Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (February 13, 1946)
ON THE RECORD —
West Coast seen best suited for UNO site
By Dorothy Thompson
SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco seems to be one city that apparently unanimously wants UNO, and if the world organization is to grow in real authority, there would seem to be excellent reasons for locating it on the West Coast, if its location is to be in America at all. Probably one long-range development will be the rise in importance of the Pacific and Asiatic world. Eastward, the course of empire appears to be taking its way, and for Americans eastward is westward.
The opposition of New York and Connecticut citizens is justified. The area is the most densely populated in the country with extremely high real estate values. It is also a center of nationality groups, particularly of later immigrants, and the hub of their publicity and pressure organizations. Undoubtedly, they will tie in with UNO in any case, but from New York they could exercise the highest pressure, as it is also the most influential publishing and radio center.
Yet New York is, perhaps, one of the less representative parts of the United States. Certainly, if we hope that UNO delegates will enlarge their comprehension of America, it would be better to have them almost anywhere else. Any city of under a million would be more representative of the authentic mind of America. New York publishes most of our books, is the center of newspaper syndicates and radio networks, and, through the electoral college system, plays an important role in the election of presidents. But it is a long time since it has given us our most eminent writers, philosophers, or social scientists. It is the most European part of the country, but America is not European, and it would be a mistake to create the illusion that it is.
San Francisco is a city of well under a million; has a temperate climate; is high in material amenities; the surrounding country is of surpassing beauty; and it has a long, indigenous Oriental-tinged metropolitanism on a solidly American foundation. Also it is far enough from Washington to encourage UNO to greater life of its own.
The East Coast seems to be folding as a UNO center. Boston is not, apparently, acceptable to the Soviet Union. One group says there is not enough free speech there – remembering periodic banning of books – and another says there is too much free speech, especially on the subject of what the strong Catholic population thinks of the Soviet Union.
But what considerations prompted placing UNO in the United States at all? It would seem better to put it in a small country. Switzerland is out. As the graveyard of the League of Nations, I believe, the Swiss do not want it, nor does the Soviet Union want it in Switzerland.
The doubts of small nations are that UNO is, in its present structure, hardly more than a concert of great powers. To house it in the territory of one of them is dubious from two viewpoints: Its host may exercise undue influence, or it is bound to be a center of espionage and intrigue, to which U.S.A. is particularly vulnerable. That may be a reason why the Soviet Union did not bid for it, preferring a splendid isolationism of its own territories.
But at one time there were overtures from the Soviets to place it in Vienna, and I wonder why that proposal evaporated.
Vienna and Austria are at the junction between the Western and Eastern European worlds. Neither after the other war nor after this one was any solution found for Austria. The Anschluss was and is opposed because it would strengthen Germany. Any sort of Danubian federation including Austria is out, since the other East European states have fallen into the power orbit of the Soviets and their policies toward the German-speaking populations, whether Austrian or German, are deepening the rifts. The western countries and powers do not wish the Soviet power bloc to include more of historic Europe than it already does. That leaves Austria hanging in midair.
Yet, Vienna still is a once-great imperial capital. It has a famous opera, excellent hoteliers and caterers, and a cosmopolitan cuisine, combining the Central European, Slavic and Mediterranean. Its people, whatever their language, are of mixed nationality. It has, immediately outside the city, empty imperial palaces. Within an hour’s ride, are beautiful mountain resorts. Austria contains some of Europe’s most famous spas; every inch of the minimuscular country is surpassingly beautiful with superb mountains, lovely rivers, and chains of lakes. And everywhere there are excellent inns.
It never has been a “nation.” It was the center of the last supranational state before the last war. It has a curiously taming influence on national prides and animosities. Vienna, as a District of Columbia of Austria itself, situated at the junction of Russia and the west, on the Eurasian mainland, would seem, therefore, a much more appropriate place than any great power – and its fate is in the hands of the great powers.
One wonders why the original Soviet suggestion was rejected.