Declaring that “we have paid too dearly for the indifference which so many people showed to Hitler when he first came to power,” Trygve Lie, Secretary-General of the United Nations, tonight warned the member states of the U.N. against “the temptation to take racial and religious intolerance for granted.”
Speaking at a round-table conference sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews in connection with the current observance of Brotherhood Week, Mr. Lie said that “it is hardly necessary for me to add that the whole world watches the United States. In this country, where so many races and religions have been brought together in a common quest for freedom, it is almost unthinkable that there should be even a suspicion of intolerance.”
The struggle for racial and religious tolerance envisaged in the U.N. Charter requires that “ordinary men and women, in their ordinary day-to-day lives, shall practice racial and religious tolerance towards their fellowmen,” Lie stated. He added that “the only type of intolerance to which we, in the United Nations, subscribe, is intolerance of intolerance.”
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