WORLD DISARMAMENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19806, 29 November 1927, Page 11

WORLD DISARMAMENT.

CONFERENCE AT GENEVA. PARTICIPATION OF RUSSIA. POSSIBILITY OF AGREEMENT. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (British Official Wireless.) A. and N.Z. RUGBY, Nov. 2/. Lord C'ushendun, who has succeeded Viscount Cecil as the British representative on the League of Nations Council, will leave London to-morrow for Geneva. The Preparatory Commission on Disarmament will on Wednesday resume its attempt to agree on a draft convention for the limitation of armaments. If such agreement* is reached a full international conference on world disarmament will be convened next year. When the commission held its last meeting in the spring of this year Lord Cecil expressed the opinion that if the countries that were represented at Geneva really desired a draft convention for the limitation of armaments, which should state the principles and methods by which such limitations would be attainable, that agreement was within their grasp. There was, however, a common reservation in the minds of all those who worked on the commission that, as Russia was not a party to the work, :t was clear that no convincing undertaking about disarmament could 1)0 drafted.

This week the Deputy-Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Litvinoff, and Lunacharsky, will represent Russia at Geneva. The Observer to-day says the Russian participation will transform next Wednesday's event into the first clear opportunity for effective progress toward technical disarmament on land. The statement made by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Sir Austen Chamberlain, last Thursday, when the subject of disarmament was debated in the House of Commons, has, says the Observer, left the world with no excuse for misunderstanding the policy of Britain. Hie Geneva Protocol has been buried as being a tactical mistake, but any effective means to peace and disarmament will be supported with intense sincerity on the part of Britain.