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The member of the Council representing China, Mr. T. F. Tsiang, was ■elected Chairman of the Council for this Fourth Session, and he was assisted Tby the members for Brazil and for the Ukraine as Vice-Chairmen. The effective and consistent support which the New Zealand Government has given UNRRA since its inception, which was explicitly referred to on more than one occasion, was appropriately recognized by the election of Sir Carl Berendsen as Chairman of the Committee on Policy—an ad hoc Committee of the whole Council —to which the more important and, in many respects, the most difficult and controversial of the items on the Council's agenda were initially assigned. Specifically, these included consideration of the Administration's problem arising from food shortages, review of the Administration's authority with respect to displaced persons operations, and consideration of the problem created for UNRRA as a result of the requisitioning of land and other resources by occupying Forces in countries receiving UNRRA assistance. The representative of Poland, Mr. Stanczyk, presided over the other main ml hoc Committee—that on procedure. Matters dealt with by this latter Committee, besides the applications from Albania and Turkey for membership in UNRRA, includLed an Australian proposal, which had been unsuccessfully pressed at the Third Session in London but was unanimously accepted at Atlantic City, to enlarge the Central Committee by the addition of Australia, Brazil, and Yugoslavia. This brings the membership of the Central Committee to a total of nine—comprising, in addition to these three new additions, the four original members, U.S.A., U.K., U.S.S.R., and China, plus France and Canada, who were admitted during the London Session. The Committee on Procedure also adopted a resolution recommending the extension of the period of UNRRA's responsibility under the amended International Sanitary Conventions, to which New Zealand is a signatory. It is pleasing to record on thig occasion that, on the basis of the reports made to the Council concerning the work of UNRRA in the six months since the Third Session, noi substantial reasons now exist for doubt or misgiving as to UNRRA's fitness for its task, or as to the justification of its seeking the continued support of member Governments. If the results achieved seem to fall somewhat short of the high-sounding promises of the first Atlantic City session, they are; by common consent, impressive indeed when measured against the almost insuperable difficulties with which the Administration has been confronted from the very beginning. As summed up by the Director-General, there have been, besides organizational difficulties associated with the recruitment of a competent international staff, continuing shortages of particular commodities; delays in receiving funds from some contributing governments; .stoppages of work in supplying countries;: severe shipping shortages; breakdowns and bottlenecks at the ports and in the internal transportation systems of receiving countries; droughts unequalled in fifty years; while " over and above these particular difficulties, there has been one general influence at work retarding and delaying all our operations. This is the very natural slackening, now that the war is over, in the pace of governmental operations, and in the force of governmental controls, upon which UNRRA must depend to an important degree." The success with which UNRRA has, nevertheless, been transferred during the last six months into an efficient operating agency may be judged by its actual accomplishments in two major fields of activity. First, by the end. of March, over 7,000,000 tons of supplies will have been shipped, with the scale of operations increasing daily, despite the presentfood crisis; second, since 1 September, 1945, approximately 725,000 displaced persons have been repatriated, in association with the military authorities.

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