VISCOUNT CECIL

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 30 August 1927, Page 4

VISCOUNT CECIL

RESIGNATION FROM CABINET

LETTER TO THE PREMIER.

REASONS FOR DECISION.

(British Official Wireless.)

(Received 30. 12.80 p.m.) Rugby, Aug. 29. Viscount Cecil has resigned nis seat in the Cabinet. The text is issued of a communication which he has addressed to the Prime Minister. In a letter dated August 25th, Viscount Cecil says “I wrote to you on August 9 immediately on my return from Geneva t,o tell you that 1 felt it was impossible to continue tn office. Owing to your absence in Canada, I understand that the letter has only just reached you. 1 have therefore re stated, in the form of a minut, which I now enclose my reasons for resignation.” In the accompanying minute, Viscount Cecil says, “1 am sorry to say I have arrived at the conclusion that I ought to resign my office. Let me in the first place assure you that thia conclusion is not due to any personal difficulty; on the contrary, I feel that O owe you, and all my colleagues much gratitude for your kindness and consideration. Least of all have I any grievance against the Hon. W. C. Bridgeman, First Lord of the Admiralty. He will, Ihopc, have already told you that through our time at Geneva we worked together in the closest agreement. Apart from one or two questions of procedure I do not think we had any differences of opinion, certainly we had none with respect to the policy to be pursued at the conference. It is true that in tehenieal matters I had to rely chiefly on advice given to us by the naval experts. Hhere again we were extremely fortunte in having as our chief adviser so able and the wideminded an officer as Admiral Field. MUCH MORE SERIOUS. “The difficulty is, I am sorry to say, much more serious, for 1 cannot conceal from myself that on the broad policy of disarmament the majority of Cabinet and I are not really agreed. I believe that general reduction and limitation of armaments is essential to the peace of the world and on that peace depends not only the existnee of the British Empire, but even that of European civilisation itself. It follows that I regard limitation of armaments as by far the most important public question of today. Further, I am convinced that no considiwable limitation of armaments can be obtained except by Internation agreement. On the attainment of such agreement, therefore, in my .indiffiTenl 'he chief cnerffic- -,f ftp Government ought to be concantra'Jeu. OF GREATER VALUE. “I say it is’of greater Vadue than any other political object. Much that happened during the session last spring of the Preparatory Commission for reduction and limitation of armaments, was to me of a disquieting nature. Over and over again, I was compelled by my instructions to maintain proposition in the commission which were difficult to reconcile with any serious desire for the success of its labours. For the most part, those instructions turned on smaller points, but the cumulative effect on the minds of the commission was very unfortunate, and was largely the cause of its comparative ill-success. Nevertheless, when you were good enough to ask me to be one of the British representatives at the recent conference, I gladly accepted. I thought there was little doubt of an agreement being reached, and I believed an agreement between the three great naval powers to a reduction of their armaments would be of great assistance in facilitating the efforts of the Preparatory Commission for general limitation. Its failure would, of course, be a corresponding disaster, but I did not contemplate failure.” OUT OF SYMPATHY. and the causes of that failure may have to be probed when Parliament meets. It is enough now to say that I found myself out of sympathy with the instructions I received, and believe that an agreement might have been reached on terms which would have sacrificed no essential British interest. What then of the future? I look back on a refusal to accept the treaty of mutual assistance, unconditional rejection of the protocol, a Ministerial declaration against compulsory arbitration, partial failure of the Preparatory Commission, and now the breakdown of the three power conference, advance in the direction first of security then of arbitration, lastly disarmament itself has been tried, and in each case has made little progress. In each case the policy I advocated has been more or less completely overruled. As it has been in the past, so will it be in the future; the same causes will produce similar effects, for the truth is—however unwilling I am to recognise it—that in these niatters my colleagues do not agree with me.

“I can see no way then in which I can be of further service in the Cabinet to this cause, which I regard as supremely important. But outside there is much to be done. The hope of the future lies in an aroused, and instructed, public opinion, and that is the object which may employ all, and more thau all, the energies which remain to me. ’'