ARMS CONFERENCE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 7, 6 December 1932, Page 7

ARMS CONFERENCE.

POSITION OF GERMANY. EFFORTS SOLVE PROBLEM. LONDON, Dec. 5. The Daily Telegraph’s Geneva correspondent says: “Baron Neurath will meet representatives of British, America, France and Italy on Tuesday in an earnest endeavour to solve the problem of Germany’s return to the Disarmament Conference. Germany is now like a woman courted by several parties and therefore realises her strength. Mr MacDonald’s efforts at conciliation have already persuaded France to consider the German proposals. “The British delegates support Mr Davis’s proposal for embodying the actual accomplishments of the Conference in an agreement. Mr Davis wishes to go home quickly with something in his pocket to show for his work at Geneva. The British delegates, however, realise that it is difficult to make concrete suggestions which can bo embodied in an agreement.”

The Daily Herald says that the attempt to close down the Disarmament Conference .and hand the business over to a Permanent Commission is gathering strength at Geneva. “Such an act is a confession of failure. The present achievements of the Disarmament Conference are little more than a.n amplification and extension of the old Hague Convention. They, do nothing to make war less probable or to remove swollen armaments. To throw up the sponge would now bo a piece of intolerable poltroonery.” PRIVATE CONVERSATIONS. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, Dec. 4. Important private conversations began a.t Geneva to-day. The Prime Minister, Mr Ramsay MacDonald, and the Foreign'Minister, Sir John Simon, this morning called on the French Premier, M. Herrjot, who will also see Mr Norman Davis, the American delegate, during to-day. Baron von Neurath, the German Foreign Minister, will reach Geneva, to-morrow.