The Third World War

On December 3 the tenth general conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), sitting at its gorgeous new headquarters in Paris, approved a 1959-60 budget of $25,970,463, some $3,290,825 higher than the budget of 1957-58. The event was so banal in our world’s routine that only the very largest journals found it deserving of a few lines on a remote page.

Having pounced on this little item as it was scuttling down its dark hole toward the past, how shall we worry it? Both the passionate admirers and the equally impassioned critics of UNESCO find it a theme most apt for ideological rhapsody. UNESCO, in its abstracted mode, gives summary expression to the motifs of our age: internationalism, welfarism, relativism, secular indoctrination, subversive coexistence, and so on. In such imposing terms we may—and most of us usually do—argue UNESCO’s merits or infamies.

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James Burnham

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On December 3 the tenth general conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), sitting at its gorgeous new headquarters in Paris, approved a 1959-60 budget of $25,970,463, some $3,290,825 higher than the budget of 1957-58. The event was so banal in our world’s routine that only the very largest journals found it deserving of a few lines on a remote page.

Having pounced on this little item as it was scuttling down its dark hole toward the past, how shall we worry it? Both the passionate admirers and the equally impassioned critics of UNESCO find it a theme most apt for ideological rhapsody. UNESCO, in its abstracted mode, gives summary expression to the motifs of our age: internationalism, welfarism, relativism, secular indoctrination, subversive coexistence, and so on. In such imposing terms we may—and most of us usually do—argue UNESCO’s merits or infamies.