Not Now, Thank You

Since the United Nations first began, its partisans have urged the creation of a U.N. army to enforce its will. Deriding the idea, Russia's delegate Andrei Vishinsky used to say that such a force would be useful only for parading up and down Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, with Secretary-General Trygve Lie out front on a white charger. In the midst of the Lebanese crisis last August, President Eisenhower called on the U.N. to set up a "standby peace force." But last week U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold cautiously rejected the whole idea of a permanent U.N. army, ready to rush off anywhere and any time. The kind of force "generally envisaged," said he, "would be without great practical value," and expensive to boot.

If the U.N. Emergency Force of 5,500 men now works on the Egyptian-Israeli border, said Hammarskjold, this is because Egypt agrees to its presence. A similar force would not have worked in Lebanon, he said, "without soon becoming a party to the internal conflicts among the nationals of the country." Nor could a U.N. force have replaced the British in Jordan, because the Jordanian government flatly refused to admit it.

"At some stage," Hammarskjold conceded, "a standing group of a few military experts might be useful . . . in preparation for meeting possible appeals for an operation." This kind of inexpensive and tentative preparation is also all that the U.S. State Department currently favors.

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