Eleanor (10 page)

A cable arrived from Washington authorizing the U.S. delegation to submit the U.S. draft Covenant as a basis for discussion, and Hendrick turned the document over to the Secretariat for distribution. At three in the morning his telephone rang in the Beau Rivage. Walter M. Kotschnig, his superior in Washington, was at the other end. “He bawled the hell out of me for having had the draft Covenant circulated, because in the meantime Lovett had instructed him to kill the Covenant. That was the way we got started with the Covenant at Geneva.”
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Unexpectedly, a prodigious amount of time was spent on the first article of the Declaration. That article, modeled on the American Declaration of Independence, read, “All men are created equal.” That would never do, protested Mrs. Hansa Mehta of India. “All men” might be interpreted to exclude women. In vain did Mrs. Roosevelt argue that the women of the United States had never felt they were cut out of the Declaration of Independence because it said “all men.” The women felt strongly. It became a minor
cause célèbre
in the Commission on the Status of Women, which voted unanimously to ask the Commission on Human Rights to substitute “all people” for “all men.”
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Mrs. Roosevelt did not resist. While she had not objected to being assigned to the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (III)
in the beginning, she had come to resent the automatic assumption on the part of the men that women were not to be trusted with political issues.
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Many of the women in the United Nations had reached the top in countries where women had very little recognition. They were afraid of the phrase “all men”: “Oh, no,” they protested, “if it says ‘all men,’ when we go home it will be all men.” So it was finally changed to “all human beings,” and subsequent articles began “Everyone” or “No one.” Occasionally, in the body of an article a lonely “his” was allowed to remain because that seemed a little more elegant than saying “his and hers.”

This same article also substituted the phrase “are born free and equal” for “are created,” the latter formulation implying a Divine Creator and a divine spark in man, Mrs. Roosevelt said, which made it unacceptable to the Communist representatives. When you write an international document, she explained,

you try not to let the words interfere with getting as much agreement as possible and as much acceptance as possible to obtain the ends you want. Now, we wanted as many nations as possible to accept the fact that men, for one reason or another, were born free and equal in dignity and rights, that they were endowed with reason and conscience, and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood. The way to do that was to find words that everyone would accept, and so that is why it says “are born” instead of saying “are created.”
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As chairman, she pushed her Commission relentlessly at Geneva. “I drive hard and when I get home I will be tired! The men on the Commission will be also!” she wrote. Her colleagues called her “a slave driver,” the delegate of Panama at one point begging her not to forget the right of the human beings who were members of the Commission. She was not unresponsive to the beauties and distractions of Geneva. “At last I have seen Mont Blanc!” she exclaimed as the clouds finally rolled away, but they had agreed to work overtime if they took Saturday afternoon off, she reminded them, and kept them in session until seven. Why didn’t they shorten
the length of their speeches, she suggested, if they objected to the length of the sessions. “No one can ever tell me that women like to talk longer than men!”

A week before Christmas the Declaration was approved by a vote of 13 to 4. Mrs. Roosevelt was not satisfied with the language. It was too professorial, too lawyerlike. “All my advisers are lawyers or I would be lost,” she advised a friend, adding, “common sense is valuable now & then I find however!” The Commission approved her resolution asking the drafting committee to prepare a short text, “which will be readily understood by all peoples.” On this resolution there was neither abstention nor dissent.
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The delegates said good-by. Bogomolov came up to her to report that his wife, who had assisted him as a translator, was practically dead “and I am very tired while you look fresh as a daisy.” That compliment, coming from a country whose representatives were known for their willingness to outsit and outtalk the representatives of the “decadent” democracies, pleased her.

“I’d love to slide on these floors,” Mrs. Roosevelt had confided to Jim Hendrick at the beginning of the session, when she felt their polished marble under her feet. “Now you can take your slide,” Hendrick solemnly advised her as they walked away from the Palais des Nations chamber in which the Commission had been meeting. Whereupon Mrs. Roosevelt gave a little run and slid, ran again, and slid once more.

“I’ve been thinking about the meeting here,” she wrote in a more serious vein to a sick friend that same day.

At first it seemed sad to me to go into that beautiful building built with love & hope by nations who thought they had found the way to peace & understanding. Now I think it gives me encouragement & I wish more meetings could be held here for when you see the present activity you realize that perhaps man’s spirit, his striving, is indestructible. It is set back but it does not die & so there is a reason why each one of us should do our best in our own small corner. Do you think I’m too optimistic?
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Would the Commission, in the end, be able to produce a draft on which both the Soviet bloc and the United States could agree, she was asked at a final press conference before departing for the States:

I think this is quite possible. They like greater emphasis on the authority of the state, and when it comes to social and economic rights, they are most anxious to spell them out in detail. The rights and freedoms of the individual, and religious and spiritual questions, don’t seem to them as important in a draft of this kind. But certainly a balance can be achieved.
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The revised drafts were forwarded to the member governments for their comments before a final session of the Commission on Human Rights, after which she hoped the documents would be ready for consideration by the 1948 General Assembly. The United States no longer had any problem with the Declaration since it would not require congressional approval.

But there was furious debate inside the administration over whether to go ahead with a covenant under which nations would assume a legal obligation to protect the rights enunciated. Officials on the working level in the field of human rights favored a covenant, but would Congress ratify such a treaty? Mrs. Roosevelt came down to Washington after the Geneva meeting to confer with the president and the State Department. Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights had just submitted a hard-hitting report that listed ten recommendations to secure minority groups rights in the United States, and southern demagogues, in full cry against those recommendations, were threatening to bolt the Democratic party in 1948. Lovett doubted that the Senate would ratify a covenant that included strong stipulations against discrimination.

To win Lovett over, the Hendricks gave a dinner in Mrs. Roosevelt’s honor while she was in Washington at which the Lovetts were guests, as were the Sandifers and the Kotschnigs. After dinner the ladies of the party went off to make small talk; but that was not what Mrs. Roosevelt was interested in, and she soon had the ladies rejoining the men. The discussion was about
the Covenant and the prospects for Senate ratification. “We talked and talked and talked,” said Hendrick. Finally Lovett sought to bring the evening to a close. “A most interesting conversation,” he said to the guest of honor, “but I know you are such a busy person with so much to do, I don’t want to keep you here any longer.” Oh, Mrs. Roosevelt protested, she was quite prepared to stay and go on talking. But Lovett, although affecting to make a joke of it, was equally determined. “You know perfectly well you have to leave now. I appreciate your position perfectly.” Mrs. Roosevelt knew then she had to say good night. But she still pressed him, writing afterward:

I do not know why I did not think of it the other night, but one of your best arguments to use when the discrimination clause has to be discussed with Congress, is that in this country the people who are the most open to Soviet propaganda are the Negroes because of discrimination. In the international picture this is something we have to consider, in our own world attitude and therefore in our domestic attitude.

It was “a sound suggestion,” Lovett replied, and he was passing it on to Dean Rusk, who was working on this matter. There were other consequences to the Hendrick dinner. Lovett advised Rusk that he thought the Declaration a horrible document, unacceptable to the United States. When Rusk discussed this with Hendrick, the latter said he thought Lovett’s ire had less to do with the Declaration than with the effort to sell him on the Covenant at a social dinner. Despite Lovett’s hostility, Mrs. Roosevelt’s authority was such that it became the department’s policy to push on with the Covenants as well as the Declaration.
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Before the June, 1948, session of the Commission, she wrote the secretary of state, Gen. George C. Marshall, that she felt the United States should do its utmost to obtain the best possible drafts both of the Covenant and the Declaration. He agreed, but with a realistic
caveat
. “The Covenant as a binding legal document must conform fairly closely to the constitutions, laws and practices of all
the countries which ratify it. Either this, or it will be a dead letter treaty.” When the drafting committee reconvened in May, 1948, she was able to say, “My Government wants a Declaration and it wants a Covenant.”
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Four lawyers sat behind her at that session.

Today was the first day that I began to understand some of the legal points we are now dealing with & when I am not clear myself I cannot make it clear for others. I am not a lawyer & four have to sit behind to guide me & they all see different pitfalls in every phrase & I am sometimes in a complete daze!

The Russians were represented at the 1948 session of the drafting committee and the full commission by a new man, Prof. A. P. Pavlov. He had a large black beard and pink cheeks, and was “by far the most civilized” of the Soviet delegates to the Human Rights Commission as well as the most polemical. He was an authority in the field of Soviet jurisprudence, was Soviet ambassador to Belgium, and was nephew of the great Soviet psychologist of the same name. Instead of proceeding to perfect the Geneva documents, he announced in his introductory speech, the drafting committee should begin the debate anew of basic principles. Slightly appalled, Mrs. Roosevelt replied that “we shall gain very little by discussing general principles at this session.” The committee should confine itself to specific drafts and avoid “theoretical conjecture.” The committee supported her. One of the general principles Pavlov wanted to stress was that the Declaration must clearly define the citizens’ duty toward the state. Indeed, it seemed to Mrs. Roosevelt, as she studied Pavlov’s amendments to this effect, that the USSR, at bottom, was dubious about the whole enterprise of drafting a declaration because, in the end, the rights that were asserted therein were rights against the state and the duties that were proclaimed were, in the main, duties the state owed to the individual. To almost every article in the Declaration Pavlov wanted to add either one of two amendments. He wanted a phrase that, in effect, said that the state would see to it that the specified right was observed. Such an exaltation of the state did not sit well with Mrs. Roosevelt, who
was reared in the individualistic traditions of the American Revolution and the Protestant ethic and who was sure that “certain rights can never be granted to the government, but must be kept in the hands of the people.”
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The other amendment that Pavlov sought to add was the “little, rather tricky” clause, “corresponding to the laws of the State.” Article XIII of the Declaration, for example, provided that “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and return to his country.” To add the phrase “according to the laws of his state” would have nullified the article because Soviet laws did not permit free departure and return. In fact, Moscow at the time was outraging western opinion by its detention of Russian wives of foreign citizens, as Mrs. Roosevelt pointed out.

It was an effective thrust, blunted somewhat when Professor Pavlov at the opening session of the full Commission charged that the United States had delayed the arrival of the Byelorussian and Ukrainian delegates by holding up their visas and requiring them to fill out an elaborate questionnaire, both in contravention of the UN headquarters agreement. She sent General Marshall a private protest. “I regret the embarrassment caused you,” he replied. The problem arose from a conflict between the UN Headquarters Site Agreement and the revised visa requirements mandated by Congress. “The Department will make every effort to prevent unnecessary delay in the granting of visas to authorized individuals coming to UN headquarters.” Some good might result from the incident, the general added. “There is now some prospect of working out with the USSR a more liberal and reciprocal form of visa procedure.”
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“Reciprocity” was becoming a key concept in U.S. response to Soviet attacks. The Russians, she wrote Walter White, wanted to accept for discussion only those petitions that were critical of the United States. She took the view that the Commission should accept all or none. When the Commission discussed the Declaration’s draft article on the right to adequate housing and medical care, Pavlov, who always arrived at sessions with two bulging briefcases, delivered carefully researched speeches on American housing shortages and soaring medical costs. In reply, Mrs. Roosevelt
invited the Soviet Union to send a group of experts to the United States to examine housing and medical standards, provided an American team was given the same opportunity in the Soviet Union. Pavlov did not accept the offer.
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