SELLING ARMS

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 December 1929, Page 4

SELLING ARMS

AN INSIDIOUS TRAFFIC.

Now that the tenth assembly of the League of Nations is over, it is clear that the most valuable work has been accomplished in connection with arbitration and security (writes Leslie R. Aldous). Great Britain’s action in signing the so-called “Optional Clause,” accepting the jurisdiction of the Permanent Court of International Justice for legal disputes, was responsible for a dozen other countries coming into line. Will her lead with regard to the Arms Traffic Convention, announced by Viscount Cecil of Chelwood during the closing days of the Assembly, have a similar happy result?

During the stormy post-war decade, tho dangers of allowing private firms to manufacture weapons of war and sell them to anybody who will pay for them have been abundantly demontered by armaments from Europe, gave strated. The Chinese civil wars, fosthe European Governments more than enough trouble and anxiety. Abd el Krimm, the Riff leader, in his wars against France and Spain did not find his seemingly inexhaustible supplies of ammunition growing on bushes among the rugged Moroccan mountains. From time to time, too, odd consignments of machine-gun parts have been discovered by Customs officials in railway trucks, bound on mysterious journeys through Central Europe. Should the’ inquiring reader ask how they came to be there, the answer is “The arms traffic.”

In 1925, the League of Nations, alive to the dangers of the insidious trade in arms, produced the Arms Traffic Convention which, if generally applied, would have dealt a deadly blow at the evil. But countries, although in theory agreed on the urgency of the problem, have been slow in using the machinery provided by the League. Vested interest in certain armaments producing Powers have probably a great deal to do with tho full story of inaction, were it written. The strange case of Mr. Shearer, who was employed by vested interests in the United States of America to bring about the failure of the Geneva Naval Conference, proves to what lengths influential concerns will go when their shareholders are threatened. useless for one armaments-producing As Lord Cecil has pointed out, it is country to sign and ratify the Convention unless the others do the same. Such a policy would simply mean that the unscrupulous Power would get a monopoly of the trade in arms. Hence Great Britain’s ratification does not become effective until certain other countries have also ratified the Arms Traffic Convention.