"With His Help"

In the early days of the United Nations, when each delegate seemed to feel the wing beats of the Dove of Peace, the idea came up of opening each session with a prayer. Letters poured in supporting the proposal, but in 1949 a special committee finally killed it. Reason: doctrinal differences might be inflamed, and the godless, i.e., Russia & Co., might be disgruntled. In fact, Russia had made it clear that it would be disgruntled. A recommendation calling for a minute of silence was the substitute passed by a bare majority out of 15 committee members--Russia and France, among others, abstained from voting; three stayed away from the meeting.

Last week the U.S. officially raised the question again. In a letter to each of the other 75 U.N. members, U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. proposed that "God should be openly and audibly invoked at the United Nations in accordance with any one of the religious faiths which are represented here. I do so," he wrote, "in the conviction that we cannot make the United Nations into a successful instrument of God's peace without God's help, and that with His help, we cannot fail."

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