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as had her colleague on the Economic and Social Council. When it appeared that the consensus of opinion in the Committee was that the Declaration should be adopted at that session of the Assembly, she reserved New Zealand's position and later voted for the adoption of the Declaration. Throughout the lengthy article-by-article examination of the Commission draft, the New Zealand delegate on the Third Committee took an active part in the discussion, in general basing her interventions on the view that the Declaration should be a concise statement of principles ; that it should set out only those human rights and fundamental freedoms which were internationally recognized, and that any spelling out of the details of these rights and freedoms should be left to the Covenant. It was emphasized that the Declaration was intended to have moral force only, and was to be contrasted with the more formal Covenant, which would be an international treaty imposing legal obligations on signatory States. The General Assembly ultimately adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by 48 votes to nil with 9 abstentions. The preamble to the Declaration states its main purpose. It is " a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms . . . ."It follows that the Declaration is but the first step in the direction of the international protection of human rights; and this the General Assembly recognized by : the adoption of a New Zealand resolution calling upon the Commission of Human Rights to give priority to its work on the Covenant |nd measures of implementation. (iv) Transport and Communications Commission The second session of the Transport and Communications Com mission was held from 12 to 20 April, 1948, devoting much of its attention to organizational arrangements for improving regional inland transport. Such arrangements already exist in Europe, mainly under the asgis of the Economic Commission for Europe, but elsewhere the Commission agreed that regional arrangements needed to be greatly developed. It decided that short-range aspects of inland transport should be handled by the regional economic commissions where such commissions exist, and that long-range matters and general co-ordination should be left to the Commission itself. The Commission also decided that an international conference of highway transport experts should be convened to revise the 1926 Highway Transport Conventions and subsequent amendments. The Commission adopted a resolution encouraging member Governments to reduce, simplify, and unify passport and frontier formalities, but