The team
Hammarskjöld came to the United Nations with two models of teamwork in his background: mountaineering (he had long experience) and Swedish government service. Each offered guidance in the new circumstance, but everything about him was more fully expressed during the UN years, and much was new. Trusted, able teams were crucial to meet UN emergencies effectively; he worked with them literally day and night when necessary. Rajeshwar Dayal, a close Indian colleague, gives an impression here of the last team, the one that managed the Congo Crisis of 1960–61. We hear from Hammarskjöld himself about international cooperation. And, at the end, an entry from the private journal records his rediscovery at the UN of what it is to work with capable, loyal partners in tasks that command their full attention. The style of this entry lies somewhere between prose and poem; the year is 1954, soon after he had arrived at the UN and formed his initial team.
Scarcely a month after his appointment as secretary-general, Hammarskjöld said to a group of UN staff members:
In all sports where a group is acting, be it football or mountain climbing, success requires perfect teamwork. But teamwork does not reach perfection without independent individual initiative, disciplined by loyalty but free in expression. The same is true of our work.
(Public Papers 2, 50)
Recruited by Hammarskjöld from the Indian diplomatic corps to serve as on-site director of UN operations in the Congo, Rajeshwar Dayal was a trusted co-worker and friend.
From his autobiography:
Hammarskjöld had a highly personal style of dealing with his vast responsibilities and was himself able in an emergency to work literally around the clock with very little rest. The ‘Congo Club’ appeared to be in continuous session, luncheons and dinners being generously provided by the Secretary-General. Late every evening, when the lights in the building had been turned off and the last of the delegates had departed, Hammarskjöld’s suite would come to renewed life. The faithful would reassemble after a long and tiring day when there would be a review of the fast-changing panorama of events in the Congo and in the conference rooms. Messages and instructions would be discussed and dispatched and the following day’s strategies planned. On days of exceptional crisis the team would remain together until well past midnight, and Hammarskjöld himself would remain at his desk on the 38th floor. (Rajeshwar Dayal, A Life of our Times, 391–92)
From a talk in 1954 to the 10th Inter-American Conference, meeting in Caracas:
I would like to pay tribute to the contributions of your Governments during these formative years of the United Nations. They have unanimously shown full awareness of the need for international organization and keen consciousness of universal interdependence. They have acted with faith in the future and eagerness for the achievement of international cooperation. (Public Papers 2, 273)
During his tour of Africa in early 1960, Hammarskjöld spoke with a university group in Mogadishu:
I think that you will see that what is needed is unity with diversity, diversity respected within the framework of an even deeper respect for unity. (Public Papers 4, 515)
And then, this beautiful entry from Markings:
With all the powers of your body concentrated in the hand on the tiller,
All the powers of your mind concentrated on the goal beyond the horizon,
You laugh as the salt spray catches your face in the second of rest
Before a new wave―
Sharing the happy freedom of the moment with those who share your responsibility.
So—in the self-forgetfulness of concentrated attention—
the door opens for you into a pure living intimacy,
A shared, timeless happiness,
Conveyed by a smile,
A wave of the hand.
Thanks to those who have taught me this. Thanks to the days which have taught me this.
(Markings, 96)
The shifts of perspective in the Hammarskjöld legacy may be alarming. At some moments he is a formidably articulate world statesman, sharing views in Caracas or Mogadishu that make utter sense: the recognition of universal interdependence, the subtle balance needed between respect for national diversity and even greater respect for unity. Saying such things, he is tugging the world toward peace. At other moments, he is an immensely sensitive witness to individual experience: probing, doubting, perceiving, assembling new insights. In this mode he is more poet than statesman, or both poet and statesman.
For the first enterprise, the traditions of Western political thought and ethical values are the firm and adequate basis. For the second enterprise, literary and spiritual traditions are the prime resources: they have taught him how to look within, how to follow an experience from start to finish, how to set it into words that record its essence. Both streams of tradition are so rich and fully absorbed by him that Hammarskjöld, speaking freely, is "more than one man deep," as an old expression puts it. For example, where he writes "thanks to those who have taught me this," he draws—almost certainly without thinking of it—on the opening pages of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, where the Roman emperor scans back through his life to thank his many teachers and companions.
The outer and inner aspects need not be at war. They enhance each other’s fullness. Hammarskjöld must have been thinking along these lines when he wrote the last entry in his private journal for 1954:
Blood, grime, sweat, earth—where are these in your world of will? Everywhere—the ground from which the flame ascends straight upwards.
