Lord Cushendun Unmasks The Soviet Complete Text Of Speech

Northland Age, Volume 28, Issue 58, 18 July 1928, Page 7

Lord Cushendun Unmasks The Soviet Complete Text Of Speech

To Disarmament Committee * Of League Of Nations (Continued) Following is the continuation of » the text of the speech delivered before the preliminary disarmament committeeof the League of Nations by Lord Cushendum which exposed the motives behind the Russian proposals for immediate and complete disarming of the nations. This speech—disclosing as it does the sinister aims and policies of the Bolshevist regime—is of such importance that the Family Herald had it cabled verbatim from Geneva for the information of its readers. The text of the speech follows : * It is all very well for the commission to laugh, but I think it is a serious matter. We have these proposals before us, as M Litvinoff has told us, to accept or reject. There is no liberty to examine them, no liberty to take out that proposal dealing with military history and to maintain some other part of the draft. It appears to me that we are bound to subject all these matters to the closest scrutiny and I think that scrutiny should, in the first place, be by the preparatoty commission, and when they have done so, I think it will be necessary that the governments whom we present should also be given an opportunity of expressing an opinion in detail. Now, as the representative of a naval power, I scrutinise particularly the articles dealing with naval armaments. lam not pre- ♦ pared summarily to reject them. Some of them could obviously not be accepted in their present form, but without going so far as * that it is quite possible that these articles may contain valuable suggestions. For example, the British Government has already announced that it is quite prepared for agreement with other powers for the total abolition of submarines. That is one of the proposals in the Soviet draft. We have declared already that we are quite prepared for that and I think it is quite likely my government might agree also to the total abolition of some of the categories of war material appended " to Article 11. It is surely very unfair when the delegate from the Soviet Rebublic comes here and speaks very scornfully of the work hitherto accomplished by the League to leave out altogether the very considerable progress that has been made. I could not help asking myself, when I listened to his words, whether he had ever heard of an agreement that was to come up very shortly after the war, at Washington. I shall be borne out by the representatives of other powers who took part in that conference that very considerable progress was made ; falling short of what is now proposed by the Soviet Rebublics but still, as compared with previous conditions, gratifying progress in the direction of naval disarmament. And even more recently my government let it be known that they are quite prepared to carry the agreement still further. The enormous ships of modern times known as capit- . al ships were, at Washington, agreed to be limited or it was agreed to prevent the further growth of these enormous vessels WANT REDUCTION The British Government has said that they are quite prepared

in agreement with other signatories of the Washington conference, to take a further step in the direction of reducing the size of these enormously costly, powerful vessels, and also to increase the period which must elapse before they are replaced by new ships And we are willing to do that at any time when the naval powers concerned think the time opportune tor such a move. All those things may not be very rapid progress. It may very well be that ardent enthusiasts may get impatient because we do not go quicker, but what we have already done, and what we have intimated, our willingness to do, does represent a very important advance along the road to disarmament.

The articles in this draft, under the heading “protection at sea” certainly have merit, both in originality and imagination, but to determine whether they are suitable for the purpose for which they are designed requires a more technical knowledge than I have. The professed object of the maritime police mentioned in Article 40 is to deal with pirates and slave traders on the high sea. I am speaking now from advice given me on these proposals by competent naval officers. I am told that, for the purpose of dealing with pirates and slave traders, the police vessels must be capable of overhauling any vessel that can take to sea and they must carry sufficient armament to force any such vessel to bring it if required. UNSUITABLE SHIP

I am told that the type of vessel specified in Article 43 would be entirely unsuitable for this work. It would be impossible to build a vessel of the necessary sea keeping qualities for work on the open ocean in all weathers within the tonnage limits laid down.

If that is so, clearly that is a point which the Soviet delegate himself would desire to amend. It cannot be that he wants the clauses in his draft to nullify the* intention which he has with regard to protection at sea.

The same criticism applies still more obviously to Article 44. Where it is intended for customs supervision, I think the draftsman of this clause appears to be under the impression that territorial waters are always smooth waters, which is very far from being the case. It is difficult to understand whv any officers and men who are to be employed on customs duty should be condemned to take to sea in boats of one hundred tons, without any armament capable of arresting high speed vessels engaged in smuggling.

Another very significant fea ture of thess proposals is that no sort of sanction is suggested for insuring compliance with any part of the convention in case of its being violated by any contracting party.

BREACH FORESEEN Article 60 evidently contemplates that there may be a direct breach of the convention. I do not know exactly what is the distinction between a direct and an indirect breach, but I do not stress the point because we might have an explanation as to what a direct breach is. What is interesting is how it is proposed to deal with these direct breaches. We are told that the representatives of the contracting states will be summoned as expeditiously as possible by the permanent commission of control, but we are not told to where the contracting states are to be

summoned, and, having regard to the studied avoidance of any machinery of the League, it is a matter of great interest and importance to us to be told to what part of the world the parties are summoned. To be continued.