UN General Assembly
1949

131. The task before the United Nations was great, and its responsibilities were likely to be steady and continuing rather than brief and episodic. For example, all three of the major subjects which had preoccupied the Security Council during the previous two years were related to one great, general and continuing movement. That movement arose out of the transformation of the colonial relationship between European peoples and the peoples of other continents into a new partnership of free communities. A great tide was moving in the affairs of men; it called for radical and complicated adjustment in political relationships. It was not surprising that the process of adjustment was producing strains and tensions, and that there was some impatience for greater speed. But every day brought new evidence that the process begun many decades before was accelerating and that a completely new relationship was being established between the peoples of the Western world and what had once been called dependent areas. The United Nations was playing an important part in that process. That was one of the reasons why the world should be most grateful for the existence of the Organization.