General view of the working press room after the Security Council session had ended. 03 April 1946, United Nations, Hunter College,New York. Copyright © United Nations 2012
uncomfortable cross-examination he would be
answered clearly with ready responses. Still, it
required to endure. According to Oakley, “His
was his exotic looks that continued to impress the
empty seat looked like Geneva with Italy absent
artist: “I kept seeing illuminated manuscripts.”6
in 1936.”4 This referred to the day of Abyssinia’s Delegate Gromyko proved to be a challenge to
(now Ethiopia) appeal to the League of Nations
Oakley. His regular absence prevented her from
for assistance that year after Benito Mussolini
making enough sketches or notations to produce
invaded the oil-rich country. As the Security
an adequate portrait by the time she submitted
Council discussed the Iran-Russia issue, Oakley
her interim progress report to The Bulletin. As
made note that “a small dark man with a fiercely
she noted in a letter to the managing editor,
drawn profile like that in a Persian manuscript
“His empty chair is not of any help!”7 Eventually,
slipped quickly into a seat at the far right of the
Gromyko began to attend the meetings and
crescent table. And so, I got my first careful little
she was able to make her studies. From her
drawing of the morning—(‘Small in stature, but not
seat, Oakley made note of the delegate’s age.
small in debate’ as one newspaper commented
Her drawing, she said, “as it developed, looked
afterward).”5 As the representative from the
very young, very boyish. He is young, as Mr.
Netherlands peppered Ala with questions, Ala
[Paul] Hasluck said the other day when I asked 8