ARMS AND ALARMS.

Evening Star, Issue 19585, 17 June 1927, Page 6

ARMS AND ALARMS.

The Mark Tapleys of the Council of the League of Nations have had their opportunity to “ come out strong ” in making the best of the results of the League’s preparatory disarmament conference. Their spirit will be admired. A French delegate claims for the first draft of a report which was all that was attempted to be arrived at that there were more points on which they ware agreed than points on which they disagreed. But the matters agreed on were, for the most part, principles of the most general kind, and the obstacles to putting them into practice remain the same, or almost the same, so far, as if the preparatory Commission had never met. It was not that too much was aimed at for a first performance. All that the first conference essayed to do was to provido the foundation of a plan for limitation of armaments, which might bo agreed to and expanded by a much larger con-

fercncc, which it is suggested may bo held next year. All that ivas done, as the results are summarised by the British organ of the League of .Nations Union, was to reach “an unsatisfactory half-agreement on the question of land forces, a rather less unsatisfactory one on air, none at all on Budget limitation, none at all on international supervision, and none at all on navies.” Wo may add to this sad digest that a recommendation was adopted to make expenditures on armaments more easily subject to comparison in future. It was agreed that each Government should be asked to send to the Secretariat of the League, in a standardised form, a statement showing both the amount proposed to bo expended on land, naval, and air armaments in the current financial year and the amount actually spent in the preceding financial year. No race in armaments could be started then without everyone knowing who was forcing the pace, and the culprit nation would be exposed at once to all the obloquy, and all the pressure for discouragement, which its attempt would deserve. But even the judgment of faith and of warmest sympathy could not regard these as great accomplishments. Something may be added to them when President Coolidgc’s conference, next week, begins its consideration of naval armarnents ; but as that conference will be limited to only three Powers the prospect is not encouraging.

The first Commission had fair claim to be a representative one. Twenty nations woro included in it, fourteen of them members of the council, five others members of tho League, and last, the United States. The discussions will be resumed by a yet wider conference when the naval meetings have shown what they can do, but it is to be feared that a bad time has been chosen for all this disarmament talk. The atmosphere of Europe seems to bo grimly determined not to help tho peacemakers. Viscount Cecil declared, after tho April meetings: “The issue now passes from the hands of tho Commission to those of the public. Do they, or do they not, desire that this policy shall be adopted? It only remains for an enlightened public opinion to insist that this greatest of all reforms shall bo carried out.” Discussions already hold, it was pointed out by another apologist for Geneva, have provided a wealth of data of an entirely new order and helpful towards an ultimate understanding. “This material, whiffi is about to be circulated throughout the world, is certain to have the respect of Administrations. What the Governments do with it rests not merely with the Governments themselves. Governments cannot move more quickly than their peoples. It remains, therefore, for the peoples themselves to take a genuine interest in disarmament if further progress is to be made.” But that need will bo difficult for some peoples. Russia, or the Russian Government, for example, finds no attractiveness of any kind in the idea. It is only a few weeks since tho Russian Minister of War was declaring: “The Red army was not at present prepared for war, and efiorts must not be spared to prepare it for war, which was bound to come.” And since then, though no ultimatum has been issued, probably because its army is not ready, Russia has been making a quarrel with Poland. How easily there might bo warfare there can bo gauged from the report that “Soviet troops fired on an aeroplane which passed over the frontier, after which. Russian and Polish frontier guards exchanged shots.” No one can say when the Soviet rulers of Moscow may not be tempted to try the excitement of an external war as a distraction from domestic discontents and, troubles. Tho last thought of most Englishmen and Americans, if they jived in Poland, with a naturally Indefensible frontier between them and Russia, would be for reducing their armaments; they would want more and more of them. And the “ greatest of all reforms,” as it may be admitted to be, is not likely to bo more popular at this moment in Jugoslavia, where Italian militia men, according to report, have just fired thirty shots at a frontier post, fortunately without causing any casualties. On the whole, it is a bad outlook for limitation of armaments.