THE WEEK

It seemed an inspiration when the United Nations building in New York was formally inaugurated in October 1952—an appropriate inscription carved in foot-high letters in the granite parapet facing the building. In December 1961, the chosen inscription seemed less felicitous. It reads: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks; nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

It has become dreadfully clear that the United Nations is out of control. The United States must, as a matter of self-protection, modify its basic attitude towards it. As a beginning, as a symbolic act, the President must remove Adlai Stevenson as ambassador. Congress must vigorously investigate the Katanga episode. We must, then, use our power to de-politicalize the United Nations, to strip it down to its technical and clerical functions. Anticipating the accumulation of political power in the hands of inimical or irresponsible blocs of nations, national review advocated five years ago the abolition of the Security Council and the General Assembly while maintaining the Secretariat and its complex—recommendations whose cogency is stressed by the recent events.

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Time Magazine

It seemed an inspiration when the United Nations building in New York was formally inaugurated in October 1952—an appropriate inscription carved in foot-high letters in the granite parapet facing the building. In December 1961, the chosen inscription seemed less felicitous. It reads: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks; nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

It has become dreadfully clear that the United Nations is out of control. The United States must, as a matter of self-protection, modify its basic attitude towards it. As a beginning, as a symbolic act, the President must remove Adlai Stevenson as ambassador. Congress must vigorously investigate the Katanga episode. We must, then, use our power to de-politicalize the United Nations, to strip it down to its technical and clerical functions. Anticipating the accumulation of political power in the hands of inimical or irresponsible blocs of nations, national review advocated five years ago the abolition of the Security Council and the General Assembly while maintaining the Secretariat and its complex—recommendations whose cogency is stressed by the recent events.