Telegram [CHEYENNE, WYOMING], 27 November 1947
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
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1 A. W. Cordier, Executive Assistant to the Secretary-General, United Nations.
2 The original document has been typed on a Western Union telegram form. Italicised words are handwritten
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[SFU : EVATT COLLECTION, UNITED NATIONS-MISCELLANEOUS]