DISARMAMENT

Evening Star, Issue 19723, 25 November 1927, Page 7

DISARMAMENT

MR CHAMBERLAIN DEFENDS GOVERNMENT WHY GENEVA CONFERENCE FAILED ANSWER TO RAMSAY MAC-. DONALD. Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, November 24. (Received November 25, at 12.45 p.m.) An important debate took place in the House of Commons to-day on the subject, of disarmament, Mr Ramsay MacDonald moved • « (that this bouse deplores the lack! of preparation by the Government and the military character of the Bidtsih delegation, which seriously contributed to the failure of the recent Naval Coniemico at Geneva, and to the slow progress made by the League of Nations Preparatory Commission for the Disarmament Conference, and the refusal ot the Government to accept the principle of arbitration and provide a scheme of international security guaranteed by the League of Nations.” Mr Austen Chamberlain, replying, referred to the resignation of Lord Cecil, and said that nobody regretted it more than he, for he and Lord Cecil hr 1 worked closely and harmoniously together on questions of foreign policy .in general and on matters that concerned the great question ot disarmament. Lord Cecil had been the principal spokesman and representative ol the British Government at Die Geneva Conference.

Referring to Lord Cecil’s reasons loi his resignation, Mr Chamberlain mentioned that one of these was that we had rejected instead of amending the protocol. Ho might say at once that the British Government’s first endeavor was to amend the protocol and so bring it into a state which might have been acceptable to us and the other Governments of the Empire, but they found that amendments for that purpose would be of so extensive and deep-reaching a character as practically to make the protocol an altogether different document. Replying to the, criticism that the British delegation to the Tlircc-Powcr-Naval Conference at Geneva was of a military character, Mr Chamberlain said the British delegation consisted of two Cabinet Ministers and one admiral, lo was the least military of all the delegations represented at Geneva. Another criticism was that wo entered the conference with insufficient prepaiation. This did not mean that the British Government had not given most careful thought to the proposals winch they could make, and the concentrations which they could bring to further the limitation of armaments, they hud indeed drawn npa scheme which would have produced not only a limitation of the expansion of armaments, but would have produced a real limitation of aggressive power. It was not, therefore, failure in that kind of preparation with which they were reproached; it was failure to deal with this matter through diplomatic channels before they agreed to go into conference at all. It was said, in effect, that the failure of the Geneva Conference was due to the failure of the new diplomacy and the lack of preparation through diplomatic channels before the conference. _ He took some blame to himself that he did not try to secure further diplomatic preparation, but it should ho remembered that the conference was not called on the British Government’s invitation, hut on that of the United States. He did not consider whether he should say to the United States Government at that moment: 1 ‘ M ould it not be well before you make that proposal to consider upon what basis the conference should meet, and whether there is such a measure of general agreement as would be likely to make the conference useful?” If the British Government did not do so it was lest they should appear in the eyes of the American Government to be seeking to evade acceptance of the invitation and lest Britain should appear to other people as seeming to be opposed to an attempt to further limit naval armaments. He thought it was a lesson that such diplomatic preparation was always desirable before a conference. It was also a lesson that only with great preparation could the League Conference itself bo brought to a successful conclusion. Those who Would press these things before groundwork was done were preparing for themselves the same disappointment that confronted us when we failed to reach an agreement in the Naval Conference.

Referring to the resolution solemnly reaffirming the doctrine of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which declared that all war was a crime, Mr Chamberlain said he did not think the time had come for that kind of amendment. He believed the practice of psychology must be allowed to grow before they could usefully undertake to change the whole nature of the covenant and fill up those gaps which its founders purposely left because they felt that to make this structure more rigid than it now was would be to risk its existence. Mr MacDonald had asked him if he was prepared to define a war of aggression. He was not. He thought' the League would make a great mistake if it attempted such a definition. He did not believe it would ho impossible, and he hoped it would not bo very difficult, for the League in a given moment to say who was the aggressor in any particular quarrel; but he thought, if they laid down tests by which they must be bound, they would find an aggressor would carefully conform to their particular tests and would escape the liability which ought to follow, upon his action, just because of tho precision of their definition.