DISARMAMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 97, 21 October 1932, Page 7

DISARMAMENT

NATIONAL MEMORIAL

SUPPORT FOR GOVERNMENT

EFFORT TOWARD END

(British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, 19th October. A national memorial on the disarmament situation has been sent to the Prime Minister, Mr. Ramsay .Mac Donald, on behalf of over 300 signatories representative of many spheres "of national life, 'assuring him of widespread support by informed public opinion for a permanent reduction of armaments. To-morrow two influential deputations on the same subject ■will bo met by the Prime Minister. One headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and including of the Nonconformist Churches, will be received by Mr. MacDouald and Sir John Simon in the Locarno Boom at the Foreign Office. A deputation of well-known people representative of the non-party life of the nation will also put their views before the Prime Minister. The desire of the deputations is to demonstrate that the Government will have the full force of public opinion behind it in all measures designed to overcome the present international deadlock, and to achieve drastic measi js of disarmament. "The Times," on this subject to-day, urges that the interval before the resumption of the disarmament discussions should be used by the Great Powers to clear their minds as to how this is to be achieved. Germany's claim to equality of status, it says, is to all intents conceded already. "Of the two conceivable alternatives before them—their own progressive disarmament to a reasonable level or a progressive rearmament of Germany to the point of renewed competition with her neighbours— they have most definitely pledged tbeinselvei to the former," says "The Times." "Their choice is dictated not only by the profound revulsion of the world from any prospect of another war, not only by the moral obligations 'of the Peace Treaty, but 'by plain common-sense and economic necessity."