The first UN Conference - 23 June 1995

Two months ago, it was practically an obligation of commentators, certainly in America and Europe, to recall and commemorate the 25th of April 50 years ago when 51 nations sat down in San Francisco's opera house to create a new League of Nations to save, as it's charter came to say: "To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war".

Well about two weeks later, I was asked to describe the scene in the United Nations conference and in San Francisco when the news arrived of the surrender of the German armies. I said truly at the time, that the reception of VE day there was of course joyful, but could not be as exuberant as it was throughout Europe because in San Francisco, of all places, looking out to the Pacific, the war was not only not over but far off, there, on an island – which was meant to provide the launching pad for the actual invasion of Japan – a battle was raging and many ships were sailing out through the Golden Gate in the nights to join it. The battle of, or for Okinawa was the last major battle of the Second World War. And it may surprise many people to hear that the invasion was bigger than the one at D-Day. Half a million American troops with 12,000 aircraft and 1600 ships stormed the island and it took three months to conquer and subdue it, at the end of which time, and the expenditure of 30 million bullets 50 years ago exactly this weekend, 200,000 people were dead, including a third of the civilian population of the island.

With these thoughts in mind two months ago, it didn't seem the proper time to stir my memories of the nine weeks of the conference in San Francisco because the personal memories of great events are quite often not at all like the grand and sombre recollections that television viewers and radio listeners expect. But this weekend celebrates also the 26th of June, the end of the organising conference of the UN and the glittering occasion when 52 nations delegates dressed up in their Sunday best. Ambassadors, presidents, prime ministers, foreign secretaries, and generals flashing on their breasts enough medals to make you sneeze. All of them walked up to table flanked by the flags of all the nations and signed the finished charter of the United Nations. So what remains most vivid in the memory of those nine weeks?

First of all, the interminable tedium of the proceedings – and I won't revive the tedium by describing it – enough to say that inventing such bodies as the security council, the general assembly, the economic and social council, the food and agricultural organisation, and drafting a sort of constitution for each, with each nation looking over the proposals in five languages and the Russians casting a baleful eye on every adjective and comma, enough so now I turn in relief to the greener memories and I can't promise that they will be either inspiring or ennobling.

One weekend when the committee meetings were suspended and that delegates were free to explore the delights of the city. Sailing on the choppy blue waters of the bay, going half an hour away to see the nearest end of great redwoods, two delegates took a little spring excursion to see the mountainsides drenched with lupins and the meadows with poppies and to admire those two sinuous trees with barks like peach skins, the manzanita and madrone. These two discovered they shared a love of wild flowers. They were the late. They were all late except me. Lord Halifax and the famous field marshal Jan Smuts – statesman, philosopher, writer of these countries constitution and chief of the South African delegation – they went off across the Golden Gate Bridge, wheeled round the mountains and marvelled at the flowers. They bent down and plucked a goodly handful, an exercise suddenly interrupted by a wail rising to a siren sound, an eruption of a motorbikes exhaust, and in no time, a uniformed man with goggles, pulling out his book which recorded crimes and other misdeeds committed against the great state of California.

The field marshal, having been under shot and shell, was probably less put out than Edward Wood, the Earl of Halifax – a saintly Yorkshireman if you can conceive such a thing – who was very put out indeed. The state trooper took their names, licked his pencil and said, "So you're a field marshal?" He looked at the small goateed Smuts. "And you a lord?" What do you know, they were neither of them in the habit of carrying credentials, just as multimillionaires rarely carry ready cash. The sceptical state trooper gave the usual sign to their chauffeur, "Follow me," and he led them all the way back to the city and to the station house, Did they know it was an offence punishable by a heavy fine or a day in jail to pluck wild flowers in California? They did not, they were mortified, they were apologetic beyond any power they had over words ,but they were still Field Marshal Smuts, the Lord Halifax. The station chief or sheriff or whoever, waited a minute and consulted a large book of photographs apparently specially constructed for this occasion. He turned like a disgusted police sergeant and said aloud: "These are two distinguished delegates to the conference." Apologies all round and kindly congratulations from Lord Halifax to the trooper on doing his duty.

I heard this story two days later, but I never sent it. In those days, there would have been an official denial from the British and South African delegations and I would have been in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes. One memory comes back to me every time there's a mention in diplomatic memoirs of the like, of a feast proffered by a sheikh or shaykh. The first party – a press party – I was invited to in San Francisco was that of an actual Arab ruler. It was at the hotel where they, the Arabs, commandeered a whole floor of suites. All I can see now is a very large drawing room, salon, perhaps banqueting room, a crowd of smiling guests and in the middle of the room turning very slowly on a spit, an enormous sheep, the steady rain of fat dripping onto a kind of toy swimming pool, which rested on the hotel's rather splendid carpet. The management was at first alarmed, but pacified by the assurance that any pronounceable damage to the furnishings would be amply repaired and paid for at extravagant rates.

I don't know whether it was the same man or his princely son who fell wildly in love with one of the elevator, the lift girls – they were then all American Chinese girls of surpassing loveliness that's why they'd been chosen. The prince or whoever wanted to buy her, the management was alarmed again, the British delegation had of course encountered this sort of thing in acquiring an empire. They thought it tactful to turn the problem over to the Americans. The chief American delegate was advised. He asked or requested an audience, or perhaps being a Democrat he summoned the prince. The problem solved itself after the American said that such a deal, the purchase of the girl was impossible. He said: "But your Highness she's an American citizen, she could get to be president." They say the prince tip-toed out baffled and ashamed. Anyway, we heard no more about it and the girl went on calling out the floors.

Then there was the night I remember waking up and looking fearfully at a little chandelier on the ceiling, and, having seen Clark Gable and Jeanette MacDonald in San Francisco, waiting for it to start swinging. I can't swear it ever did but it was an earthquake alright. And I was told the next day by a hotel switchboard operator that the delegates forgot for a moment all about organising the peace of the world and jammed the lines to their homelands with the breathtaking news that they had, as Mark Twain put it enjoyed their first earthquake.

Once, only once there was an item of local news that blew most of the United Nations off the front page and off the radio. It was the now immortal case I recalled long ago of the ding dong daddy, a motor man on the cable cars that go clickety-clack as they are drawn up the mountainous streets and controlled on the downhill ride by continuously moving cables sunk in slots beneath the streets. At every intersection, the motorman pulls a bell on a chord before he releases the brake, and plays always the same one note/tune: ding da ding ding, ding ding. The hero I think of our tale was such a motor man, Francis Van Wie, familiar for a year or two to the people who regularly took his run, a small tidy rather meek little man and no doubt a devoted husband. A local newspaper man had his doubts and discovered that on the contrary, Mr Van Wie had not one wife but three wives, one in San Francisco, one across the Bay in Berkeley, one down the peninsular somewhere, all content, each secure in the knowledge that she alone was his one and only help mate. How did he do this? Well he had somehow invented three lives and following you may guess a pretty agile schedule, lived them out. To one wife he was a night worker – so he was – he was working on wife number two. To another he said he had an 8 a.m. to noon job, which allowed him to spend some of the afternoons with number three. For close on two years he juggled his calendar and his appearances with lively skill and apparent satisfaction to one and all. However, one unlucky day, wife number two, who never went into the city, did go in and saw him tug his chord on his cable car. It was the end of a beautiful triple play. He was arrested and charged with bigamy. Not being a peasant he accepted the charge and didn't insist on trigamy. He became known and greatly admired by the citizenry and the delegates alike as the 'ding dong daddy of the D car line'.

During his first week in jail, two more wives showed up and then more. By the weekend, the count was 11. He got out after two years and married again and again but serially this time. He died in 1963 at the age of 73. By his bedside at the end was his 81 year old ever loving wife number 18.

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