NAVAL CONFERENCE

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 74, 22 February 1930, Page 10

NAVAL CONFERENCE

NEW FRENCH DELEGATES. LONDON TIMES’S COMMENT. (United Press Association.—By Electric Tolegraph.—Copyright.) (British Official Wireless.) Received February 22, 1 p.m. RUGBY, Feb. 21. It is understood that M. Briand will return to the London Naval Conference ns head of the French Delegation. His principal colleagues are expected to be M. Albert Sarraut, who attended the Washington Conference, M. Pietri and M. Danielch, who is president of the Briand Group in the Chamber of Deputies. Although the conference stands adjourned until Wednesday, the experts are daily continuing the examination of the question of special ships not belonging to any clearly defined category, and they expect to be able to complete their report for the First Committee by the time the conference resumes. Commenting on the conference, the Times to-day says: “The British and American Memorandum made it clear that if those two Towers alone were concerned there would he little trouble in fixing a programme for the next five years, which would substantially reduce the burden and menace of naval armaments and open up the way for further reductions in future conferences. But this is a Five-Power Conference, and what it has been set to nchieve is a five-Power agreement to reduce the naval programmes of all five and capable of being made at the basis of an all-round agreement at a general disarmament conference, which it is proposed to summon as soon as circumstances are favourable. “A study of the different memoranda submitted -shows that this is going to be an even more difficult matter than was expected, especially as some of the figures, if they were translated into actual tonnage, would involve a very considerable increase in the programmes contemplated by Great Britain and the United States But while no Power can be expected to make any concession renlly imperilling its security, all the Powers may fairly be asked to consider whether an international agreement for five years does not justify a greater readiness to reduce their armaments than some of them have yet shown, and whether either their security or their navies and ports will really be endangered by accepting compromises whicn, if they should prove unsatisfactory, can be reviewed at the next conference in 1936 in the light of the situation as it then presents itself. “Great Britain, by suspending work on the Singapore Base and many drastic cuts in her constructive programme, has already gone to extreme lengths in the way of reduction. “During the adjournment of the conference the other Powers might usefully ask themselves whether they cannot come to some decision in the same direction.”