The speech, up to then, had been the customary exhortation—to uphold the Organization, to apply oneself unsparingly to one’s work—and this made for an interesting change. Words like “joy” and, more especially, “sorrow” did not often find their way into that auditorium, and were particularly unlooked-for on Staff Day, when the Organization was at its most impersonal. The lifted faces—faces of a certain fatigued assiduity whose contours, dinted with the pressure of administrative detail, suggested habitual submergence beneath a flow of speeches such as this—responded with a faint, corporate quiver. Members of the staff who had been half sleeping when the words reached them were startled into little delayed actions of surprise, and blew their noses or put on their glasses—to show they had been listening. In the galleries, throats were cleared and legs recrossed. The interpreters’ voices hesitated in the earphones, then accelerated to take in this departure from the Director-General’s prepared text. “Les fleurs du chagrin,” said the pretty girl in Booth No. 2; “Las flores del dolor,” said the Spanish interpreter, with a shrug toward his assistant.

The man on the rostrum now repeated the words from the song, in his own language—and apparently for his own satisfaction, since throughout the hall only a few very blond heads nodded comprehendingly. He went on in English. “Perhaps,” he said, “perhaps the answer to that question is No.” Now there was a long pause. “But we should remember that sorrow does produce flowers of its own. It is a misunderstanding always to look for joy. One’s aim, rather, should be to conduct oneself so that one need never compromise one’s secret integrity; so that even our sufferings may enrich us—enrich us, perhaps, most of all.” He had laid his hand across his mimeographed text, which was open at the last page, and for a moment it seemed that he meant to end the speech there. The précis-writers were still scribbling “our sufferings may enrich us.” However, he looked down, shifted his hand, and went on. He thanked them all for continued devotion to their duties in the past year, and for the productivity illustrated by an increased flow of documentation in the five official languages. There would be no salary raise this year for the Subsidiary Category. The Pension Plan was under review by a newly appointed working group, and the proposed life-insurance scheme would be studied by an impartial committee. It was hoped to extend recreational facilities along the lines recommended by the staff representatives.… He greatly looked forward to another such meeting with the staff before long.