DISARMAMENT.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 11 December 1925, Page 5

DISARMAMENT.

LEAGUE’S WAR FORCES

A KNOTTY PROBLEM

BY CABLE —PBESS ASSOCIATION-COPYEIGIIT. LONDON, Dec. 10. Disarmament replaced the Mosul question at- yesterday’s private sitting of the Council of the League of Nations at Geneva. Though it is gathered that tentative efforts at a settlement of the Mosul question are continuing, the growing feeling is that it a decision is left to the Council the boundary will approximate the Brussels line, leaving Mosul in Iraq. The position regarding disarmament is that the League proposes to appoint a preparatory commission to study questions, which will be submitted in due course to a disarmament conference. * . The rock on which the Council threatened to split was- the proposed investigation into the specifically pledged war forces which the League would have at its disposal against an aggressor. France wanted a stipulation that such forces should exceed those of any single Power. Britain refused to permit even the hypothetical question to be discussed. As a result of frank conversations between Sir Austen Chamberlain (British Minister for Foreign Affairs) and M. Boncour (France) there will be no immediate investigation of the potential war forces, though Britain agreed tc permit a commission to take consideration of the industrial position of all countries, and to study the extent of the financial and economic blockade which the League can command against aggressors. The diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Telegraph affirms that America, and Soviet Russia wi'l he invited to nominate representatives on the commission, and gives the items of the questionaire the commission will study, examples of which are:— What is the precise meaning of armaments ? . Is there a distinction between offensive and defensive armaments?

. Are there means of differentiating civil from military aircraft?

How is the mercantile marine to be reckoned in estimating a country’s naval power?