-
6 SURPRISE
- NYU Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
123 6 Surprise The mayor of San Francisco stayed in London longer than any other American civic booster. Roger Lapham circulated among the diplomats to remind them of the warm welcome they had experienced in his city, and he was gratified to hear San Francisco mentioned frequently during the lengthy debates over whether to place the headquarters in the United States or in Europe. By December 20, when the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations determined that the site question needed further study by yet another committee, Lapham decided he had done all he could for the moment. An interim committee had instructions to select up to six well-qualified locations for the UN’s General Assembly to consider, and Lapham felt confident that San Francisco would be among them. He knew that a final decision had been deferred until the first meeting of the General Assembly in January.1 And so, on Saturday, December 22, 1945, joining a tide of Americans heading home from war, the weary but hopeful mayor of San Francisco began his long journey back to the United States after nearly a month of courting the United Nations. Waiting at the airport, he heard stunning news: San Francisco was out of the running. What? While Lapham had been on a train from London to the airport one hundred miles away, the long-winded Committee 8 of the Preparatory Commission had moved with highly unusual efficiency to limit the headquarters search to locations east of the Mississippi River. Lapham was in no mood for diplomacy now. “It’s a hell of a note,” he declared angrily to a reporter who caught up with him at the airport, “after being in London so many weeks and after believing that we were dealing with the proper outfit , suddenly to discover that the vote has been taken this way.” It smacked of back-room dealing, not careful deliberation. “When it comes down to brass tacks, we can only draw the conclusion that this vote has been 124 The New World taken in the atmosphere of regular ward politics. It’s a cheap, dirty trick. I’m sorry, but that’s the way I feel. That a great international organization should stoop to such a level staggers me.”2 How could this have happened? The events that led to Mayor Lapham’s surprise, and to the series of rapid and unexpected developments that followed , showed that civic boosters and diplomats were approaching the headquarters site question with fundamentally different priorities and contrasting mental maps of the world. Even though the boosters viewed their interests as both local and global, they ignored, downplayed, or could not perceive international factors that blocked many of them from the prize they so confidently pursued. Meanwhile the diplomats, who saw the world in terms of nations, continents, and the balance of power, had no experience to guide them through the tangle of local factors that complicated finding a location to do business in the United States. There were far more competitors than any previous contest to host the Olympics or a world’s fair, and the circumstances of deciding upon a permanent home for diplomacy differed greatly. The diplomats could not separate the task from international intrigue as their nations jockeyed for influence in the postwar world. “Beautiful Small Towns in the East” During the four months of meetings in London in the autumn of 1945, the British minister of state, Philip Noel-Baker, had suffered one defeat after another. He had been denied a grand ceremonial last meeting for the League of Nations, where he had spent much of his career, and he had lost two fights to place the United Nations at the league’s headquarters in Geneva. Despite his best efforts to change the course of history, Western Europe—the region of the world that he regarded as the cradle of civilization —was giving way to the newly prominent United States. When the vote confirming the United States occurred on December 15, Noel-Baker had been the model of gracious defeat as he offered a motion to declare the choice unanimous.3 But this experienced strategist recognized that his moment of defeat also presented new opportunity. While the American government’s neutrality left a leadership vacuum on the headquarters question, the decision to place the UN in the United States created a groundswell of sympathy for Europe. Within hours of the December 15 decision, Noel-Baker circulated a memorandum benignly titled “Some Further...