The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1928. THE ANGLO-FRENCH COMPROMISE.

Hokitika Guardian, 23 November 1928, Page 4

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1928. THE ANGLO-FRENCH COMPROMISE.

In due course, no doubt, the discussion on the Anglo-French naval compromise will be permitted to die out. That will happen, considers an exchange, when it is no longer possible to make capital out of the matter in one quarter or another. The topic is being kept alive, it is fairly apparent, on the American side, by representatives of the Big Navy' Party to suit their own purposes. In the House of Commons it is being used by party leaders who desire to put thß Government in the wrong. It is not apparent that there has been warrant for anything approaching the agitation that has occurred over the Anglo-French negotiations. They have been provocative of suspicion, real as

well as simulated. The British and French Governments may have committed an error of procedure in delaying publication of their agreement. But that the agreement was other than innocuous, since it was to be submitted to other Powers for their consideration and failing their approval, was to go by the board, it is difficult to see. The attempt lias been made to depict Great Britain and Franco in the light of conspirators. It has, however, been made perfectly clear that they entered upon these negotiations with the object, surely laudable in itself, of trying to settle those differences between them that bad hitherto obstructed the work of the Disarmament Commission at Geneva. The chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives at Washington declares that the main purpose of the AngloFrench agreement was to inveigle the United States into the adoption of a naval principle which would ensure Groat Britain’s supremacy on the seas for all time. This expression of opinion from such a source has to he considered in the light of the fact that there are politicians in the United States who persistently talk as if the views ef their country’s Administration respecting the manner in which naval limitation should be brought aliout were of a great deal more Importance than those of Britain or any other Power, and as if the British desire for small cruisers rather than the American desire for large cruisers was the principal obstacle to agreement on naval limitation proposals. The threePower Naval Conference came to nothing. The preparatory Commission on Disarmament lias been making very slow progress. A difficulty that specially confronts it is that very difficulty which it was hoped the Anglo-French naval compromise might overcome through the elimination of those points upon which France and Britain had previously heen unable to agree, this being the establishment of a basis which other Powers might find it possible to accept. Agreement respecting the estimate of naval strength by categories instead of total tonnage, respecting the non-limitation of small cruisers and small submarines and the limitation of large cruisers, with abandonment of the British position in regard to the counting of reservists in an estimate of military strength—such were The features of the Anglo-French compromise. The United States does not like them, and is entitled to say so. But the imputation of discreditable motives, and the suggestion that the agreement furnished a sinister commentary on the progress of disarmament, are founded on reasoning which is extravagant and unconvincing. The unfortuate part is tat this extravagant reasoning comes from those in liigr places who might he expected to he at least fair, and not descend to the tricks of the yellow press, always ready to bait anything pertaining to England This unfortunate leaven in the characteristics of the United States does not make for real peace, or that entire confidence which

should go so far towards a peaceful understanding.