has tended to make him an increasingly lonely man...

...Intelligence is a rare quality in present-day public life—so rare that its appearance in Adlai Stevenson engaged, and still engages, the loyalties of millions of Americans...

...As a realist, Hammarskjold is well aware that only the great powers can negotiate the issues which divide them...

...Some have wondered whether, in persistently dealing with political problems on their rational level, he tends to ignore the deep and irrational sources from which they spring—the passions, for example, which stir a Middle East mob into abrupt and terrifying violence...

...The Assembly has, on the whole, had the opposite effect...

...A typical instance came in connection with the tenth anniversary meeting of the U.N...

...It was small wonder that, the day after the Assembly adjourned, Hammarskjold could permit himself one of his rare moments of open exultation...

...The comparison between the two men is an interesting and revealing one...

...The issues put before it tend to provoke a veritable torrent of words, often boring and repetitious in the extreme...

...Heads of state have often spoken before the Assembly, but their speeches—even when going beyond the formalities to real substance, as in President Eisenhower's "atoms for peace" speech—have not been related to the Assembly's agenda...

...But he attaches the utmost importance to keeping open the channels of communication between them—among which the U.N...

...So also a divided world has increasingly sought reassurance from the fine intelligence of United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold—an intelligence detached from any narrowly national loyalty and dedicated to the interests of mankind and to the organization which was established to serve them...

...Conscious of the ingrown inferiority complex which the Arabs have developed over the centuries, he has gone out of his way to treat them as equals...

...More importantly, he deflected the "security check" of the American members of the secretariat, which had reduced staff morale to an all-time low, into channels so discreet and roundabout that it virtually disappeared from view...

...The Swedes have developed a keen appreciation and precise assessment of the interests, objectives, and methods of the great powers which overshadow them and which at any time might have trampled them out of existence...

...Applying these principles, he has taken the calculated risk of treating the Arabs—the proverbial "deadend kids" of post-war politics—as responsible adults...

...Each side found itself obliged to modify its extreme position before coming to the forum of world opinion...

...Hammanskjold was put forward for his post by the French and the British because they wanted someone as unlike the colorful and bumptious Trygvie Lie as possible—an administrator who would stay out of the headlines and concentrate upon the mammoth job of operating his multinational secretariat...

...The President took a constructive line in his address, and even Gromyko, after roaring like a lion, came up with a surprisingly mouselike resolution...

...Second, the Assembly gave Hammarskjold what he had patently wanted all along—a unanimous invitation from the Arab states to establish the U.N...

...DAVID C. WlttlAMS, editor of the ADA World, has written widely for publications here and abroad...

...Hammarskjold is never accidentally vague, and his elaborate, carefully balanced sentences are not merely the consequence of translating a Swedish thought into English...