Part: 1234         Session: 12         Page 34353637383940414243444546474849505152535455 of 512

discussion, most of which, oddly enough, dealt with the U.N. question and not the recognition question. But of course these things are related.

The specific editorial was not written by me and the particular circumstance under which it came in -- it sort of came in without any immediate prior discussion. The day before, for instance, we hadn't discussed the thing, but it just came in. And since this was very much the kind of thing that I wanted the Times to do, we did it.

I gather, then, there had been, as you say, a tremendous amount of prior discussion and a tremendous amount of, shall we say, of your convincing the higher-ups that this should be done.

I can't say whether I convinced or wore down, but this is a little confusing because really most of the discussion dealt with the U.N. rather than with recognition. And when the recognition question came up, I found really to my surprise that this piece was accepted without any difficulty. And since this is a completely confidential statement now, I think a very important part of this would be left out if I did not state that when this editorial appeared it was with the complete agreement of all the people concerned. There was no disagreement at all, either expressed or unexpressed, I'm sure of that. And this represented quite a considerable move. And when I say “all concerned,” I mean all concerned, everybody, including the editor emeritus, who was my predecessor, very emphatically.

Does this imply that sooner or later there will be another editorial on the U.N. question?