Volume 51, Number 1 · January 15, 2004
'A Great Day in History'
By Brian Urquhart
Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations
by Stephen C. Schlesinger
Westview, 374 pp., $27.50
In April 1945, as the Allied forces poured into Germany, Franklin Roosevelt's dream of an international security organization, conceived in the heat of war, was about to become a reality. The arrangements for the San Francisco Conference were nearly complete, and the poet Archibald MacLeish had started work on the President's opening speech. On April 12, thirteen days before the conference was to open, Roosevelt died. In the shadow of an immense and universal grief, his conference went ahead as planned. I remember that, to me, serving in Germany, it seemed a magic moment, a revival of hope, common sense, and the possibility of a decent future.
Review, 4156 words
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