Without Distinction

At this season of the year, says a dry British Admiralty handbook, fog is rare in Beirut. Last week, in that ancient city of Lebanon, where St. George is supposed to have slain his dragon, a winter sun beat fiercely on old walls radiant with purple bougainvillaea and flaming crimson poinsettias. Its rays glittered gaily in the gentle wash of Mediterranean tides on Lebanon beaches, and shone on the sleek hoods of shiny new U.S. taxicabs weaving their way through clusters of bronzed and burnoosed Arabs.

At night in Beirut, neon signs glared garishly before such nightspots as Maxim's, Harry's Bar and the tinseled Kit Kat Club, where a burnished blonde from Budapest chanted defiantly: "Bingle, bangle, bungle, I'm so happy in the jungle, I refuse to go." In the black sky overhead, Aldebaran, Betelgeuse and Rigel blazed as brightly as they had centuries before when Arab herdsmen first gave them their names.

Plans for a Study. Despite its crystal days & nights, Beirut was not entirely free of haze last week. On the southern outskirts of the city, past Parliament Square, where a bemused policeman stood directing traffic with one hand and counting his beads with the other, delegates from 44 countries were gathered for the third annual conference of UNESCO (the United Nations' Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Their purpose was to remove all global misunderstandings.

From the conference rooms rose a heavy mist of insubstantial words. Through it one could hear the faint humming sound of platitudes being rubbed together, of logs being rolled, of whitewash being slapped across naked raw spots of international dispute. "Her interpretation of the dance is certainly interesting. Now if we could find a way to bring it down to the level of popular understanding . . ." Or: "It might be beneficial for us to initiate plans for a study with a view to promoting more understanding . . ." Scarcely a speech failed to make a bow to UNESCO's objectives, "human rights and fundamental freedoms . . without distinction of race, sex, language or religion"; or to that other ringing UNESCO slogan: "Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed."

UNESCO, however, could not ignore the fact that the very country in which it met last week was proudly and openly at war with the Jews of Israel. On the second day of the conference, the Lebanese delegation, supported by other Arab nations, raised an outcry against the admission of Jewish observers from whatever nation. A hot debate ensued until somebody discovered that no Jewish observers were present or intended to come. Sullenly then the Arabs agreed to admit all organizations which had "accepted the invitation" (no Jewish group had).

After that, the conference got down to business. "Let the mind of man be free," cried U.S. Delegation Chairman George V. Allen, "and it will soar to undreamed of heights of majesty. Let people understand each other, and they will create a world order of peace and human betterment."

While he spoke, the rattle of gunfire echoed through the auditorium. Outside, a handful of Lebanese Communists had picked a fight with the police. They were driven off, but when the session was over the police were not satisfied. Lebanese Communist Mustafa Aris was in the hall as an accredited observer for the World Federation of Trade Unions, and the irate police decided to pick him up and toss him in jail, diplomatic immunity or no. UNESCO's secretariat promptly protested, and while Mustafa languished in stir, the understanding Lebanese government promised that in future, before a UNESCO delegate was clapped in prison, the director general would be consulted "whenever possible."

Impossible of Solution. Meanwhile, for the delegates, there was still the problem of how to enlighten the world. In a 115-page report, Britain's neon-bright Biologist Julian Huxley told the delegates what had been done in this direction during his second year as director general. His report mentioned a "pilot project" in Nyasaland for the education of natives in literacy, health, agriculture and commu nity living. There had been a survey started on re-education in Germany, and the launching of an "Inquiry into the Tensions Affecting International Understanding," to find out why people get so mad that they go to war.

There were many other projects, all worthy, all vague, and mostly unfinished. An investigation in Haiti, said Dr. Huxley, had disclosed that Haiti's problem "is fundamentally one of overpopulation, soil erosion and disease, and is impossible of solution only or mainly by educational methods." "People generally," remarked George Allen dryly, "are impressed by finished jobs." Later on, stocky, practical U.S. Delegate Anne O'Hare McCormick cried in desperation: "What is the precise role of UNESCO? It's becoming more and more vague. We are constantly being called upon to make studies and promote. Promote what? What we need is action."

Each One Teach One. The UNESCO majority, led by the U.S., got action on one point. They were determined not to re-elect Dr. Huxley to his $15,000-a-year job. To replace him for a six-year term they chose, by a vote of 30 to 3, 46-year-old Jaime Torres Bodet, Foreign Minister of Mexico. Energetic, curly-topped Torres Bodet, who speaks French, English and Spanish with equal ease, is a poet who published his first works 'at the age of 16, but is no idle dreamer.

Hardheaded and respected, he is one of the best bridge players in Mexico. As a teacher and cabinet minister combined, he stumped his country in Mexico's famed "each one teach one" literacy campaign (TIME, Feb. 4, 1946). "All good intentions," he said then, "must be bounded by two essentials--to nourish [and] to teach . . ." Last week, accepting his new job, he promised "all my enthusiasm and all my strength" for UNESCO's ideals.

The Pitch of A. Both will be badly needed to dispel the fog in Beirut. At its first meeting in Paris two years ago, U.S. Delegation Chairman William Benton had likened the general program of UNESCO to "a pork barrel floating on a cloud." In two years the program had not changed appreciably. By last weekend more than 60 separate resolutions had been dumped into the laps of conference subcommittees. Many, like Austria's pet project for an international conference in Vienna to standardize the A pitch in the musical scale, bore all the earmarks of a bid for a slice of celestial pork.

The U.S. delegation was doing what it could to bring UNESCO down to dry earth by backing practical Minister Torres Bodet's election, and by insisting that each division of the organization provide competent working plans for every project for which funds are required. But there was another hurdle in the path that could not be surmounted by hardheaded business methods alone. That was the tendency of UNESCO delegates to avert their eyes from the very issues that needed to be faced most squarely.

The fear of offending was such that nobody was bold enough to press the Argentine delegation for a report on, say, freedom of the press in Buenos Aires. It was not the thing to ask the representative from South Africa for a summation of the state of racial tolerance in the Transvaal, or to cross-question Egyptians on the rule of law and the state of human rights in their country "without distinction, of race, sex, language or religion." Even the Americans, constantly pressing for bold action, remained diffident. "We can't afford to give the impression that we're running this show," said one.

At Beirut last week, the real issues of international understanding were plainly too hot to handle. The best that a disillusioned Frenchman in downtown Beirut could say of those who kept hands off: "Ah, ces Unescans! Ces gens sans race, sans couleur et sans sexe."

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