Mouseproof

New Zealand's blunt, able Sir Carl Berendsen is a great & good friend of the United Nations, an organization he helped to found, but his friendship does not blind him to its drawbacks--its intrigue, its financial irresponsibility (the way delegates like to travel at someone else's expense), or its futility. Last week, having quit after six years as New Zealand's chief delegate, Sir Carl got his opinions off his chest at a meeting of the U.N. association back home in Wellington.

"The flow of speech and the spate of words in the United Nations," he said, "are quite incredible and in time become insupportable . . . Votes are bought and sold, not for money, but by a system of bargaining which some think part of the democratic system but which I and many others think disgusting ... I say with amazement, agony and fury that millions of worthy but simple people act as if they believed that it is possible to keep the peace by words and good intentions."

The U.N., Sir Carl conceded, "is the best we can do in the circumstances, and if we did not have it we would have to invent something very like it." Nonetheless, he added in disillusion, "we established at San Francisco an organization which could no doubt protect the world against a marauding mouse but not against any real danger from a tiger."

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