Volume 12 (1946) - Introduction

As Canada returned to peacetime existenCe after six years of extensive participation in the greatest crisis of modern times, she was confronted by the challenge of living in a world very different from that which she had known in the past. The documents contained in this volume portray Canada's chang¬ing international posture and the external policy developed primarily under the auspices of the Department of External Affairs and a small group of offi¬cials from other departments to meet the challenges of that time. Before using this volume the reader should develop some appreciation of the operations of the department responsible for the majority of the 1,277 documents selected from the 9,598 files that were examined.

On Dominion Day of 1943 Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King proudly affirmed that in "the Course of the present war we have seen Canada emerge from nationhood into a position generally recognized as that of a world power." The exigencies of responding to a wartime situation had given Canada a higher position in the world power structure than was justified by the yardstick of traditional prerequisites for recognition. In this changed world she had christened herself a Middle Power and set out within the con¬text of her functional principle¹, to prove that this was no idle boast. But her functional principle was never accepted by the other powers with the result that she found herself called upon to take positions, for the sake of maintain¬ing her status as a Middle Power, on issues which did not directly involve her. Whereas in the League of Nations she had asserted her independence by her mere presence, in the United Nations confirmation of her self-proclaimed status required the development and pursuit of Canadian-bred policy in¬itiatives. Pre-war isolation was rejected as an anathema and 1946 became the year for projecting her high hopes of wartime planning onto the international stage.

Of necessity, Canada became vitally concerned with establishing a better basis for international trade and commerce in a peaceful environment. In spite of this, one of the least understood elements of Canada's post-war interna¬tionalism has been her foreign economic policy. Yet more than anything else it determined the Cabinet's decision-making on international issues. The force behind this was neither External Affairs nor Trade and Commerce, but the Department of Finance where every move was carefully calculated by its Deputy Minister, W. C. Clark, to advance Canadian prosperity, not charity. The Department of Finance had a group of financial experts whose involve¬ment with international economic reconstruction tended to relegate External Affairs to the role of a post office in these transactions. For this reason the record of Canadian external relations cannot be found solely within the files of the Department of External Affairs. Questions of relief, rehabilitation, exchange rates and balance of payments were all bound up with Canada's desire to strengthen the newly created international financial agencies. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 the Chairman of the Canadian delegation, Brooke Claxton, announced that: "We believe that peace is not merely the absence of war but the positive establishement of prosperity. Trade between nations, like the well-being of the people within each nation, is a main pillar on which to build the structure of a lasting peace."2 Those who managed the Canadian economy remembered the slump that had followed the First World War and the aggravation caused by the American policy of high tariffs. During the Second World War Canada's productive Capacity had so expanded as to make her the second largest supplier in the world. No one had to be told of the domestic consequences that would follow if Canada could not sustain that productivity through exports abroad after the war. By the nature and extent of her contribution to the war effort she had made herself more vulnerable to shifts in the international economic climate. For that very reason Canada was a most concerned participant in the conferences preceding the appearance of the IMF, UNRRA, FAO, WHO, PICAO, IBRD, and the abortive ITO. This type of involvement led other departments, such as Labour, to establish at this time their own divisions for handling matters of international Concern.

Canada's enviable record of putting vast resources at the disposal of Mutual Aid, Military Relief and the United Nation's Relief and Rehabilitation Admin¬istration programmes had led her European and Latin American allies to expect greater Canadian bilateral involvement. Sometimes in an embarrassing way, they sought assurances of continued access to Canada's vast material and slim financial resources. For they too realized that underneath all the jargon of peace on earth was an innate Canadian desire to advance her status and prosperity through increased contacts abroad. By the end of 1946 seven coun¬tries had established legations in Ottawa for which Canada could not reciprocate and a host of others were anxious to negotiate an exchange of diplomatic representatives. This phenomenon and its subsequent demands upon a limited number of skilled diplomats is reflected in the documents.

In responding to both its own needs and the changing world scene, the Department of External Affairs had its parameters and operations altered. For as long as the Prime Minister served as Secretary of State for External Affairs and the Cabinet Secretariat was in an embryonic stage, it was convenient for the Prime Minister to use the Department as a reservoir of skilled people for special wartime projects. In the planning and execution of these programmes, External Affairs had become the putty of the civil service structure. Thus officials who should have been giving advice and direction to other Depart¬ments whose work flowed into the international arena, found themselves sub¬merged in technical questions of air priorities, prisoners of war, frontier formalities, censorship and economic psychological warfare. All these proj¬ects were important in themselves but outside the normal duties of analyzing foreign affairs, recommending policy thereon and carrying out the accepted policy in the diplomatic field. At the end of hostilities it was discovered that the dismantling of this wartime apparatus and adaptation of the basic cen¬tralized structure of the Department to the conditions prevailing in 1946 was no easy task. The fact that neither the incumbent Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs nor his successor possessed any demonstrable administrative capabilities for executing an efficient transformation made it all the more difficult.

For twenty of the Department's thirty-seven years, and continuously since 1935, Prime Minister King had concurrently been Secretary of State for External Affairs. On September 4, 1946, the position was relinquished to Louis St. Laurent whose views on the world situation and Canada's part there¬in were much different from the Prime Minister's and closer to that of his senior advisers. During the war he had watched Canada throw off the trappings of the spectator-commentator and take her seat on the players' bench. Under his leadership in the forthcoming fray, Canada would attempt to play her own game under the guise of an international referee among the great powers.

Simultaneous with this change occurred a triple shuffle of the Department's three top career officers. Mr. Norman Robertson, who had Carried the burden of Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs since Dr. Skelton's death in 1941, left for a well-earned rest as High Commissioner in Great Britain. No detail of the Department's varied operations during the war had been too small for his personal attention. Added to this burdensome method of centralized administration was the continual flow of demands of the Prime Minister who made few policy decisions without consulting him. The constant pressure of long hours of work had taken its toll and Robertson no longer possessed the energy required for leading Canada down untrodden paths. His replacement was Canada's Ambassador to the United States, Lester B. Pearson, who had already demonstrated how he thrived on challenges, activity and new responsibilities. With St. Laurent's blessing he would prove that Canada had an important role to play in the inter¬national arena. The post in Washington vacated by Pearson was filled by H. Hume Wrong who as Associate Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs was known for his administrative talents and his chairmanship of the Working Committee on Post-Hostilities Problems. It was Wrong who had done so much to prepare Canada for her role in the United Nations.

Unfortunately little of his time was devoted to designing an accompanying administrative structure. The triple shuffle enhanced the policy side of the Department but ensured that its administrative apparatus would always lag behind its needs.

Without the prerequisite administrative planning an already overworked structure was incapable of smoothly absorbing its new responsibilities. This accentuated deficiency accounts for the three-year period of organizational experimentation that began in 1946. In the past when the Department was much smaller there had been benefits from organizing its activities around the abilities of its senior officiers and the reactive demands of international relations. This was no longer possible and in 1945-1946 the Department began a sometimes painful and always unsettling allocation of people and responsibilities within the divisional framework established in 1944. Because of the number of changes made, an organization chart of the headquarters of the Department has been included inside the front cover for the user's reference. The preparation of this organization chart has been a tedious proCess. The Historical Section of the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce and the Directorate of History in the Department of National Defence have retained reasonably complete personnel records. Unfortunately the same was not done in the Department of External Affairs where complete records have been kept on only the senior officers. Since this was a period of great mobility in the civil service and before comprehensive records were kept by the Public Service Commission, the whereabouts and movements of many junior officials are difficult to trace from the surviving and incomplete, and at times contradictory, telephone directories and quarterly departmental lists. Subject to these qualifications the departmental organization chart and the list of representatives abroad inside the back cover give as complete and as accurate a picture as possible.

TABLE 1
GROWTH OF THE DEPARTMENT OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS, 19394947e

The extent of the Department's expanded activities is illustrated in Table 1. Within the year the number of international agreements concluded had almost doubled, its budget had more than doubled, and its representation at international meetings and conferences had quadrupled. For these under¬takings its staff was increased by twenty-two percent and demands were made for an even larger increase the following year. Each of these indices of growth caused unsettling adjustments that account for many of the short¬comings of the documentation presented in this volume, in addition to the indefinable gap left by the loss of fifty-nine potentially significant External Affairs files. Unfortunately the surviving records of other Departments in¬volved in specific external operations seldom filled the vacuum.

More than the preceding volumes, this volume contains the memoranda of lesser officials. First because they throw light on the advice, whether followed or not, that was given to the principal actors. These memoranda allow for an appreciation of the stresses, assumptions and delusions under which the policy-makers laboured in the absence of their own record of decision-making. Secondly, they often contain the only statement on policy that was committed to paper by an official dashing off something for a departing delegation whose members had only recently learned of their appointment. Thus officers who only a few months before had received their initiation at the "University of the East Block" were liable to be asked for policy recom¬mendations on subjects they knew little about and their superiors even less. One diarist at the time thus described his morning's work in the Department of External Affairs:

All morning a stream of interesting and informative telegrams and despatches from missions abroad comes pouring across my desk. I am tempted to read them all and to try to understand what is really happening, but if I do that I have not time to draft answers to the most immediate telegrams and despatches crying out for instructions. I must skim through everything with my mind concentrated on immediate practical implications. If I try to be objective and to comprehend all the issues I am lost. I draft telegrams and speeches under pressure, short-term considerations uppermost—'Will the Prime Minister sign this?'—Are we not too short of personnel to be represented at this or that international meeting?' This is the way policy is made on a hand-to-mouth basis out of an overworked official by a tired politician with only half his mind on the subject'

At the top, pyramids of memoranda and telegrams rose on the Under-Secretary's desk for weeks on end with only the most urgent being cleared off each day. A tradition of openness at the top meant that matters of im¬mediate significance were settled orally among the senior echelon of officers. Paper work was too often tedious and superfluous. Robertson seldom com¬mitted his views to paper because he had easy access to the Prime Minister and usually left Ottawa only in his company. Fortunately for the historian, Pearson did neither and the paper record improves as a result. Even so, there are few occasions when he found it necessary to write the argumentive type memoranda for which Dr. Skelton is remembered. Memoranda were usually for conveying the technical aspects of policy while the reasons for that policy were communicated orally. It was in keeping with the nature of the growth of the Department and the intimacy and complete understanding which characterized the relations of Robertson, Pearson and Wrong that none of them ever thought of preparing a formal letter of instructions for his successor. As Mr. Wrong remarked at a press conference on September 26, 1946: "We follow a fairly consistent pattern at the various conferences we attend, but I don't see what is to be gained by attempting to reduce the matter to a simple code." Senior officials were conscious of making history, not the records for history. The individual rather than the file was the main source of information. Thus gaps in the paper record were of less con¬sequence to the official than to students thereafter.

The shift of the main portion of Canada's diplomatic activity to inter¬national conferences had profound consequences for the organization of the Department and its paper records. Unlike other delegations who actively publicized their policy objectives at these Conferences, the Canadian delegates acting upon the instructions of the Prime Minister deliberately cut a low profile. Unobstrusively in committees and corridors they applied Canadian policy directives to specific issues. In most cases it was sufficient for them to record only the fact of achievement, defeat or compromise. The how and why were too often left for Departmental gossip or the Confines of a private letter. Numerous references in the official files to these unofficial exchanges of letters are accompanied by the notation that they were not indexed and the editor's searches in private collections of papers were seldom productive.

The shift in the location of many international meetings from London, Paris and Geneva to Washington and New York also contributed to the in¬completeness of the paper record by reducing the need for written instruc¬tions. When a Canadian delegate in New York wanted to discuss routine matters he had the telephone at his disposal while for more important issues he could easily return to Ottawa for an unrecorded meeting with the Prime Minister and a few officials. M of the major decisions on the international control of atomic energy, for example, were made in this fashion. In inter¬viewing the officials of the time the historian soon discovers the difference between the written instructions prepared for a wide distribution and the really significant instructions that were transmitted orally. Once the major issues of policy were clarified and agreed upon by those who needed to know, there was never a thought given to the completeness of the file. Files were filled instead with subsequent telegraphic exchanges communicating merely technical and drafting details. Their profusion often overwhelmed the officials in Ottawa who had neither the time nor the auxiliary documents to comprehend the full significance of what was happening. Within the context of this volume these dispatches remain unintelligible unless read in conjunction with the official minutes, submissions and records of trade-offs. When taken in total they do provide the record of Canadian policy-making but such a record cannot be produced within the confines of a single volume. Ultimately it is the historian who must discover the way through this lab¬yrinth when all international documentation is made available. Undoubtedly he will discover that there are differences of opinion or different versions of what the Government wanted communicated, what the Ambassador did communicate, and what the foreign government thought the Canadian Am¬bassador Communicated.

The preparation of briefing papers and final reports on international conferences had always been very dependent upon the time available to the authors thereof. In 1946, conference agendas overwhelmed the Depart¬ment. The files are replete with half-finished and draft commentaries that never reached the delegation in the form intended. The writing of the lengthy background sections of the briefing papers was assigned to junior officers who offered little indication of Canadian policy. In some instances this was because there simply was none but more often those senior officers responsible for policy initiatives carried them in their own heads. From the few available briefing papers, extracts dealing only with Canadian policy have been reproduced here. As for reports on international conferences, some of the more general reports of delegations to the various conferences held under the auspices of the United Nations have already been published. Only extracts from previously unpublished reports have been included in this volume. The standard format for the unpublished reports included an assessment of the leading personalities at the conference, a description of the issues under review, and an assessment of the impact of the results on the future of the organization. In this format the contents of the delegation report differed little from a good newspaper account. In vain one looks for some indication of how the delegation assessed the impact of the proceed¬ings on Canadian policy objectives. These reports are more useful for understanding international rather than Canadian external relations as part of the wider scene. Although these conference briefings and reports can be located in various collections and files, the most comprehensive set is located in the Conference Report Series maintained by the Historical Division of the Department of External Affairs.

The dismantling of the war-oriented records management system and the designing of a new system would have caused little difficulty if it had not coincided with an enormous increase in the number of new subject files. During a similar period of expansion at the beginning of the war the: Department's Records Section had found it impossible to maintain its yearly filing system. Therefore, in 1940, a new system was created and all sub¬sequent documentation and new subject files were added to it. In time, these files collectively became known as the "40" series with, as adjuncts, the secret "s" series and the top secret "50,000" series. This system did not lend itself to the new divisional structure introduced into the Department in 1944 but the Records Section held on in expectation of a respite at the conclusion of hostilities. Instead of a respite, the Section acquired an even greater volume of work. Whereas in the past a single subject could be confined to an easily identifiable group of files, such broad subjects as disarmament and atomic energy were scattered throughout many groupings. Because despatches were filed by subject, references to numerical sequences had little value and subsequent renumbering and dividing of files further complicated the dispersion of the numerical sequence. By 1948 the single centralized system gave way to decentralized sub-registries for each division. In the interval covered by these documents the user will encounter the deficiencies produced by this overstrained system. A researcher may now use the Department of External Affairs' key word index to uncover the most appropriate files.

In addition to the tradition of oral communication that detracted from the files, individual officers in seeking to speed their own work and make it more effective, circumvented the less efficient central registry by main¬taining working files of their own. Officials were more interested in making history than in the records of history. The number of undated or unsigned pages in the files gives evidence of this. Whether these pages represent the idle thoughts of a junior officer or approved policy is seldom evident. Since both British and American officials were in the habit of informally passing unidentifiable typed drafts of statements on Canadian policy to Canadian officials, even the origin of the document is sometimes in doubt. Unfortunately these documents have had to be omitted because of their anonymity. The diplomat who once knew has either forgotten or died.

Another major deficiency in the Records Section that has a bearing on this volume was its inability to develop a successful means of integrating post and Ottawa files for the preservation of as complete a record as possible. From the preponderance of Departmental paperwork in the files the reader might conclude that the Ambassador or High Commissioner played an insignificant role in the carrying out of policy directives. A complete set of records might confirm this but it would be speculative without the con¬firmation of post files. The working files of Canadian missions in London and Washington alone have been preserved with any regularity and these have been partially integrated with the other files or deposited as separate collections in the Public Archives of Canada. The few fragmentary docu¬ments from Paris and Tokyo that have found their way into the files only lead one to wonder about the rest. Ottawa was kept informed of the successful diplomatic initiatives but what has happened to the working papers of unsuccessful, diplomatically inspired initiatives, and inter-post cor¬respondence? Canadian delegations to international conferences often de¬posited their working papers with the closest Canadian post. The value of the files from Canada House and the Embassy in Washington accentuates the loss of the files of the Consulate General in New York.

The editor of this volume makes no claims to presenting a complete documentary story of Canada's external relations for much of the raw material for the historian's task remains locked up in foreign archives. It is hoped that this volume can be used as a basis for discovering this documentation when other national and international archives follow Canada's more generous access policies.

Collections of documents emphasize the episodic nature of external relations. For those who wish a fuller presentation of the Department's operations the monthly External Affairs Bulletin is available in the Depart¬ment's library. On policy issues the best chronology after January 29, 1946 is found in the Reports of the Weekly Meetings of the Heads of Divisions (DEA/8508-40). At each meeting the Heads reported on the main activities of their Divisions during the preceding week. These reports provide the best review of Canada's external relations.

In making his selection the editor has had access to all files and permission to include any document that did not violate the privacy of individuals or adversely affect national, security by describing intelligence operations. In the final selection no document was excluded for either of these reasons. The six most obvious gaps in this record were deliberate choices made because of the type of documentation available in the files or elsewhere.

No policy-Oriented or comprehensive descriptive documents could be located in External Affairs' voluminous files on the distribution abroad of information about Canada or the resumption of cultural exchange programmes. Without this kind of documentation the editor decided that there was little value in documenting the technicalities of distributing Canadian materials and culture aimed at dispelling the notion that Canada was for Mounties, wheat and Pioneers. Scholars wishing to monitor these programmes are invited to immerse themselves in the appropriate files.

Regrettably it has not been possible with just the few documents included to gain a. fuller appreciation of domestic concern with foreign affairs and its impact on such issues as the possible recognition of the Vatican and partici¬pation in the United Nations Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organization. From the file references contained in this volume, these avenues can be pur¬sued in conjunction with existing records of private organizations and inter¬ested individuals, when these become available.

The absence of references to certain subjects, especially those dealing with technical matters or private individuals and business should not lead readers to the conclusion that the Government was not interested or involved in these transactions. Space alone has made it impossible to include the highly techni¬Cal documentation on subjects such as radio frequencies or the registration of Canadian Bank securities in the United States.

The fourth gap in the documentation comprises relations with countries that were so amiable that, in the absence of conflict or a change in the status of the relationship, reports from the post became travelogues or condensations of local news. This type of report is helpful for the study of individual diplomats, administration and the perceptions upon which policy recommendations were made but, being devoid of Canadian content, they have little relevance for this collection. Consequently only samples of this kind of report have been in¬cluded, such as the three fascinating documents revealing the trials and tribu¬lations of one Canadian diplomat in Nanking.

The fifth deliberate omission in this volume pertains to Newfoundland. After this series began, the Department of External Affairs decided to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the confederation of Newfoundland with Can¬ada by undertaking the production of two volumes of documents on Canada's relations with Newfoundland in the pre-confederation period. Since both of these volumes cover the period of this volume, unnecessary duplication was avoided by excluding, except incidentally, documents relating to Newfound¬land as readers would naturally wish to consult the more extensive collection.

The final category of omissions deals with documents associated with the signing of minor treaties. These include ratification procedures, submissions to Council, and the granting of full powers to sign agreements on behalf of Canada. Here the procedure is very repetitious and the texts of the treaties are readily available in the Treaty Series. Researchers wishing to follow through this aspect of treaty-making are referred to. the Legal Precedents and Rulings File in the Legal Library of the Department of External Affairs.

Users of this volume are reminded of the change in attitude toward public information that occurred at this time. In pre-war years the Department and the Prime Minister did their best to cloud their activities in secrecy. The public received little more than the results of policy initiatives as recorded in the Treaty Series and Orders in Council. By 1946 and thanks to the in¬clinations of St. Laurent and Pearson some of the cloud cover was rolled back. Brief debates on foreign affairs in the House of Commons were per¬mitted by the Prime Minister. The Standing Committee on External Affairs that emerged after the division of the old Standing Committee on Industrial and International Relations in the previous year was now allowed to examine the Department's operations and a selection of its policies. Weekly press briefings were inaugurated along with the publication of Statements and Speeches. There has been no attempt made to duplicate these sources in this volume but the reader is encouraged to use them in tandem.

The broader picture of Canada's external relations into which these docu¬ments must fit is found in a number of readily available sources. Of special note are the accounts written later by the actors themselves, such as Lester Pearson, Arnold Heeney, Escott Reid, Dana Wilgress, Maurice Pope, and the more numerous pieces about them. Of primary importance is the third volume of The Mackenzie King Record. In the absence of proper minutes of Cabinet meetings as opposed to records of decisions, and notes for the file about the Prime Minister's interviews, King's diaries remain an indispensable source that must be read in conjunction with this volume. Also of special note are Lester B. Pearson's article "Canada Looks Down North." in the July 1946 issue of Foreign Affairs, the testimonies of officials of the Depart¬ment of External Affairs before the House of Commons Standing Committee on External Affairs and the published speeches delivered before the General Assembly of the United Nations. In a Department that was not much given to philosophizing about its total objectives the reader should not be surprised at the lack of documentation thereon. The first public statement of this period on the long-term principles governing Canadian policy which comes closest to putting on paper Canada's approach to international problems was made by St. Laurent in the Duncan and John Gray Memorial Lecture at the University of Toronto on January 13, 1947. In this lecture the Minister described what was meant by Canada's policy of "constructive international action" within the context of "secondary power" manoeuverability. "There is little point", said Mr. St. Laurent, "in a country of our stature recommending international action, if those who must carry the major burden of whatever action is taken are not in sympathy." Evaluations of the role revealed in the documents in this volume will have to be read in the context of this state¬ment. Above all, the views of officials described in this volume will have to be read within the overall framework of the five general principles enunciated as a result of the 1946 experience:

a) external policies must not destroy Canadian unity;

b) external policy should be based on Canada's belief in political liberty;

c) external policy should reflect respect for the rule of law;

d) external policy should be based upon some conception of human values;

e) external policy should be based upon a willingness to accept inter¬national responsibilities.

Those familiar with this series will notice the elimination from this volume of the customary list of documents containing a summary of each. This change has become necessary because of the enormous increase in the post¬war documentation. When the editor had to choose between including the list or approximately' two hundred important documents within the confines of a single manageable volume, he opted for the presentation of as complete a record as possible in the belief that, while users could make their own lists, they could not as readily acquire missing documents.

In addition to these reasons for the change in format, readers should be reminded that this volume was produced during a period of financial strin¬gency. The publication of the manuscript has already been delayed for more than a year because of a lack of funds and further delays would have been necessary if a list of documents that is costly to prepare had been added to an already massive volume. It is hoped that the expanded index will somewhat alleviate the inconvenienCe created by this decision. Suggestions for an author index have not been acted upon because, unlike the period covered by the preceding volumes, the decision-making process had become so diffuse as to make such an index meaningless. On the majority of issues the imprint of the Under-Secretary was in initialling the memorandum, draft, or telegram and occasional marginal notations that have in any case been reproduced along with the document.

Users of this volume will find their task easier if they keep in mind some of the basic editorial practices followed in reproducing the documents. When more than one copy or draft of the same document was available the editor, after whatever verification was possible, selected for reproduction the most authentic and complete text that appeared to have been used in briefings, negotiations and the final decision-making process. All documents appear in their original language. Normal variations in spelling have not been altered but typographical errors and mistakes in the spelling of proper names and places have been corrected. Additions to the original text have been set off by square brackets while omissions are indicated by suspension points ( ). In the instances where only portions of a document are reproduced, the word "Extracts" appears in the caption. In the case of long documents such as commentaries or reports, the pages from which the extracts are taken are indicated at the end of each extract. Asterisks in the text refer the reader to footnotes found in the original document while editorial footnotes are num¬bered. A dagger (1) appearing at the end of a reference to a document.(e.g., My ATOM 84†, Telegram 35 of July 8†) indicates that the document in question is not printed in this volume. Since the selection of documents for the volumes covering the 1944-1945 period had not been finalized when this volume was ready for publication, it was not possible to provide footnote references to these volumes when documents of this period are referred to in the documents printed herein.

In order to save space and avoid unnecessary repetitions, standard shortened forms of captions have been used in certain cases. Captions for documents originating in or addressed to officers within a Division of the Department of External Affairs identify the division while omitting the name of the Depart¬ment. The officers of each Division are listed in the organization chart of the headquarters of the Department inside the front cover. Captions for documents originating with or addressed to the Canadian delegations to the first session of the General Assembly of the United Nations also use a shortened form throughout the volume (Delegation to the General Assembly of the United Nations) even though Canada was represented by different delegations at the two parts of the first session. The date of the document indicates to which part of the session the document belongs and a list of the members of the two delegations is appended for easy reference (see Appendix A). Mem¬bers of Canadian delegations to other international meetings of 1946 are listed in the Annual Report of the Secretary of State for External Affairs for 1946. It should be noted that Canadian delegations at conferences abroad used the services of the nearest Canadian post to send and receive telegrams; there fore, captions for these telegrams contain the title of the senior representative at the post (e.g., Ambassador in. France). Delegation telegrams were identified by abbreviations of the name of the delegation, conference, or organization involved (e.g., ATOM, ASDEL) followed by the number of the message. These identifying abbreviations, usually found in the first line of the text of the document are explained in Appendix B.

The key to the location of a document, a location symbol followed by â volume or file number or both, is found in the upper right-hand corner of each document. The location symbols for personal papers are made up from the initials of the person (e.g., W.L.M.K., C.D.H.) while those for departmental files use initials based on the English spelling of the Department's name (e.g., DEA, DND). A full explanation of the symbols is found in the list-"Location of Documents". Enclosures are from the same source as the main document unless otherwise indicated.

There are a number of individuals whom the editor wishes particularly to acknowledge for their assistance on various aspects of the work. Foremost is the Director of the Historical Division, Arthur Blanchette, who put at the editor's disposal a number of means for overcoming 'difficulties in production: In initially selecting the documents from the files he is indebted to the work of his research assistant, Douglas Waldie, whose perception of the task made it so much easier. On his second research assistant, Michel Rossignol, fell much of the burden of preparing the documents for the printer. His linguistic skills and meticulous attention to detail were invaluable assets.. In addition there have been the staffs at the Department of National Defence, the Privy Council Office and the Public Archives who guided me through indexes to the files required and individuals who kindly granted me access to the fourteen collec¬tions of private papers under their jurisdiction and who gave their permission for the publication of the documents selected. Finally I remain grateful for the pioneering work done by my predecessors in this series, who made themselves available for consultation. While acknowledging the assistance provided by the above, I remain fully responsible for the selecting and editing of each document.

DONALD M. PAGE

¹The Prime Minister on July 9, 1943 (House of Commons, Debates, 1943, Volume V, p. 4558): On the one hand, authority in international affairs must not be concentrated exclusively in the largest powers. On the other hand, authority cannot be divided equally among all the thirty or more sovereign states that comprise the United Nations, or all effective authority will disappear.... In the view of the government, effective representation should neither be restricted to the largest states nor necessarily extended to all states. Representation should be determined on a func¬tional basis which will admit to full membership those countries, large or small, which have the greatest contribution to make to the particular object in question.

²See Document 72.

³Sources: Annual Report of the Secretary of State for External Affairs and Public Accounts of the Dominion of Canada, 1939-1947.
Information not available.

⁴Diary entry for September 7, 1945 in Charles Ritchie, The Siren Years—A Canadian Diplomat Abroad, 1937-1945. (Toronto: Macmillan, 1974), p. 208.