Volume 34, Number 17 · November 5, 1987
The Best Man
By Arthur Hertzberg
A Life in Peace and War
by Brian Urquhart
Harper and Row, 390 pp., $25.00
Brian Urquhart is a unique public servant, and in several ways. He is the only living person to have served in senior political positions in the Secretariat of the United Nations from its beginnings in 1946; he has, more than anyone else, been responsible for the success the UN can claim in organizing forces to keep the peace in Cyprus, the Middle East, and Africa. Yet among all the 'realists' who run governments today, Urquhart has remained a man who insists that moral principles must count in the affairs of the world, and that decent behavior toward the powerless, the poor, and the homeless would advance the interests of nations further than the hard-headed Realpolitik they usually espouse. There is, I think, a danger that his moving and beautifully written memoir will be read with respect and a knowing regret that, with few exceptions, the world powers did not behave the way the author would have wished. After dutifully praising him, the 'realists' are likely to ignore his experience and turn back to their preoccupation with short-term competition for power. Urquhart's book will have been read as the reflections of a nice, frustrated gentleman of good intentions who was condemned to live among savages.
Review, 3305 words
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