CONTROL OF ARMAMENTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 170, 19 June 1934, Page 6

CONTROL OF ARMAMENTS.

On May 28 President Roosevelt issued a proclamation making the sale of arms and munitions to Bolivia and Paraguay illegal within the United States. Previously he had asked Congress to ratify the Geneva Arms and Ammunition Convention, a nine-year-old treaty supervising the international traffic in arms and munitions. The Senate has now ratified this document, but with the proviso that nine other principal arms producing countries must approve of the pact before it becomes effective in the United States. With that condition there should be no disagreement, for isolated action by one country will not end what has been declared to be a grave scandal, by which some countries have supplied war material to both combatants in the Chaco region. The League of Nations has made strenuous efforts to control the export of arms and munitions to belligerent countries, and the long and horrible conflict between Paraguay and Bolivia has at last brought it within good prospect of success. On May 17, an earnest appeal by the British delegate (Mr R. A. Eden) resulted in the members of the League Council agreeing in principle to place an embargo upon the export of munitions to Bolivia and Paraguay—Britain immediately held up export licenses—and the United States for the first time in her history applied an embargo to both participants in a w r ar when the President issued liis proclamation. Now she has carried the matter still further by the Senate ratifying the Geneva Convention, which was drafted as the outcome of an advisory commission set up at the First Assembly of the League. It suggested the prohibition of all export of arms without a special license from the Government of the exporting country, and the prohibition of all import of arms without a license from the Government of the importing country, and that no munitions or,, implements of war should be manufactured ■without a license. The Powers refused to sign a convention, on these lines unless the United States did so, but until now the latter has not seen her way clear. A greart advance has therefore been made in a matter of suprime importance among the nations. Official League figures show that tw r o million rounds of ammunition and 99 machine, guns have been supplied to Bolivia, and sixteen million cartridges to Paraguay, while Peru and Colombia, in anticipation of war over the Leticia incident, have received cartridges, bomb carriers, and high explosives. The horrors of the Gran Chaco warfare have stirred the United States to action, and the obligation is on the countries mentioned in her proviso to similarly ratify, the Convention so that wars may be made less difficult and arbitration more favoured when disputes arise.