ENCOURAGING WORK

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 255, 25 September 1933, Page 7

ENCOURAGING WORK

THE DISARMAMENT TALKS, FRENCH GOVERNMENT’S PROGRESS. SMOOTHING THE WAY. (United Press Association.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (British Official Wireless.) Received September 25, 11.5 a.m. RUGBY, Sept, 23. Yesterday’s disarmament conversations in Paris are understood to have been encouraging and helpful and to have carried still further the work of adjusting the views of the British, French and United States Governments, which has been the object of the earlier talks which Captain R. A. Eden and Mr Norman Davis had had with the French Ministers. By these preliminary discussions it is hoped to smooth the way when the Disarmament Conference is resumed, and there is every reason to believe that much progress in this direction was made as a result. The preliminary conversations have to be laid before fifty or sixty, nations at the conference for discussion and approval. No question of final agreement arises in connection with those talks, but they none the less serve a useful purpose. According to the Times, the questions under discussion were the contents of the eventual disarmament convention and the conditions, including international supervision, on which it could be accepted by all parties. The British Goverment has insisted on giving the convention the first place in the discussions and keeping the conditions in secondary proportion. The main purpose of the conference, therefore, was to discover liow far, assuming the necessary conditions, France was prepared to go in disarmament. Here British representatives at once found reason for encouragement. They found the French Government prepared to go farther after tho preliminary period than before, and they found they were also nearer an approach to a Franco-Italian understanding than at any previous time on the contents of the" disarmament convention. GRADUAL DISARMING. IMPORTANT DECISION. LONDON, Sept. 23. It is understood that as a result of the recent conversations, France, Britain, the United States, and Italy have virtually agreed to disarmament in two stages. The first stage will extend over four years, in which no new armaments will bo allowed, then a substantial reduction will be made. An important -point is that France has agred in principle, to effect such disarmament. GOVERNMENT SUPPORTED. LEAGUE OF NATIONS’ BRANCH. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, Sept. 22. The Executive Committee of the British branch of the League of Nations Union has pased a resolution assuring the Government of its strongest support for the Government’s present efforts to secure a convention for the reduction and limitation of armaments, with effective control, and expressing its belief that the adoption of such a convention, is more essential now than ever. It trusts that the Government will press for an automatic, periodic and effective system of supervision applicable to all countries alike,, and for a reduction in armaments which will begin on the ratification of the convention and proceed by regular stages.