The position with regard to Palestine is in my judgment the most
critical in the history of the United Nations. The choice now is
between a complete washout and a positive solution. In such a
situation abstention can only mean a direct invitation to the two
groups in Palestine to fight it out on the battlefield with the
United Nations, which is supposed to maintain peace, not even
offering a just solution. I therefore beg you both to put this
position most urgently before President Aranha, to whom I send my
deepest regards. The situation turns on the votes of Latin
American countries over whom he has a wide and justly deserved
influence. It is contrary to the self-respect of any nation to
evade such an issue and I earnestly request the President to
intervene in the way he deems best to produce a result with
justice to all the parties and the future interests of United
Nations. In the ad hoc committee I struggled for two months so
that the delegates would finally face up to the issue on the vote
and it would destroy all this work, losing [2] the enormous cost
of time and energy [spent] on Palestine. Assembly itself [would
lose] in prestige if as a result of all this nothing positive was
achieved. Indeed it would reduce the high status of the Assembly
to the discredited status now occupied by the Security Council.

To you both and all the Secretariat and especially to President
Aranha, who worked so hard to make the Assembly a success, I send
my greetings and felicitations. I believe the joint efforts of us
all have made a success of the present Assembly but that it is
necessary to come to a positive decision on Palestine.

HERBERT VERE EVATT
Australian Foreign Minister