United Nations Progress
The executive committee of the Preparatory Commission for the United Nations Organisation has been doing useful work in the past week, and what is equally important, has been letting the public know about it. The arrival of Mr. Edward Stettinius has imported a valuable element into the discussions, for the late Secretary of State holds the view that it is essential to push forward with con- structive work before the momentum generated at San Francisco has died down. It is necessary to bring the whole machinery into being as soon as possible, and that cannot be done till the first General Assembly has been held. It is a question, therefore, of arranging a time-table. Mr. Stettinius himself had hoped that the Assembly might meet, to organise itself and transact formal busi- ness, as early as November, with another meeting for ordinary business—in a sense the first meeting proper—in April. The com- mittee as a whole was not prepared to move quite so fast, for not enough ratifications have yet been received to bring the Charter into force, and it is not desirable to hold an Assembly till practically all signatories have ratified, and can therefore send delegates to the meeting. It seems more probable that the full Preparatory Com- mission will be held early in November, and the first Assembly some two months later, i.e., before the end of January. All the subsidiary bodies, the Security Council, the Social and Economic Council, the Trusteeship Council, can then be formally constituted and put in a position to begin their work. Meanwhile the first steps for the nomination of candidates for the bench of the Court of International Justice have been taken. All this is, of course, only machinery, but to create the machinery and set it moving is the first essential. No unnecessary time is being lost in doing that.
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