Here is a neatly turned speech in Boston by the British Ambassador to the UN, Sir John Sawers, marking UN Day.

He recalls how Artur Rubinstein defiantly played the Polish anthem back in 1945 to show his contempt for the exclusion of a democratic Poland at the establishment of the UN.

And this is a powerful passage reminding us about Timescale:

In 1950 the UN Security Council (helped by a Soviet boycott) unanimously condemned the aggression against South Korea by communist North Korea.

Fighting under a UN banner, a US-led force, with 15 other nations including Britain, attempted to roll North Korea back.

We – you – paid a high price.

The Allies lost some 40,000 people in that war, mainly Americans.

Ten times more than in Iraq.

Was it worth it? History says yes.

Our huge, generous investment in freedom for South Korea saved tens of millions of South Koreans from the miserable fate still being suffered by their compatriots north of the DMZ.

Those people have made South Korea a dynamic, sophisticated country.

One of those people is today’s distinguished UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, who spoke at Harvard earlier this week.

Mr Ban was just nine years old when the Korean War ended.  He vividly recalls a childhood of hunger and poverty as South Korea went through war and then slowly recovered.  

Today, fifty-five years later, he is at the pinnacle of world diplomacy. A remarkable journey for him – and for his country.

And maybe in Baghdad or Basra or Mosul or Kirkuk there is a nine-year old Iraqi boy, or Iraqi girl, who, yes, has suffered pain and uncertainty in these difficult years.

But who will grow up strong and confident, and in years to come will be Iraq’s first UN Secretary-General.

Success – and failure – do not always come quickly.