UNITED NATIONS: Town Meeting of Two Worlds

Sun and rain chased each other over the San Francisco hills on the day the nations convened to write the U.N. Charter. The bandleader, who was on the sunny side, played The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise. But cynics sneered: "Another League of Nations."

Last week, on the second anniversary of the Charter,* U.N.'s record was still befogged by the optimists and the cynics. Many of the optimists had actually joined the cynics. One clear-eyed Dutchman at San Francisco had been afraid of that. The Netherlands' Eelco van Kleffens had warned: "The world expects too much. . . . Make this clear, lest we defeat our purpose by giving the impression that we are doing more than we are."

No Force. As a matter of fact, U.N. had done about as well as such realists as Van Kleffens thought it would. Despite warnings that U.N. was not world government, the man in the street from San Francisco's Embarcadero to Calcutta's Chowringhee focused his attention on the international police force that was supposed to prevent aggression. On its second birthday, U.N. showed no sign of becoming a supersovereignty.

Last week, when U.S. Delegate Warren Austin warned that in Bulgaria, Albania and Yugoslavia U.N. might need force to pursue its investigation of Greek border violations, it was painfully apparent that U.N. had no force to use; the international police force was still not in being. So long as Russia insisted that it should be made up of equal contributions of troops from each of the Big Five, it was not likely to come into being; under the Soviet plan the U.S., Russian and British shares could be no larger than China's.

Another point for the cynics was that no real progress had been made in its most important project: atomic control. Still another: Russia had used the lethal veto ten times to block action in the Security Council.

On the other hand, U.N. still commanded the respect of statesmen because it was a forum for mustering world opinion. The organization's high point had come in April 1946, when it made the Red Army get out of Persia. Thus, thanks largely to U.N. and its imposing moral force, Persia had a Government free of Russian domination.

It was not beyond possibility that the violations of Greece's frontiers could be stopped in a similar way. Moreover, U.N. was making progress on a host of social questions, ranging from opium control to a list of the Rights of Man.

Mechanically, U.N. worked. It was using up document paper at the rate of 2,000 tons a year, and 22,000 phone calls were going through its switchboards every day. Last week, U.N. technicians demonstrated how fast their radio teletype is: a query to the U.N. office in Geneva brought a flash right back: "Having a heat wave. . . . Lake Geneva looks most romantic under a summer moon."