Book Reviews : World Crisis in Oil. By HARVEY O'CONNOR. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1962. Pp. xiii, 432. $7.50.)

• Author: Peter H. Merkl
• Published date: 01 March 1964
• Date: 01 March 1964
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/106591296401700129
• Subject Matter: Articles

151
As appears from the foreword by professor Richard L. Walker, one of the main
aims of the book is to serve &dquo;as a useful companion for college textbooks on the
United Nations and international organization,&dquo; since, so it is claimed-a very ques-
tionable claim in the opinion of this reviewer -
that most of tl:e books dealing with
the United Nations, including college textbooks, &dquo;have been written by students of
international organization who play down the importance of formidable changes in
the organization.&dquo; This aim of the book is tarnished, however, by the fact that the
editor has confined himself, with hardly an exception, to introductory notes to the
several contributions, which point out what were the occasions for the statements
reprinted in the volume. Yet nowhere has he appended any notes to draw the atten-
tion of the undergraduate student, for whom, after all, the collection is primarily
designed, to the most glaring factual errors, if not misrepresentations, in some of the
pronouncements which have been included in the volume. Two examples must
suffice to illustrate this point. In the reprint of the speech delivered by James F.
Byrnes we read: &dquo;The deficit [of the UN] approximately $160 million is due to
money spent for the purpose of making war in the Congo and the Gaza strip.&dquo; Leav-
ing aside the debatable question who &dquo;made war in the Congo,&dquo; it certainly is a mis-
statement of fact to assert that the UN
spent money to wage war in &dquo;the Gaza strip.&dquo;
In the speech by Senator Thomas J. Dodd there is a passage which says: &dquo;Theoreti-
cally, all of these employees [of the UN], at the point of joining the United Nations
abandon their national loyalty and ideological convictions and become ’international
civil servants.’ &dquo; A scholarly edited collection intended as a counterbalance to sup-
posedly one-sided college textbooks on the UN at this point could be expected to
have a note by the editor...