1957 what was going on

J Infect Dis. Get Email Updates. To receive email updates about this page, enter your email address: Email Address. What's this? Links with this icon indicate that you are leaving the CDC website.

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Then followed two years as undersecretary of state at home until — at the age of fifty-one he became secretary of state for External Affairs in the Canadian government in Such is the brief, prosaic data on Mr. Naturally, during the period when Lester Pearson was a civil servant at the Department of External Affairs, he could express his views and opinions only to the Canadian government. It was, however, during those years, which to him were largely an apprenticeship, that he gathered his wide experience and broadened his outlook.

It was during that period that his views on international problems took shape. He participated in the World Disarmament Conference 1 in Geneva in , in the London Naval Conference 2 in , and during that same year in the work of the Canadian delegation to the Sixteenth Assembly of the League of Nations. These conferences cannot have been very encouraging to Lester Pearson. All of us who had to do with the League of Nations in those years felt that we were going from one defeat to another.

For the young Lester Pearson, however, just taking part in all this, observing it at first hand, has no doubt proved a valuable experience and contributed infinitely to what he has later been able to accomplish. It is a violent criticism of their domestic policy, as well as of their foreign policy; at home, of their inability to master the economic problems; abroad, of their hesitation and indulgence, their yielding to Hitler again and again in the belief that peace could thus be preserved — bringing them finally to the Munich crisis of Lester Pearson is said to have been one of the first Canadians who recognized at an early stage that the way which had been chosen would not lead to the desired end.

War would have to come. Gove Hambidge gives the following description of him in his book The Story of FAO : «Mike Pearson, young, modest, responsive, intelligent, and possessed of a quick sense of humor and a flair for working out effective compromises between opposing viewpoints, had made an excellent impression at the Hot Springs Conference. He was elected chairman of the Interim Commission for Food and Agriculture, which was appointed to prepare the plans for the permanent organization FAO.

Hambidge makes the following comment on his work on that Commission: «More than any other person he was responsible for steering the Interim Commission through two years of successful work. I would like to quote what Lester Pearson himself said on that occasion because it shows so clearly that he was already aware, at that early stage, that international cooperation was threatened by the new progress of science in the field of nuclear research.

But his words also show that he holds a vision of a better world for mankind, a world without fear and without want. This is what he said: «We at this Conference know, and we have shown, what science could do if harnessed to the chariot of construction. On that chariot race, with science driven by both contestants, all our hopes and fears and agonies and ecstasies are concentrated.

If we lose in that contest, anything that we have done here or may do elsewhere in London, or Washington, or San Francisco, or Moscow will have as much consequence as a pebble thrown into the Gulf of St. This was said in Twelve years have passed since then, and we have been witnessing just such a race, menacing and fatal because, if it continues, there can be scarcely a doubt about the outcome: the extermination or decay of a large part, if not the whole, of mankind.

The fact that this is a reality must have contributed greatly to Mr. At about the same time the plans for FAO were being made, Lester Pearson took part in organizing UNRRA 4 , which was set up mainly for the purpose of reestablishing the economy of the war-ravaged countries after the war was over.

The organization was also to take care of the displaced persons who had lost their homes as a result of war and persecution. In he was made chairman of the Subcommittee for Displaced Persons. He undertook the work because he believed in a better world for mankind. He carried it out by approaching the problems in a matter-of-fact way.

After a meeting of the Council of UNRRA in , he said: «So UNRRA must not merely do its job well; it must do it so well that it will give heart and courage to the governments who, slowly but steadily, are building up the international structure of peace; so well that it will, by its example, bring hope to men and women, who, if that structure falls, will again be crushed beneath its ruins.

In Lester Pearson returned to Ottawa where he became secretary of state for External Affairs in He held that position for nine years.

During this period Mr. Pearson has had a part in most of the important conferences which have been held for the solution of international problems. His chief contribution to international politics, however, has been made within the framework of the United Nations Organization. As early as at the San Francisco Conference, where the United Nations Charter was formulated, he had been an adviser to the Canadian delegation. He was the one who argued on behalf of Canada against the veto of the great powers — an argument he continued in the meetings of the General Assembly of the United Nations.

I would mention that he strongly supported the «Uniting for Peace» Resolution of In other words, this resolution reduces the effect of the veto of a great power. As far as he has been able to do so, Lester Pearson has endeavored to improve the efficiency of the United Nations, to enable that organization to operate as quickly and effectively as possible. During the time in which the United Nations has been in existence, one international conflict after another has arisen, and the moral strength of the organization has been put to a severe test.

The first really important conflict which the UN had to deal with was the question of Palestine. This matter was considered in a special session in Pearson was elected chairman of the Political Committee, and the Special Committee on Palestine recommended that the British mandate over Palestine should be discontinued and that the country should be divided into a Jewish and an Arab state.

The recommendation of the committee was considered at the Second General Assembly. The question of division was then dealt with by an ad hoc committee in which Mr. Pearson participated very actively. It established the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department, and empowered federal officials to prosecute individuals that conspired to deny or abridge another citizen's right to vote. Moreover, it also created a six-member U. Civil Rights Commission charged with investigating allegations of voter infringement.

But, perhaps most importantly, the Civil Rights Act of signaled a growing federal commitment to the cause of civil rights.