BRITISH POLICY

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 96, 20 October 1933, Page 9

BRITISH POLICY

ANNOUNCED BY SIMON

ENDORSED BY HAILSHAM

(British Official Wireless.) (Received October 20, 11 a.m.) KUGBT, October 19.

The policy of the British Government in regard to disarmament, as outlined by Sir John Simon at Geneva on Saturday, was warmly, endoised at Liverpool last night by Lord Hailsham, Secretary for War, who strongly emphasised that tho speech represented the collective views of the British Government, Lord Hailsham said that lie had read in a Press telegram from Berlin that the German Government had given an. official warning to their newspapers not to attack Britain as a country, but to confine hostile comments to individual British Ministers, meaning, of course, the Foreign Secretary himself. "I suppose,',' he said, "it is possible to create some division between the Foreign Secretary and his colleagues, or at any rate his compatriots at home. I think, therefore, it is right I should say at oiice that the Foreign Secretary in what he did at Geneva on Saturday last was speaking not personally or individually, but as a representative of the British Government, with the assent of his colleagues in that Government."

He added that Sir John Simon and Mr. Anthony Eden had not only communicated to their colleagues every? thing that happened during tho conversations with tho interested Powers, but actually came homo and had discussions upon points which arose. It was at the inyitation of the President of the Conference that Sir John Simon reported the effect of conversations at which ho had been present. "We, his colleagues, know that his story was true, because he had been able to report to us from day to day exactly what was ,going on. There cannot be any doubt as to the accuracy of the statement he made. But it does not rest there. When Sir John" Simon finished his speech tho other Powers who had been present at the conversations, the United States, Italy, and Franco, each expressed in turn acceptance and approval of what Sir John Simon had said and not one of them suggested that there was a word of inaccuracy in the account which he gave."

Lord Hailsham said that lie would not discuss the merits of the situation. Britain had only one desire. She desired world peace and that security which world peace required for its permanence. That was her only purpose and her only object.