UN General Assembly
1947

Hopes for the success of the United Nations were running very high in the closing days of the first session of the General Assembly. Few of us, if any, left this hall last December in the belief, that six months later the United Nations as an instrument of peace and world security would appear to be failing, much as the League of Nations did. None of us imagined that we should come back to work here haunted by the fear of another war. We gathered here in October 1946 under dense clouds of indifference and pessimism: pessimism arising from the disappointment of the Paris Conference where the great Powers had unsuccessfully tried to reach an agreement regarding the peace settlements with the totalitarian aggressors, and indifference, to a surprising degree, from this great metropolis.