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" Recommends the establishment within the framework of the Security Council of an international control bod}- for the purpose of the supervision of and control over the implementation of the measures for the reduction of armaments and armed forces and for the prohibition of atomic weapons." At the beginning of the discussion on this proposal in the First Committee the United Kingdom representative (Mr McNeil) described it as " unrealistic." In the first place, while data - were available on the arms and armed forces of countries like the United Kingdom, there was no corresponding information on the position in the Soviet Union. Secondly, the method of disarmament proposed was to the advantage of those who so far had disarmed least. Unlike the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the Western European countries had since the end of the war reduced their defence forces to a minimum. Nevertheless —and this was the crucial point —no nation could reject an appeal for disarmament provided its genuineness were placed beyond doubt by an offer of a satisfactory system of verification, inspection, and control. The delegate of the United States (Mr Austin) pointed out that a majority of the members of the Commission for Conventional Armaments (which had been set up as a result of the General Assembly's resolution on disarmament of December, 1946) had agreed that disarmament could take place only in an atmosphere of confidence and security, for which the essential conditions were the establishment of United Nations security forces, the control of atomic energy, and the conclusion of peace settlements with Germany and Japan. The fulfilment of all these conditions had been blocked by the Soviet Union. Under these circumstances the maintenance of a comparable Power relationship was fundamental to world security. The United States now realized that it had disarmed too soon and too fast after the war. The New Zealand delegate (Mr Thorn) also referred to the need for security as a prior condition of disarmament, a proposition which, he said, was regarded at San Francisco as axiomatic. While the allied States had not forgotten how oppressive the burden of armaments could be, or had ceased to hope that one of the chief benefits to be secured from the United Nations would be relief from that burden, they were agreed that to call for disarmament without first establishing a tried and working system of security was a delusion. They knew that there was one thing even more grievous than the burden of armaments —namely, war, due to unpreparedness. In the view of the New Zealand delegation the way to disarmament was still the way of the Charter ; specifically to conclude the agreements required under Article 43 and, more generally, to solve in the spirit of the Charter the concrete problems affecting the preservation of peace which come up for consideration before the United Nations.