THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1932. DISARMAMENT DIFFICULTIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21098, 4 February 1932, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1932. DISARMAMENT DIFFICULTIES.

The Disarmament Conference, assembling on its due date, has been confronted with a situation making its work more difficult than even the least optimistic could have expected. Nations having membership in the League convoking the conference, and one of these a permanent and powerful member of its executive body, are fighting each other. It makes no material difference (hat they have not broken off diplomatic relations: they are engaged in what a British Cabinet representative has rightly described as "war in everything but name." This happening is a disquieting disappointment to all entertaining high hopes for the success of this unique gathering, inclusive of almost every nation in the earth and bent on a more resolute and comprehensive effort to discourage war than has hitherto been attempted. There is sad irony in this synchronising of the conference with so grimly furious a conflict. When the date of the conference was under discussion by the League, in September of 1930, there was a sharp divergence of opinion on a motion to fix the date as one prior to the end of 1931, Count Bernstorff, speaking for Germany, complained that there had been unnecessary delay already, and others, including Lord Cecil, counselled patience. Eventually, the Assembly expressed a desire for a date in 1931 but left the choice to the Council, which afterwards selected February 2 of this year. In that discussion and the subsequent deliberations of the Council, weight was given to the critical advisability of holding the conference when the international atmosphere was favourable. It was argued that failure to reach agreement in it on a drastic and practicable limitation of armaments would mean a severe setback to the cause of peace, and that the conference should therefore be called at a time when political ferment, with inevitable reactions prejudicial to foreign policy, was unlikely in any leading country. There was expressed a hope that nations would so order their own affairs that the purpose of the conference would be furthered. The argument and hope were wisely entertained, but events have shown the fallibility of both in the presence of rabid national instincts. Few have been so foolish as to under-estimate the task before the conference. It is impossible to abolish armaments overnight, and they have been poor if well-intcn-tioned friends of peace who have spoken with assurance of this. When the League set about preparations for this fully international effort, there were found to be tremendous difficulties on the very threshold of the task. To get a working definition of disarmament was the first: in the diverse capacities and circumstances of the various Powers were elements that made what was disarmament for one no real disarmament for another. Moreover, some nations were so situated that they could rearm with speed under necessity or at will, while others could do relatively nothing to match this martial recovery. So the initial problem imposed toil to unravel a tangle; but a formula was at length found to cover all cases. Then began the vast work, undertaken with the continuous aid of technical experts, of compiling an all-nations register of forces on land, at sea and in the air, of munitions facilities and construction programmes, of methods of recruiting and mobilisation, of annual budgets, and so on. The sifting of these was a colossal feat, for there was often more than met the eye. There were met awkward obstacles in the way of national suspicions, even innocent inquiry evoking a burst of indignation at what was sometimes held to be a sinister attempt to promote an arrangement to place one nation at the mercy of another. Instances of misinterpretation by quite reputable Powers strewed the path of the preparatory commission. At long last, near the end of 1930 —it had been set up in 1925—the commission was ready with its report. All there had been of real delay was occasioned by the hampering reluctance of some Powers to study and aid its work; the rest was due to the nature of the work itself. It would be a thousand pities if, after so much sincere toil, the opportunity to reach agreement on an effective reduction and limitation of means to make war were lost because of lack of will to take occasion by the hand.

In the statesmanly action of the British Government has been provided a way of averting the failure threatened by the crisis in the Far East. Leadership of this kind was needed. To have the conference baulked because so many Powers were necessarily engaged in militant activity, through the resort to arms of two others, would have been a failure almost as great as to assemble and disagree. The strife between Japan and China, with all its ugly implications, was rightly regarded as a call to get on with the business in hand, first using the opportunity of this unique assemblage at Geneva to bring international pressure to bear on these combatants. This unwholesome struggle has imparted a special urgency to the work of the conference, at least by providing a horrible example of the evil of war, and still more by impressing the need to give practical force to the principles implicit in the League of Nations and the Briand-Kellogg Pact. Added emphasis is given to the moral obligation of restricting "means to do ill deeds," and the necessity of facing resolutely th~ practical aspects of the purpose of the conference is equally impressed. It cannot very well lose itself in idle sentiment, with this strife in the forefront of thought, The time may not prove so inopportune, after all. A new hope for the world may grow out of the disappointment.