The Delegate

In the face of every doubt that the United Nations Organization would work, Congress plowed ahead with the conviction that it must.

Unanimously the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the nation's UNO-participation bill, passed it on to the Senate for a vote. Such prompt and positive committee clearance meant that the bill, giving the U.S. a world responsibility it has never had before, would pass with little opposition, become law as soon as the President signed it (Harry Truman had his pen primed).

The bill made its points firmly: 1) the President would appoint and Congress would confirm the UNO delegate (probably earnest, white-topped Edward R. Stettinius Jr., to whom the job has long been promised); 2) the delegate, with ambassadorial rank, would act only on presidential order, never on his own initiative; 3) the President would be empowered, through his delegate and without asking Congress, to send a limited number of U.S. troops anywhere the

UNO's Security Council might decide they were needed; 4) neither the President nor his delegate would have the power to use more troops than the numbers specified in the military agreements under the United Nations Charter.

The bill did not say, or imply, as some lawmakers and editors loudly cried, that Congress was relinquishing its war-making powers to two men--the President and his UNO delegate. Nor did it mean that the President would now be scot-free to get the U.S. into a series of meddling and unconstitutional wars to back up the nation's Charter pledges. U.S. Presidents have always had the power to send their troops into battle--they have done so many times without committing the nation to war. But Congress has always reserved, and still reserves, the right to follow the shock troops with armies.

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