The Department of State announced on March 21 that the U.S. Government had informed the United Nations on that day that it does not favor any action by the United Nations to change the present calendar. The United States made its position known in a note transmitted by Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., U.S. Representative to the United Nations, to the U.N. Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold, who had asked all governments for their views on proposals to revise the existing calendar. . . . The text of the U.S. reply to the Secretary-General is as follows:

Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
The Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations presents his compliments to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and has the honor to refer to the Secretary-General's note SOA 146/2/01, Dated October 7, 1954, concerning World Calendar Reform.

The United States Government does not favor any action by the United Nations to revise the present calendar. This Government cannot in any way promote a change of this nature, which would intimately affect every inhabitant of this country, unless such a reform were favored by a substantial majority of the citizens of the United States acting through their representatives in the Congress of the United States. There is no evidence of such support in the United States for calendar reform. Large numbers of United States citizens oppose the plan for calendar reform that is now before the Economic and Social Council. Their opposition is based on religious grounds, since the introduction of a "blank day" at the end of each year would disrupt the seven-day sabbatical cycle.

Moreover, this Government holds that it would be inappropriate for the United Nations, which represents many different religious and social beliefs throughout the world, to sponsor any revision of the existing calendar that would conflict with the principles of important religious faiths.

This Government, furthermore, recommends that no further study of the subject should be undertaken. Such a study would require the use of manpower and funds which could be more usefully devoted to more vital and urgent tasks. In view of the current studies of the problem being made individually by governments in the course of preparing their views for the Secretary-General in 1947, it is felt that any additional study of the subject at this time would serve no useful purpose.