The Yale Political

Glossier and more ambitious than most of its fellow picnickers in the meadow of political life, a new "Journal of Divergent Views on National Issues" begins to sit imposingly on the newsstands. Its editors, Yale Juniors, are more than hopeful about its job; indeed, they sound oracular; they will "cover from all points of view the major problematic situations countervailing our way of life". To start with, they cover the United Nations.

It is not a happy choice. Few "situations" are more susceptible to the stale striking of familiar and unrevealing ideological attitudes. The contributors, mostly men who have repeated their ideas about the U.N. over and over since its beginning, set them forth here once more, irrepressibly insisting on what everybody knows them to believe.

Now one can divide the way in which public officials and students have thought about the U.N. into some six polemical schools, and since the Yale Political is almost exclusively a polemical magazine, it is surely not unfair to do it here. The scheme works like this:

1. First one distills the lyric rhapsodists, who in this issue number two: Chester Bowles and Senator Alexander Wiley. Bowles' contribution is by far the more interesting, for his faith in the U.N. rests on something at least vaguely tangible, its unexpected "capacity for executive action" and its value as an international forum of ideas. Wiley's hope lies merely in discussing things, "a meeting of world minds," and he evidently does not care who does the discussing. Bowles, in short, says nothing substantial; Wiley says nothing at all; but it is true nonetheless that the rhapsodists are the U.N.'s spiritual trustees, and that they must always figure heavily in the battle to keep it alive.

2. The poets' chief rhetorical opposites (and enemies), who make one wonder if discussion can really be a profitable exercise, delegate to represent them here two famous didactic lcturers. The first, Ambassador Valerian Zorin, explains how U.S. activity in the U.N. has (as is well known) hindered the efforts of peace-loving nations to disarm, to reform U.N. executive machinery, to admit the Chinese People's Republic, and to eliminate colonialism. Not very curiously, the style and tone of the article closely resembles that of Robert C. Hill, who used to be Ambassador to Mexico, and who now quotes from the U.N. Charter to show why the U.S. ought to "favor collective intervention in Cuba." He defends the very principal of intervention against Herbert L. Matthews, in what the Y.P. unluckily terms a "debate". (Matthews immediately concedes that intervention cannot be called impermissable and cites the case of Trujillo, whom Hill does not mention.)

Another debate between preachers casts Selby Ngcobo of Rhodesia as an apologist for African nationalism and neutralism against Harry Rudin of the Yale Faculty. Ngcobo comes off the worse for it, largely because although neither talks either to each other's points or to those of their critics, Professor Rudin writes more specifically and less windily. The exchange is a magnificently fatuous one, and the editors should blush for it.

3. By this time one welcomes more restrained if less exciting voices, those of men whose liking is more for the descriptive than for the . These include Senator Keating, who argues well against distributing foreign aid through the U.N., pointing out that agencies like Paul Hoffman's (or even the World Bank) must "seek objective...bases for allocation of aid [which] can be found only in the two extremes of either realistic economic fact or the theoretical national equality of all states." He puts the case with little originality (and for far too long), but at least he works with solid stuff. So also Arthur Dean, who summarizes last month's N.Y. Times' quotations of his stand with enviable succinctness.

4. Harlan Cleveland, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization, leads the largest bloc of men connected with the U.N. Of the school of subdued optimists he alone represented in the Y.P., which is just as well, for except for a few remarks on the tradition of the International Civil Service as a career service, his discourse consists of bland official history.

5. Against this dismal pattern the magazine holds a genuinely impressive tract, the introduction to the Secretary General's Annual Report. The product of the late Dag Hammarskold's lucid mind, it describes concepts of the U.N. as a "static conference for resolving conflicts of interest and ideologies" (the Wiley view) or as an organization able to play an effective role in the world through executive action. The only pity of it is that it ends so suddenly.

By choosing to worry about "divergent views" rather than real analysis of "national issues" the Yale Political has lamentably ignored all the important questions. Precisely what the U.N. can accomplish; its future in light of a Congo expedition of which many of its wealthier members disapproved; the usefulness of a bond issue; the legitimate scope of its activity; the sort of man U Thant is--appear to be outside the magazine's concern. Y.P. has attracted big names, but it must know by now that active officials with jobs to keep and little time to spare can rarely be counted on to contribute original and specific ideas--especially on problems so diffuse as the U.N. (Considering the content, by the way, its celebrated refusal of Adlai Stevenson's article on the ground that the Ambassador had just rewritten an old speech looks ludicrous.) Big names also tend, rather mischievously, to spend 30 inches of type on points worth no more than four.

With a less prepossessing dramatis personae, more careful attention to garnering substance instead of polemic, and a layout more dramatic and attractive, Y.P. may succeed in proving its fundamental objective a sound one. For the moment, it has poured a stinking and vinagery old wine into a new, blue bottle. The result does not deserve to be read.

4. Harlan Cleveland, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization, leads the largest bloc of men connected with the U.N. Of the school of subdued optimists he alone represented in the Y.P., which is just as well, for except for a few remarks on the tradition of the International Civil Service as a career service, his discourse consists of bland official history.

5. Against this dismal pattern the magazine holds a genuinely impressive tract, the introduction to the Secretary General's Annual Report. The product of the late Dag Hammarskold's lucid mind, it describes concepts of the U.N. as a "static conference for resolving conflicts of interest and ideologies" (the Wiley view) or as an organization able to play an effective role in the world through executive action. The only pity of it is that it ends so suddenly.

By choosing to worry about "divergent views" rather than real analysis of "national issues" the Yale Political has lamentably ignored all the important questions. Precisely what the U.N. can accomplish; its future in light of a Congo expedition of which many of its wealthier members disapproved; the usefulness of a bond issue; the legitimate scope of its activity; the sort of man U Thant is--appear to be outside the magazine's concern. Y.P. has attracted big names, but it must know by now that active officials with jobs to keep and little time to spare can rarely be counted on to contribute original and specific ideas--especially on problems so diffuse as the U.N. (Considering the content, by the way, its celebrated refusal of Adlai Stevenson's article on the ground that the Ambassador had just rewritten an old speech looks ludicrous.) Big names also tend, rather mischievously, to spend 30 inches of type on points worth no more than four.

With a less prepossessing dramatis personae, more careful attention to garnering substance instead of polemic, and a layout more dramatic and attractive, Y.P. may succeed in proving its fundamental objective a sound one. For the moment, it has poured a stinking and vinagery old wine into a new, blue bottle. The result does not deserve to be read.