STAFF TALKS

Evening Post, Issue 77, 31 March 1936, Page 9

STAFF TALKS

LOCARNO' POWERS

NO DATE FIXED YET

QUESTION FOR CABINET

(British Official Wireless.) (Received March 31, 11.30 a.m.)

RUGBY, March 30.

A meeting of Ministers was held this morning at which, besides the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Monsell, the Secretary for Air, Lord Swinton, the Lord Privy Seal, Lord Halifax, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Anthony Eden, and the new Minister for Co-ordination of Defence, Sir Thomas Inskip, were present.

Contrary to newspaper reports that the meeting would be concerned with approval of the proposed technical conversations with the General Staffs of the Powers still adhering to the Locarno Treaty, and guarantees thereunder, it is pointed out in official quarters that Cabinet approval of these talks was involved in the decision of the Government to accept the proposal drawn up at the recent Four-Power Conference. The technical arrangements in question were provided for in the third section of the proposals and relate solely to the carrying out of the existing obligations of the British Government under Ihe Locarno Treaty in a case of actual unprovoked aggres-

sion. a It is understood that no date for the beginning of the conversations has yet been fixed, and this question may come before Cabinet on Wednesday.

In the meantime consideration is being given to the conditions under which talks would be held, and it is assumed that this was one of the subjects upon which the French Ambassador spoke with the Foreign Secretary when he called at the Foreign Office this afternoon.

In agreeing to conversations between the staffs in connection with their reaffirmation of the Locarno obligations —which was the contribution of the British Government to the restoration of confidence by compensating Belgium and France for loss of security resulting for them from the remilitarisation of the Rhineland—the Government, it is recalled by political commentators, had before it the example of similar technical exchanges in whichi the French Government recently agreed at its request to participate in connection with the possibility of unprovoked aggression in the Mediterranean, and in accordance with Article 16, paragraph 3, of the League Covenant.