DISARMAMENT

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 295, 2 December 1930, Page 5

DISARMAMENT

REFERENCE OF DISPUTES TO TRIBUNAL. NEW AND FAR-REACHING STEP. I British Official Wireless.! Rugby, Nov. 30. The Foreign Secretary, the Rt Hou. Arthur Henderson, speaaing at Cardiff, referred to the situation regarding disarmament. Under the terms of the general act of arbitration, which, he indicated, the Government was every dispute would bo referred to an impartial arbitral tribunal. Ho added: “As a result of the discussions at the Imperial Conference we may now hope that all the selfgoverning dominions will act with us in taking this new and far-reaching step. The British commonwealth having given a lead, other Powers, 1 am certain, will follow the example. Wo skull then have made another great step forward toward the cmup-etiou of our system of safeguarding against war." On world disarmament the Government was also in complete accord with the dominions. The preparatory commission on disarmament at Geneva was making very satisfactory progress, and he could not appraise too highly the work of Lord CeciL Ho continued: “Plainly we must have some limitation of the man-power to bo maintained. If a treaty comes iutn operation we must have some limitation of material, wo must have publicity so that we know what Governments are doing, and wo must have some sort of supervision and -ontrol by an impartial League of Nutions commission, whose task shall be to ensure that the limits included in the disarmament treaty are not infringed or exceeded in any way. “After the first five years the disarmament treaty will be subject, to revision, and if the experience of tho first five years shows that tho treaty necus improvements we will be in a happy position to set about making that improvement. When wo have tho work of tho preparatory commission completed, we hope before many months, there will bo a fixed disarmament conference representing the whole world." A GERMAN PROTEST. IVnlteil Press Association—By Cable— Copyright.) .. Berlin, Dec 1. General Groener, interviewed vigorously protested that Franco was not carring out her solemn undertaking to disarm after Germany had done so. He said this must result in an unbearable disproportion of armaments in Europe. The intcr-Allied disarmament commission bad confiscated 130,000 machine guns in Germany, 60,000 guns, 15,700 aeroplanes and 27,700 aeroplane engines, and ot 10,000 factories capable of making armaments 600 had been destroyed and the others were so transformed as to bo useless for military purposes. Germany could now bo overrun ty tho French and Belgian standing armies of 740,000 men, 1600 aeroplanes and 2000 tanks.