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voted upon the South African representative referred again to the difficult situation in which his Government would be placed in having to report back to the inhabitants of the territory that the United Nations did not consider them able to form an opinion on the question of their future status. He indicated further that while his Government would report the outcome of the Assembly's deliberations to the inhabitants, they would for the rest necessarily reserve their position. The resolution was treated as an important matter requiring a twothirds majority, and was adopted by a vote of 37 for, none against, and 9 abstentions. New Zealand recorded an abstention. Philippine Proposal for Conference of Non-self-governing Peoples The Philippine proposal for a conference of non-self-governing peoples (as distinct from the Governments of non-self-governing territories) was referred simultaneously to the Fourth (Trusteeship) and Sixth (Legal) Committees. Reference to the Sixth Committee was based on the views held by a number of delegations that it would not be in conformity with the Charter for the United Nations to call such a Conference, and that if it were, the Philippine proposal that this should be done by the Economic and Social Council went beyond the functions of the Council. The sub-committee rejected a proposal for a joint meeting with Committee VI and decided to defer consideration of the general policy involved in the resolution until the findings of the latter Committee on the legal issues were available. In the course of the discussion in Committee VI the Philippines withdrew their original proposal and substituted a modified resolution, which merely drew attention to the development of regional commissions, particularly the Caribbean Commission, as a means of assisting non-self-governing peoples to realize the objectives of the Charter. This was returned from the Legal Committee with a statement that there was nothing in the modified text contrary to the terms of the Charter. Several of the delegates in. the sub-committee were obviously disappointed at the material changes which had-been made'in the resolution, and the debate tended to centre round the original proposal rather than that which was actually before the sub-committee. A number of amendments, some of which were designed to bring the text back to the original proposal and others merely to improve the wording of the substituted text, were suggested, but in the result none was adopted. Both in the Legal Committee and in the sub-committee of Committee IV the delegate of France expressed strong objection to what he regarded as the unconstitutional way in which the matter had been handled. In the Legal Committee he based his objection on two grounds—(l) that the Philippine proposal was not on the original agenda for the session, and, not being of an urgent nature, should not have been included after the session commenced ; (2) that the original proposal had been referred to the Legal Committee because of strong doubts as to whether it was in