Office of the Historian
  1. Home
  2. Historical Documents
  3. Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 1945
  4. Document 73

UNA Files

The Acting Secretary of State (Stettinius) to the President 1

secret
[Washington,] November 15, 1944.

Memorandum for the President

Subject: Questions Left Unsettled at Dumbarton Oaks

There are six principal questions which need to be settled in connection with the establishment of the United Nations organization. They are as follows:

1.
Voting procedure in the Security Council
2.
Initial membership
3.
Location of the United Nations Organization
4.
Arrangements for International Trusteeships
5.
Drafting of Court statute
6.
Procedure for the termination of the League of Nations

[Page 50]

There are attached hereto recommendations as regards the first four of these questions.

As regards the Court statute, it was tentatively agreed at Dumbarton Oaks that a group of legal experts would meet two or three weeks prior to the opening of the Conference to draft the document.

As regards procedure for the termination of the League of Nations, the British and the Chinese governments have appointed committees to work on this subject and have promised to communicate their conclusions to us.

  1. Printed from an unsigned copy typed in the Department of State; authorship not indicated. This memorandum and the five following memoranda were prepared for a conference with the President on November 15, 1944. See post, pp. 56–57.↩