BATTLE OF LAKE SUCCESS: Junior S.O.B.

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In a Manhattan living room one day last week, an eight-year-old boy, his eye on the clock, said: "Mummy, I want to see Howdy Doody." Obediently his mother went to the television set. As the screen flickered to life, the face that appeared was not the familiar, freckled countenance of the famous TV puppet, but the cold, clean-cut face of a man talking Russian. Said the little boy, in a voice foreboding tears: "I want to see Howdy Doody."

"Hush, dear," said his mother. "This is U.N."

"Oh, pooey," said the child.

A great many other Americans felt the same way. For the past fortnight that Russian face on the nation's television screens blocked not only Howdy Doody, but such other favorites as Lucky Pup, and Life with Snarky Parker. But the show that replaced them—a curious mixture of boredom and excitement, alternating long-winded oratory with sharp, electrifying statements of historic rights & wrongs—was definitely worth America's while. To millions of Americans it brought the unique experience of seeing the enemy right in their living room.

The name that went with the face was Jacob Malik. He appeared as a broad-shouldered, blond figure, slimmer on television than he actually is, with a hard-set jaw, impassive and unsmiling. Often he stared balefully at his unseen audience; sometimes he scribbled notes or leaned back to catch the whispers of three Russian aides sitting behind him. Hour after hour, in a dry voice that rarely rose in audible anger, meticulously using the same phrases and arguments, meticulously carrying out his orders, he lied.

To Hamstring & Delay. As the second week of Security Council meetings opened, under Malik's presidency, the first business should have been a discussion of North Korean aggression, with South Korean representatives taking part. But not with Malik presiding. That was why the Kremlin had sent him back to the U.N.—to hamstring, delay, obstruct, make sure that nothing was done.

Instead of taking up the agenda item, he read a "most urgent" telegram from the North Korean authorities, a denunciation, conveniently in Russian, of "American interventionists . . . barbarous attacks . . . cannibalistic cynicism . . ." It was cut from the same cloth of distortion and falsehood that the Russian delegate had unrolled in all his previous harangues (e.g., the real aggressors in Korea were "American imperialists"; only the Soviet Union desired a "peaceful settlement," etc.).

While Malik droned on, the other ten delegates sat patiently around the horseshoe table. From the ceiling, television lights glared down on the high-domed head of Britain's Sir Gladwyn Jebb, the pince-nez of the U.S.'s Warren Austin, the long nose of France's Jean Chauvel, the doodling hand of China's Tingfu F. Tsiang.

When Malik had finished reading, the Council's majority moved hard, for the first time, to trip him up.