The French Fallacy

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 48, 19 November 1932, Page 16

The French Fallacy

"The essential fallacy,” says the London “Observer,” “of French policy is that, in trying to maintain a disparity of strength in its own favour, it is all the time accumulating against itself forces of which its confused reckoning takes no account. It is unconsciously ‘re-arming’ Germany by the fastest route.

"The process has gone far enough already. If it. goes the length of refusing to the Reich that equality of military status which is due to her to-day upon any fair reading of the’ Treaty of Versailles, it may prove the fatal hinge of the next generation’s history.

“What we have written is a fair and temperate expression of the mind of this country. Its substance ought to be in the foreground of every pronouncement made in the name of Great Britain to the Powers of Europe and to America. It is their due—and most of all owing to France herself —that they should know where we stand both' on the principle involved and on the time for its Application.

“Only by that clear declaration can the Disarmament Conference be brought to its business and rescued from ‘chanting vain hymns to the cold, fruitless moon.’ ”