Norway High School - Caduceus Yearbook (Norway, ME)

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THE CADUCEUS 29 Building. The front of the building is made of glass and marble. Atop its sloping roof is a copper-covered dome. It has seven bronze doors which Canada gave to the U. N. In the lobby is an information desk and book store. Stairways and elevators lead to the huge auditorium where the General Assembly holds its meetings. The hall is seventy-five feet high. The walls have window-like openings. In this room are newspapermen, translators and radio, and T. V. announcers. The auditorium has six hundred thirty-six seats for the delegates and places for eight hundred visitors. Each seat is equipped with a tiny switch- board, and a set of earphones. On the switchboard are tive buttons, one for each of the five languages spoken in the United Nations. The General Assem- bly needs a big room for its meetings. It is the largest of the U. N. divisions. Each of the sixty Nations belonging to the U. N. may send five representatives to the assembly, but the five representa- tives together may cast only one vote. The third building is the Conference Building. With three divisions-the Security Council, the Trusteeship Coun- cil, and the Social and Economic Coun- cil. The building has a garage for 1,- 500 cars, a fire-fighting squad, a print shop, a cafeteria, and a post oflice. The main part of the building is made up of three big rooms-one for each of the councils. The Security Council meets almost every day. Its big job is to keep world peace. Eleven nations belong to the Council. Nationalist China, France, Russia, Britain, and the United States are the permanent members. Six oth- er Nations are elected by the General Assembly to serve for two-year, terms. Present two-year members are Chile, Greece, Pakistan, Columbia, Denmark, and Lebanon. Turkey, Brazil, and -New Zealand took theiplaceof Chile, Greece, and Pakistan this month. Though 'it is small, it is the most powerful groupf- The Trusteeship Council meets twice a year in January and June, to help nations that cannot exist independently. Other nations take a weak country in trusteeship until it can stand on its own feet again. The Economic and Social Council has are elected by and serve for eighteen members who the General Assembly , three-year terms. They workdfor high- and education er standards of living around the world. ' Henry Cabot Lodge, the chief United States delegate, represents our nation in several branches of the U. N. Besides Lodge, nine other people are serving from the .United States in the General Assembly. They' are: Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, Governor James Byrnes, Representatives Frances Bolton, James Richard, Archibald Ca- rey, James Zellerback, Henry Ford, Dr. Charles Mayo, and Mrs. Oswald Lord. More women than ever before are attending this year's U. N. General As- sembly session. The present assembly has thirteen member delegates and thirteen alternates. India's Madame Pandit, the president of the Assembly, is the best known. Another of the women leaders is Mad- ame Paul Bastid of France, head of one of the U. N .'s courts. The largest number of . women come from Cuba, which has sent three. Most of the women have served at U. N. meetings before. Several are lawmakers in their own countries and hold government positions. ' ' -Betty Eaton, '57

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28 THE CADUCEUS in lands where war has destroyed homes and the country itself. UNICEF helped seventeen million children in seventy- two different countries last year. Where WHO is for all people, UNICEF is just for children. It is financed by United Nations and voluntary contri- butions. United Nations Educational, Scientif- ic and Cultural Organization, better known as UNESCO, is an organization to forward peace in the different coun- tries by the co-operation of the nations in education, science, and culture. It works through UNESCO commissions in the member nations, which arrange for the nations to exchange teachers, students, and many kinds of craftsmen. Its headquarters are in Paris, France. UNESCO is going to set up five United Nations centers in different parts of the world to train teachers. UNESCO teams have gone to Bolivia, India, the Philippines, Thailand, where WHO, too, is working. It was organized in 1946, about the time UNICEF was organized. World Health Organization, called by many WHO, was founded in 1948, later than UNICEF and UNESCO. Its aim is to better health conditions around the World by a world wide attack on diseas- es. In 1949, April 7, was proclaimed World Health Day. WHO is working to destroy yaws, a tropical disease. in Haiti and Thailand. Before WHO stepped into Guatemala, Costa Rica, and other Central American countries, about three-fourths of their people were suffering from malaria. WHO has cut the :number of malaria cases in half by draining the swamps and spraying the houses with DDT. It has also been working to' destroy yellow fever and ty- phus in the samelands. WHO helps all people, young and old. Its headquart- ers are in Geneva, Switzerland. The Food and Agriculture Organiza- tion has headquarters in Rome, Italy. Its purpose is to expand food production and improve food distribution. FAO sends experts to advise the farmers on methods of farming in general, irriga- tion, and to treat cattle against disease. In Ethiopia, FAO is winning a fight against a disease that has killed one million -cattle a year. In Asia FAO is teaching farmers how to grow more and better crops, and it is also teaching the fishermen how to catch more fish. In India FAO is teaching the farmers how to get more crops with their old-fash- ioned machinery. These are the most widely known of the United Nations' Helping Hands. With these organizations working to help the peoples of unfortunate lands to live better, get the most crops from their land, be healthy and be better educated, this will be a better land in which to live-Thanks to the United Nations. -J. Emily Foster, '57 October 24 was the U. N.'s birthday. The U. N. came into existence on that date in 1945. It is located in New York and occupies three modern buildings in which representatives of sixty member nations work on problems that concern the entire world. The three buildings are: The Secretariat building is thirty-nine stories high. There four thousand secretaries, translators, messengers, clerks, and others keep records, trans- late speeches and prepare for United Nations meetings. The head of the Secretariat is Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden. He has a big job directing the office staff and keeping things going smoothly at the U. N. The second is the General Assembly

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30 THE CADUCEUS Is the United Nations a success? The United Nations has been organized for only eight years, and that isn't a very long time. Oh, yes, I agree that eight years sounds like a long time, but it is a short time for an organization to settle problems of world peace, to develop friendly terms among all na- tions and to achieve co-operation in the solving of the world's problems. In the eight years that the U. N. has been organized it has done much good, such as sending troops to fight in Korea and WHO IWorld Health Organiza- tionl, which has helped to raise health standards in other parts of the world by sending food, doctors .and nurses to feed people and vaccinate them against the diseases that are prevalent in some of these foreign lands. There is UNESCO. Its duties are reconstruc- tion, education, communication, and cultural changes. Because UNESCO covers a large field of purposes, you can see that this organization must be a strong one. It has done much to maintain world peace. The first line in UNESCO's constitution is Since wars began in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed. This means that if there is world organiza- tion, we can make this a world of peace instead of a world of war. To solve all its problems, the U. N. is broken into six different groups. These are: A General Assembly, a Security Council, a Secretariat, an Economic and Social Council, a Trusteeship Council, an Intemational Court of Justice. Each group has its work to do to try to keep this a free world, free from war and free from dictatorship. Besides these six main groups there are other specialized Agencies. Some of these are the United Nations Educa- tional, Scientific and Cultural Organiza- tion, International Labor Organization, World Health Organization. -Jeannette Blanchard, '57 Suppose you were at a gathering in your community of people from many different nations of the world. Pretend that they all spoke the same language so that you could understand, that they were people of all ages. This is proba- bly what you would hear: Have you ever heard of WHO, an agency in the United Nations organiza- tion? asks an elderly man from a Cen- tral American country. Do you real- ize what they have done to help my people? Why, in Guatemala and Cos- ta Rica they are fighting a war against insects that cause disease. In Costa Rica alone they have cut malaria cases in half by spraying the houses with DDT and by draining the swamps where the dangerous mosquitoes breed. Why, of course we have heard of it. In my country they are now fighting a battle against yaws-a tropical di- sease, replies ,a man from Thailand. A man from Haiti breaks in, What a coincidence, they are doing the same thing in my country. 'Tm a nurse from Thailand, says one young lady. If it weren't for WHO I probably would be in the same boat as I was before. Besides training nurses, they have tried to help improve the hospitals and check disease. It was UNICEF that helped mother and me, spoke a little boy from India. Yes, said his mother, we were very near starvation when that wonder- ful organization came to help us, and to feed us. It helped me, too, said a teen-age girl from the Philippines. When we