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declaration was to be generally acceptable it must indeed be a straightforward statement of principles unembroidered by details as to their application. And the only effective way of ensuring this result was that a majority of members of the Committee should stand behind the well-prepared, if imperfect, Commission text, in the hope of avoiding the introduction of unwelcome amendments. Accordingly the New Zealand and other delegations found themselves .voting against amendments which they themselves found unexceptionable, but which would be difficult for some delegations to accept, or would unnecessarily lengthen the text. On the other hand, as will be seen below, there were some issues which the delegation regarded as so fundamental that it supported them, although complete acceptance of these criteria would have suggested otherwise. The type of difficulty that arose can be illustrated by efforts'which were made by the Netherlands and Brazilian delegations to introduce references to the divine origin of man into the Preamble and Article 1 respectively. The amendments proposed met with strong opposition from the representatives of such countries as India, China, and the Soviet Union, and in each case the amendments were withdrawn before they came to a vote. In commenting on the decision of the Netherlands delegate to withdraw his amendment, the New Zealand delegate expressed sympathy with that amendment. Her delegation believed, she said, that any effective realization of human rights and freedoms could not be separated from the spiritual values associated with man's divine origin and immortal destiny. She indicated that she would have voted for the amendment if it had been put to the vote, but expressed appreciation of the action of her Dutch colleague in withdrawing an amendment which, as had been made clear in the debates, presented difficulties to members of the Committee with different philosophical backgrounds. The amendments as a whole fell into two main groups. The Latin American States presented a great number, many of which were based on the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man adopted by the Ninth International Conference of American States at Bogota in 1948. Some of these amendments were in themselves unobjectionable, but. were not to be preferred to the more concise and balanced text of the Commission draft. Some have found their way into the final text of the declaration. Others again could not be supported because they were inconsistent with the purpose and tenor of the declaration and on the whole their unsatisfactory features were those of the second main group of amendments—those presented by the Soviet Union. The Third Committee found itself considering Soviet amendments identical with amendments already fully discussed in the Commission on Human Rights. Their central theme was the position of the State