a sufficient indication that the Assembly has asserted, and will I am confident continue to assert, its influence and authority in support of peace and order throughout the world. And these decisions were taken in circumstances which might well have deterred the Assembly from making any decisions at all had the Assembly not been firmly resolved to do its duty as it saw its duty. Inevitably the Assembly was caught up in the differences that have so unhappily arisen between the east and the west; differences between the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and those member nations who think with them, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union and its associates on the other; differences which are, of course, not merely between these two great Powers as such, but which are in reality the result of widely divergent theories of government and human relations. All the decisions referred to above, with the exception of that on Palestine, were most bitterly contested by the Soviet group in language of violence and vituperation which is quite unprecedented in my experience, quite irreconcilable with any real attempt to find a common agreement, quite inexplicable from any reasonable point of view, and, in the opinion of the vast majority of delegations, totally indefensible and wholly deplorable. The Assembly was quite undeterred by these minatory and menacing phenomena or by repeated threats of boycott. In firm terms the Assembly expressed its indignation at the stultification of the Security Council by the use of the veto (and incidentally at the use of the veto on the admission of new members) and quite deliberately established the " Little Assembly " in order to ensure that if and when the Security Council, by reason of the veto, should in future prove unable to discharge its obligations under the Charter, the Assembly itself should always have an organ in permanent session ready to consider any threat to peace which the Security Council should be unable to meet. And in all these instances of differences between the Soviet group and others, the Assembly passed its resolutions by overwhelming majorities against an opposing vote confined to the six members of the Slav group alone. That such fundamental differences should exist is, of course, in the highest degree regrettable, but that despite such differences, despite the use of every means of procrastination and violent opposition, the Assembly should prove itself ready by huge majorities to make its decisions is, in my opinion, a fact of real significance.

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