Manawatu Evening Standard. WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 5, 1928. THE PEACE PACT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 238, 5 September 1928, Page 6

Manawatu Evening Standard. WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 5, 1928. THE PEACE PACT.

Are we to take it that the Peace Pact for which Mr. Kellogg, the Secretary of State for the United States of America, is primarily responsible, is merely another “peace gesture” which, so far as America is concerned, carries no intention on the part of its Government to enter upon that selfabnegatory action that she is imj posing upon the other signatories to the Denunciation of War Treaty, which was so solemnly assented to by the representatives of' the Great Powers in Paris last week? So far as President Coolidge and his Government are concerned, neither is committed (ft the observance of the Treaty until it receives the assent, or rather is approved by two-thirds of the members of the Senate. The Washington cablegram which we published on Saturday seems to indicate that the President hesitates about asking the Senate to approve of the Kellogg Treaty until it has first sanctioned the shipbuilding programme covered by the Navy Ships Construction Bill. American action since the Armistice concluded in November, 1918, has curiously complicated the European situation, and has not been without its effect upon world politics. The late President Wilson practically forced his fourteen points and the League of Nations upon the Allies, by threatening to withdraw from the Versailles Peace Conference, and having bound them to its observance, failed to gain the assent of his fellow countrymen to the Treaty, the result being that a separate Treaty was concluded between America and Germany. The Washington Naval Disarmament Conference, called at the instigation of the late President Harding, while it came to an agreement regarding the limitation of capital ships and their armaments, imposed far greater sacrifices upon Britain and the Dominions than upon the United States. Then in the later Disarmament Conference, in the demands made by the United States representatives in regard to the limitation of cruisers, further sacrifices were asked by them of Britain in the cruiser classes, while they insisted upon their right to offset the British naval tonnage by a much larger class of armoured cruiser carrying heavier armaments. The failure of that conference left an unpleasant feeling behind it that the Americans were more desirous of reducing the strength of the British Navy than they were to limit their own naval defences. The fact is that Britain has made greater sacrifices than any other naval Power in the reduction of her armaments, and this Peace

Pact which. Mr Kellogg 1 has engineered requires still further sacrifices on her part, where naval defence is concerned, than President Coolidge is prepared to consider on the part of the United States.