Sohn Asks Printing of Dumbarton Oaks Discussions for Data on U.N.

In the light of last week's publication of the records of the Yalta conference, Louis B. Sohn, professor of Law and John Henry Gregory Lecturer on World Organization, yesterday advocated releasing the discussions of the 1944 Dumbarton Oaks Conference.

Sohn said in a letter to the New York Times that the Yalta papers furnished important information on the early background of the U.N., but found it "strange" that the material from the Dumbarton conference, which formed the basic plans for the U.N. charter, had not been made public first. He said, "After the printing of the Yalta papers, there is no longer any valid excuse for withholding the Dumbarton Oaks papers from the public."

He elaborated on this at his home in Cambridge, "I believe that Secretary of State Dulles published the papers for political reasons and not to aid scholarship," he said.

He then complained that no plans had been made for publishing the Dumbarton Oaks papers, which, he said, "can throw valuable light on the meaning of many provisions of the United Nations Charter." In this respect he likened them to James Madison's notes of the Federal Convention of 1787.