Wolves & Lambs

The Soviet delegate, an economist named Nikolai Feonov, told a Russianized version of Aesop's fable about the wolf and the lamb, in which the lamb retorted to the wolf's accusations with such vexingly clever answers that the wolf finally ate the lamb for its impertinence. The lamb, of course, was the Soviet Union, the wolf was the U.S.

Nevertheless, other delegates to the 18-nation Economic & Social Council (called ECOSOC* for short) found Feonov an easier man to deal with than such wolf-eating lambs as Molotov, Vishinsky and Gromyko. Feonov actually promoted shirtsleeved sessions in smoke-filled hotel rooms in an effort to break impasses on the council floor. But he could not break the bonds of Russian policy.

Winding up its third meeting last week at Lake Success, ECOSOC had a hatful of recommendations for the General Assembly, which convenes on Oct. 23. Mostly they concerned such matters as world health, narcotics control, an International Refugees Organization. Russian intransigence blocked a U.S.-favored proposal for a central commission to coordinate Europe's economy; but a 450-page report was drafted on recovery in devastated areas. Russia blocked an attempted short-term solution of the Danube River problem. When the U.S. proposed a Vienna conference on the Danube question in November, Russia said that the Danube countries would boycott it.

The U.N.'s big, bluff Secretary General Trygve Lie patted the earnest, scholarly delegates on the back, praised "the spirit of agreement that I have found in this council." But he worried because U.N. agencies were using paper at the rate of 1,000,000 sheets a day to produce tentative findings and recommendations which might never get beyond the paper stage.

* Pronounced Eek-o-sock or Eck-o-sock, optionally, and not to be confused with UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). UNESCO is a semi-autonomous U.N. body which will probably have head quarters in Paris.

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