A WARNING

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 137, 14 June 1927, Page 15

A WARNING

WORLD NEARING A CROSSROAD

DISARMAMENT OR MORE WAR

"With civil war in China, with Jugo-Sla-via and Italy at swords' points in Albania, and with a war cloud gathering in the Balkans, the Disarmament Conference in Geneva and a speech made by Reichswehr Minister Otto Gessler in the Reichstag get small shares of the world's publicity, states the Berlin correspondent of the "San Francisco Chroniple." Yet . yon Gessler's was probably, the most notable speech delivered in the Reichstag during the present session.' It was a sharp reminder to nations, and particularly to European Powers, that they had come to one of history s crossroads. . ■ . ' ' "Either general disarmament or we must stand opposite our enemies witli equal arms, declared the Reichswehr Minister. It is absolutely impossible that Germany, which is a member of the League of Nations Council, should remain in the position of an Indian tribe." He recalled that' the general reduction of armament to a point consistent with the maintenance of international order was one of the Wilson fourteen points on which Germany-had accepted the Armistice. \on Gessler only said more emphatically what the ex-Ambassador to Washington, -now. German delegate, to the League - Disarmament -Conference, said a few'days. ago'in .Geneva. Count yon Bernstqrff declared the Versailles Treaty states that German, disarmament should be the introduction-to general disarmament by other Powers. Germany's legal position here:is strong.' The Allies.have formally given her a clean bill of health "with regard to her own disarmament, and the Allied Military Control Commission has been withdrawn from German soil. Accordingly Germany is well within her legal rights in demanding that the Allies fulfill their obligations, and that is why yon Bernstorff, who is the outstanding League propagandist in Germany, as Lord Robert Cecil is in England, declared that disarmament was the acid test of the League. What Germany demands, he said frankly, was real and not sham disarmament. This was directed at the French proposal that military limitation of armaments should be .-confined to forces capable of immediate mobilisation. Paul Boncour's stand and the French army's scheme of mobilising the whole nation in case >f war are regarded by Germany as a violation of Article VIII. of the League Covenant, which binds members to reduce their armaments to "the lowest point consistent with . national safety and enforcement by common action of international obligations." If the Allies .do.nothing to reduce their own armaments^—and all indications point to their refusing to; do anything of the sort —then it remains only a question of time before Germany will tear up the provision of the Versailles Treaty by which she is forced to remain defenceless, just as Russia took the first favourable opportunity to make a scrap of paper of the Treaty clause "neutralising" the Black Sea, which was forced on the Tear's Government after the Crimean War. '