The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (51 page)

I also visited the quarters of refugees who had made their way from areas formerly occupied by the Germans, like the Sudetenland, to the Western sector. The people were crowded into unsanitary and ramshackle underground shelters without proper heat or water or food.

The whole journey had been a good one for me. I had grown and matured and gained confidence. After we landed in New York I wrote my thanks to the President and to the secretary of state for an unforgettable experience, and thought my work with the United Nations was over.

Not long after I returned to New York I received notice that the Economic and Social Council, which had been set up by the United Nations in London, had created a committee, the Nuclear Commission on Human Rights, to make recommendations on matters pertaining to the functioning of the UN Human Rights Commission. It was to meet in New York in the spring of 1946 and the members were named as individuals rather than as representatives of their various governments. I was asked on President Truman’s invitation to be a delegate to the General Assembly.

We began work in temporary quarters at Hunter College in New York and carried on at Geneva and the United Nations headquarters at Lake Success, on Long Island, for the next two years. But during the same period I was again nominated and confirmed as a member of the United Nations delegation to the General Assembly and continued as a delegate until 1953. At the same time I was also the United States representative on the Human Rights Commission.

Thus, over the years, in one capacity or another, I saw a great deal of the Russian delegates and not infrequently felt I saw and heard too much of them, because they were usually the center of opposition to our ideas.

Perhaps Maxim Litvinov, whose wife was English, was the most skillful Russian diplomat in getting along with Western government officials. V. M. Molotov, who had been so rigid as foreign minister and who helped make
niet
such a famous word at the United Nations, was always correct and polite. But, although I saw him frequently and sometimes sat next to him at dinners, I never felt it was possible to know him well. In fact, it was difficult to know any Russian well and I suppose the Kremlin planned it that way. It was really impossible to have a private and frank talk with Russian officials.

One of the Russian delegates over a period of years was a big, dramatic man with flowing white hair and a bristling black beard, Dr. Alexei P. Pavlov, a nephew of the physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, famous for his studies of conditioned reflexes. His nephew was an able delegate but he seemed to feel the need of proving that he was a faithful Communist. He was a brilliant talker and he often gave me a difficult time in committee meetings.

More than once Dr. Pavlov arose with a flourish, shook his white locks angrily, and made a bitter attack on the United States on the basis of some report or even some rumor that had to do with discrimination against Negroes, particularly in our southern states. Of course, I always replied vigorously, pointing out that the United States had done a great deal to improve the social and economic status of the Negro.

On one occasion, when I was irritated to the point where I could no longer stand it, I interrupted him to say sternly, “Sir, I believe you are hitting below the belt.” This may not have been elegant language for a diplomatic exchange but it expressed my feelings.

The Soviet delegates could be very thorough in seeking out American weaknesses or in distorting the picture of our country by citing some isolated fact to support their propaganda. Once the Russian delegate made much of what he said was a law in Mississippi forbidding any man to strike a woman with an ax handle more than two feet long. This was an example of American brutality.

“In my country,” a French delegate mused, “the law forbids a man to strike a woman even with a rose, long stem or short stem.”

Louis Hyde, a delegation adviser, telephoned our legal adviser in Washington to check on the allegation. The uncomfortable answer he received was that an old law something like that actually was on the books in Mississippi. In any event, we had no very strong reply.

The Russian delegates simply did not dare talk with a foreigner without taking the precaution of having a witness present, lest at some future time their superiors might accuse them of making traitorous statements. Not even brash, outspoken Dr. Pavlov, who so often berated me and attacked my stand at United Nations sessions, dared ignore this practice. One evening he and his colleague Alexander Borisov came to my apartment with several other guests. I had invited a friend who is an excellent pianist.

Dr. Pavlov listened happily, his big shock of hair falling forward and his black beard touching his chest. As they were leaving, Mr. Borisov went into the other room for his hat, leaving me alone with Dr. Pavlov. Dr. Pavlov leaned toward me and in a conspiratorial whisper said, “You like the music of Tchaikovsky. So do I!” This was as close as I ever came to getting a frank expression of opinion from a Soviet official.

I certainly do not want to give the impression that the Russian officials or representatives are surly or even unfriendly, because they are often quite the opposite. It is in official negotiation or debate that they adopt such rigid attitudes and distort facts so irritatingly and display such stubborn unfriendliness toward Western ideas. Despite their difficult official attitude, I always felt that the Americans should refuse to show unfriendliness toward representatives of the Communist bloc. Some of our delegates would not even be photographed shaking hands or talking with a Communist representative when the reporters and news photographers clustered around at the opening of each session of the Assembly or on some similar occasion. Presumably our reluctant delegates were taking the position that the Russians were mortal enemies, or perhaps they felt it would do them no good politically.

The Russians, on the contrary, were eager to be photographed shaking hands with and smiling broadly at the delegates of other nations, particularly Americans, realizing that this gave the impression all over the world that they were trying to be friendly and co-operative.

It is possible that Westerners never fully understand the complexity of the Russian character, but I constantly kept trying to do so throughout my service with the United Nations and later, because I know it is extremely important for us to learn all we can about our powerful international opposition.

I am not certain that there is any moral in these observations about my dealings with representatives of the Soviet Union. On second thought, there is, of course, a moral and a warning for those who love freedom, and it is probably best expressed by a kindly but tragic man who loved freedom very much indeed. His name was Jan Masaryk, the son of Thomas G. Masaryk, the first President and founder of the Republic of Czechoslovakia.

At meetings of the United Nations General Assembly it happened that the Czechoslovak delegation sat directly behind us. Jan Masaryk, as foreign minister of Czechoslovakia and head of the delegation, listened to the debates intently in the early days of the General Assembly, but when it came time for a vote he always followed the lead of the Russian delegation. This was not difficult to understand because the Russian armed forces practically surrounded Czechoslovakia. On one occasion he leaned forward and whispered:

“What can you do? What else can you do when you’ve got them right in your front yard?”

He found that what he did made no difference to the Russians. In February of 1948 the Communists seized power in Czechoslovakia by a
coup d’état
and a few days later it was announced that Jan Masaryk had died by leaping from a window.

Thirty-two
    

The Human Rights Commission

DURING MY YEARS
at the UN it was my work on the Human Rights Commission that I considered my most important task, though as I have explained I was also a delegate to the General Assembly, which, at times when the two jobs more or less fused, caused some confusion.

Now to get back to the commission that made recommendations on the definite composition of the Human Rights Commission at Hunter College in the spring of 1946. The work in this perod was an intensive education for me in many things, including constitutional law, and I would not have been able to do much but for the able advisers who worked with me. I was more than grateful for the fact that Marjorie Whiteman, who has written a legal work on American treaties, sat behind me at almost every meeting and explained what we could or could not do for constitutional reasons. My first adviser at this time, James Pomeroy Hendrick, always remains in my mind, with Mr. Sandifer, as an ideal guide, philosopher and friend. Urbane and soft-spoken, with a quiet sense of humor, he was tireless and devoted. He never spared himself and so he made me work hard.

After I had been elected chairman of the commission I tried to push our work along as rapidly as possible. I might point out here that eventually we decided that our main task was to write an International Bill of Rights. This was to consist of three parts. First, there was to be a Declaration, which would be adopted as a resolution of the General Assembly and would name and define all the human rights, not only the traditionally recognized political and civil rights but also the more recently recognized social, economic and cultural rights. Since the General Assembly is not a world parliament, its resolutions are not legally binding on member states. We therefore decided that the Declaration would be followed by a Covenant (or covenants) which would take the form of a treaty and would be legally binding on the countries that accepted them. Finally, there was to be a system for the implementation or enforcement of the rights.

We also finally recommended that the Human Rights Commission be composed of eighteen members, each of whom would represent one of the United Nations governments, and that they should be chosen on a rotating basis with due regard for geographical distribution, except for the representatives of the five great powers—the United States, Soviet Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China. As was customary, it was agreed that these five powers should be elected automatically to the new commission as members, leaving thirteen seats to be rotated among other members of the United Nations. These recommendations, however, came later. At the Hunter College sessions we were just getting started.

When we called for a formal vote on presenting our proposals to the Economic and Social Council, the Soviet Union merely recorded its “objections and dissent” to certain agreements and thus did not join in the recommendations of the preparatory commission. The Council accepted our recommendations and President Truman then nominated me as the United States representative on the commission. Being the first chairman of the commission, in addition to my duties as a delegate to the Assembly, kept me on United Nations work during five or six months of the year and I had to keep my daily schedule on a crowded timetable basis, with no minutes to spare.

I remember once when the Assembly was in session at Lake Success, Richard Winslow, who was manager of the office of the United States mission, told me that he had been urgently asked to arrange a time when I could talk to Tyler Wood, who was then assistant to Will Clayton, about a problem concerning the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.

“Well,” I replied, handing him my calendar, “here’s my schedule. You figure out when I shall see him—if you can!”

He worked on the calendar for a while and then said that he and Mr. Wood would meet me at a certain hour when I would be leaving a New York hotel. They did. We got into the automobile that was waiting for me and Mr. Wood began talking. He talked until we had driven pehaps twenty blocks to the CBS studios, where I got out while they remained in the car. I did a broadcast with Mr. Dulles on some United Nations matter, then returned to the car and resumed talking with Mr. Wood while we drove from Madison Avenue to Broadway and Fifty-ninth Street. There I got out again and went into the United Nations Information Center, which was just being formally opened at ceremonies that I had promised to attend. I returned to the automobile and resumed my conversation with Mr. Wood as we drove downtown to the Hotel Pennsylvania, where Mr. Wood and Mr. Winslow left me. I continued on to my apartment at Washington Square, some twenty blocks away, but I had an appointment with Senator Austin at the Hotel Pennsylvania not long afterward, so I returned there within a short time. Arriving in the offices we had at the hotel, I discovered I had five minutes before meeting the senator, so I sat down in a big easy chair and closed my eyes.

A few minutes later I was awakened by a startled exclamation and looked up to see Mr. Winslow and Mr. Wood standing in the doorway, staring.

“How did you get here! We left you on your way home. We walked across the street, had a quick hamburger and coffee and came directly here, and you’re already on the scene!”

In those days my life went long at that pace for long periods at a time and I suppose I enjoyed it, because I like to keep busy. When the United Nations headquarters was at Lake Success my schedule was complicated by the fact that I always had duties to attend to in New York early in the day and then had to drive for forty minutes to reach Lake Success in time for the opening of the Assembly or some other meeting at eleven o’clock. This suited Mr. Sandifer or any adviser because he always knew that I would be starting out at twenty minutes after ten. He could climb into my automobile with the assurance that for the next forty minutes I would be his “captive audience” and that our discussion of the day’s work would not be interrupted.

In the period that I presided as chairman of the Human Rights Commission we spent most of our time trying to write the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Covenants, and there were times when I was getting in over my head. The officers of the commission had been charged with the task of preparing the first draft of the Declaration, and I remember that on one occasion, thinking that our work might be helped by an informal atmosphere, I asked this small group to meet at my apartment for tea. One of the members was the Chinese representative, Dr. P. C. Chang, who was a great joy to all of us because of his sense of humor, his philosophical observations, and his ability to quote some apt Chinese proverb to fit almost any occasion. Dr. John P. Humphrey, a Canadian who was the permanent head of the Division of Human Rights in the UN Secretariat, and Dr. Charles Malik of Lebanon, one of the very able diplomats at the United Nations, also were at this meeting.