ARMS PROBLEM

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 96, 6 April 1934, Page 5

ARMS PROBLEM

SECURITY GUARANTEE Maintenance of Convention DEFINING AN AGGRESSOR ißritieh Official Wireless.! (Received 6, 12.30 p.m.) RUGBY, April 5. Reviewing the outlook for disarmament, with particular reference to the Geneva bureau meeting, “The Times” says: “The view is undoubtedly provipg common that distinction may and should be made between giving a guarantee for the maintenance of exact positions established by peace treaties and giving a guarantee for the maintenance of a new international system based upon an urmaments convention. “A general guarantee of security must be directed to the crossing of a frontier or to some other act of overt aggression. There must almost inevitably be a difficulty in the discussion of whether the action of a State charged with aggression was, or was not, justified, -and there may, or may not, be doubt whether in fact its action may properly be held to have constituted aggression. In guaranteeing an armaments convention these doubts are unlikely to arise. “Observance of agreed limitations is to be chocked by direct international commission and there will only be a case for taking sanctions if the commission has definitely reported that a particular State has exceeded its permitted armaments. Furthermore, the presumption is that in one case hostilities will already have broken out before collective action has to be taken, but an infringement of the armaments convention would not be tho same irreparable disaster. That alone is a convincing argument in favour of a guaranteed convention. “Another hardly less point in British eyes is that a convention would stand for a new and better system, whereas a general guarantee of security must inevitably be inseparable from the provisions of the peace treaties. ’ ’