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laid upon them, as trustees for all, the " primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security." (5) The United States did not favour a hasty attempt to amend the Charter. It preferred to build slowly and to test the Charter's potentialities for growth by letting experience be a guide to a better understanding of that instrument. (6) The Council should endeavour to clarify the voting formula in the light of experience and practical need, as soon as possible. The Council should insert in its rules of procedure as complete a list of procedural decisions (which did not require unanimity) as the Council could agree upon. (7) The United States considered that the principle that a party to a dispute should not be a judge in its own cause was sufficiently clear in Article 27 and should be firmly maintained. (8) The problem of enabling a permanent member to abstain from voting without invoking the unanimity rule, deserved careful consideration. The representative of the Soviet Union (Mr Vyshinsky) attacked both the Cuban and Australian proposals as an attempt to abrogate the Charter. The present voting formula had been devised by President Roosevelt in a successful endeavour to break the deadlock which had been reached in the discussions on the formation of an international organization for security. It reflected a principle, " the unanimity of the permanent members of the Security Council," which was vital to the maintenance of international peace and security. Both the late President Roosevelt and Generalissimo Stalin had expressed their conviction of the necessity of maintaining unanimity among the Great Powers, which bore the main burden of the war against Hitlerite Germany. Perhaps those countries which attacked the principle of the unanimity rule had not gone through the horrors of Hitlerite occupation, and, therefore, underestimated the danger and tragedy of a new war. The principle of unanimity was the basis for the solution of the problems confronting the Great Powers. The Australian delegation was the leader in the attack on this principle and had developed a tradition of systematically attacking any proposals put forward by the Soviet Union, both at the Paris Conference and in the United Nations. Mr Vyshinsky then sought to rebut in detail the accusations made by the Australian delegate against Russia's use of the veto in the Security Council. These accusations, he said, lacked any grounds. The present attacks of certain nations on the use of the unanimity rule were, in fact, tactical manoeuvres in a strategic plan to strike at the unity of the Great Powers and destroy that unity which must, nevertheless, be maintained despite ideological and political differences. Past tragedies, such as the history of the late " League of vices and faults," had taught that only in unity was there strength. Courage must be found to defend the truth that a United Nations Organization of fifty-four nations would be powerful only if the five Great Powers agreed. In spite of any decision which might be taken, the representative of the