"People--Just People"

POLICIES & PRINCIPLES

"Praise ye the Lord," sang the chorus of white & Negro children. The Lord may have heard, but the audience was busy with other praiseworthy subjects. The hum of heterogeneous good will that rose from UNESCO's well-wishers almost drowned out the song. The music teacher who had rehearsed the chorus for weeks was so angry the orchid almost popped off her black evening dress; good will created its own exasperating tensions.

A Biscuit? To decrease international tension caused by misunderstanding, representatives of some 500 U.S. organizations (the exact figure was undetermined) met in Philadelphia last week. They had been asked to advise the U.S. delegates to UNESCO. The meeting was the strangest infusion of brotherhood since William Penn came there to found "a greene Country Towne" in 1682--or at least since Karl Marx's First International broke up there in 1876.

Philadelphia wondered what UNESCO was. A biscuit? A radio station? That Rumanian composer? The letters stood for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It was dedicated to the proposition that "since wars begin in the minds of men . . . the peace must therefore be founded . . . upon the intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind." Few at its Philadelphia conclave disagreed with that proposition. Fewer still were sure they knew what it meant.

It was hard to be sure, for that matter, just where all 500 organizations fitted in. Veterans' associations, labor unions, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Y.M.C.A. were on hand. There were representatives of the National Thespian Society, the American Association of Teachers of French, the Polish National Catholic Church of America, the D.A.R. and the American Guild of Organists. The cultural unity of the human race was the farthest objective anybody actually mentioned, but the American Society of Mammalogists, perhaps looking for new species' to consolidate, showed up, too.

A Threshold? Representatives shopped around, listening to speeches. In a discussion panel headed by George F. Zook, of the American Council on Education, they could hear about the international exchange of cultural films. In the panel on Social Tensions, Dr. Quincy Wright, professor of international law at' the University of Chicago, was offering (for those who could follow it) a new definition of war. Said Dr. Wright: "War is a condition where tensions pass the threshold of a certain intensity of pressure." Some of these tensions, summed up the panel secretary later, could be measured--"like gastric ulcers, and crime and suicide rates." It was a matter of grave concern, said the secretary, that the world was unable "to measure whether tensions between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are decreasing, or are greater than the tensions within China."

There were a dozen other panels, from Educational Reconstruction through Humanities & Philosophy to Museums. Sir Ramaswami Mudaliar, of India, reminded his listeners that misunderstandings work both ways: "The barbarians think we are barbarians." UNESCO's Bernard Drzewieski, a pint-sized Pole, pointed up UNESCO's need: "In some parts of Greece and Poland there are 50 kids to one pencil." But Drzewieski himself had trouble with one small cultural barrier: he attributed the dream of "the new city of Friends" to "Walter" Whitman.

Out of the section on Arts & Letters came the suggestion that Soviet Composer Dmitri Shostakovich be invited to explain his "ideology" to a congress of creative artists.

An Idea? In midweek the 90-man National Commission for UNESCO met to discuss the recommendations of the 500 organizations--and pass its own recommendations up the line. This led to more concrete suggestions, if not more outright clarification. Present were such prominent folk as: Commission Chairman Milton Eisenhower, president of Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science and a younger, scholarly edition of General Ike; Assistant Secretary of State William Benton and his oldtime advertising partner, Chester Bowles; Donald M. Nelson (now of Hollywood), and Texas' witty historian Frank Dobie.

Dobie had a radical suggestion: "We're not going to get anywhere under the im-aginationless name of UNESCO. Call it 'people--just people.'" A bobby-soxer had an idea: "What about every school in the United States adopting a needy school somewhere in the world?" Chairman Eisenhower "liked that idea very much."

Astronomer Bart Bok of Harvard and Bacteriologist Stuart Mudd of Penn wanted to urge Russian scientists to urge their Government (thus far, outside and not even looking in) to join UNESCO. Orchid-draped Mrs. William Dick Sporborg, of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, sprang what she herself called "a surprise"--that the National Commission shelve everything else and concentrate on reducing tensions between Russia and the U.S. Assistant Secretary Benton thought that wouldn't get far "without the cooperation of Russia."

A Hot Fight? Naturally enough, there was no one view that stood out above all the others at the end, but two or three delegates tried to sum Up. Said Chairman Eisenhower: "The greatest danger to democracy is narrowness."

Monsignor Frederick G. Hochwalt, of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, half-seriously observed that the trouble with UNESCO was too much agreement. Suggested the Monsignor: "If we could get a real hot fight going in UNESCO--between the natural scientists and the philosophers, say, or even about whether UNESCO is a good idea at all--people would sit up. . , ."

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