THE SAN FRANCISCO CONFERENCE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR SIR, —I would
suggest that your Editorial Comment on the Yalta plan for voting-procedure in the Security Council goes a little beyond what the actual -terms of the announcement seem to warrant. It has not been laid down that "in Ate early stages of. the discussion of a dispute by the Security Council the actual disputants . . shall have no voice ": but only that in certain quasi-judicial activities "a party to a dispute should abstain from voting." I should agree that exclusion of disputants from even discussion wou'd be more judicially correct—but that does not appear to have been stipulated.
There are other curiosities in the proposed plan for voting. When memb:rship of the Security Council was fixed at eleven, one had assumed that a majority would be six. Why the mystic number seven? It means that when action is to be taken, even the " Big Five" need the agreement of at least two of the smaller members of the Council: and that any five of the six non-permanent members can veto action. This seems to safeguard the rights of small nations at the expense of decisive action—a comment seldom levied against the Dumbarton Oaks proposals. Nor, since the six non-permanent members are elected by the whole General Assembly for only two years at a time and three retire every year and become ineligible for immediate re-election, would -it be easy for the major Powers to pack the Council with client States. Further, will the important distinction between "quasi-judicial" and " political " de- cisions, elaborated by Mr. Stettinius on March 5th, be easily definable? If there be dispute about this within the Council it would presumably, as a matter of procedure, be decided by a majority of any seven of the eleven members: again strengthening the power ,of the non-permanent members. These " concessions " to members other than the "Big Five" seem too seldom realised in the present discussions of the proposals.—
Yours faithfully, DAVID THOMSON. Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
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