DOCUMENTS PUBLISHED

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 60, 12 March 1934, Page 7

DOCUMENTS PUBLISHED

RESULT OF RECENT EFFORTS

BARTHOU DEFINES POLICY

(British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, March 9. The results of the parallel and supplementary efforts of various States to advance the work of the Disarmament Conference in accordance with the. recommendation of the bureau on November 22, have been communicated"to Mr. Arthur Henderson, chairman of the Conference; and all material documents, including the British and Italian memoranda and the series of memoranda exchanged between France and Germany, are published by the League of Nations. In a covering letter communicating the documents that have passed between France and Germany, M. Barthou, French Foreign Minister, restates the French Government's view that a controlled reduction of armaments must take place down to the level which will enable equality of rights to be realised in a system of security for all nations, and that effective guarantees of execution are indispensable. "' "'* • It adds the following observations:— (1) "The existence of formations which, in spite of certain, denials, are incontestably of military character,'? must be taken into account in any calculation of effectives. (2) The French. Government could not accept an immediate reduction of its armaments which would be accompanied by an immediate re-armament of a qualitative character of Powers, bound "by the military clauses of the treaties. (3) The , question of guarantees of execution in case provisions of the eonvehtion are violated is of especial importance. (4) The present circumstances, and more particularly the increasing pace at which certain countries aro continuing to re-arm in contravention of provisions of treaties, necessitates a rapid solution of the problem with which the Conference is concerned.