THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30, 1932. DELAYED DISARMAMENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21144, 30 March 1932, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30, 1932. DELAYED DISARMAMENT.

Nearly two months have passed since the Disarmament Conference assembled, and as yet it has taken no definite step toward ils goal. This fact is disappointing. True, ihe conference was understood to be a long one : a period of six months was tentatively named as its probable duration. Its task, moreover, is admittedly difficult; for the first time in history there is faced the need to discuss disarmament on a worldwide basis and with reference to every form of weapon, and the complexity of the problem is as obvious as its mere size. Those who fondly imagine that agreement can be quickly reached to bo done with preparations for war arc without knowledge of what such an agreement involves. Some excuse can be justifiably offered, too, for slow progress at the conference ; almost every nation of the unprecedented number there represented has its domestic troubles, mainly economic, and statesmen have been so necessarily absorbed in these that attention to the international task, even attendance at Geneva, has been broken. But when all allowance is made for difficulties, foreseen and unforeseen, the failure to reach any conclusion of note is to be deplored. A third of the allotted time is gone ; the first quarter of the year of hope is closing; and agreement seems as far off as ever. It may not be. In the spate of preliminary talk a measure of concerted opinion is observable, and it has been, of course, essential to give full opportunity for unbuttoned speech at the outset. To say that this has cleared the way for speedier decision at a later stage is possible. Nevertheless, it is not convincing. The year has begun badly, even Geneva must admit: the vexing quarrel in the East has continued its elusive course, baffling the League, making a mock of the Briand-Kellogg Pact, and spreading inflammable animosities. For the Disarmament Conference to suffer delay, perhaps obstruction, is to add a further reason for disquiet. The beating of swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning-hooks, on which the nations were declaredly set, is taking so long that there is room to suspect that the forge-fires have got cold. At the beginning of the conference, it will be remembered, there was a marked difference of opinion about the use to be made of the framework for discussion presented by the League's preparatory commission after years of close albeit interrupted study of the problem. That initial work was highly valuable. Without its collation of technical material and shaping of a formulated convention into which the conference was intended to put details, no profitable start could have been made. Unfortunately, there has developed an unexpected reluctance in some quarters to proceed upon this basis, despite the fact that the commission included representatives of all the leading Powers and came. with unanimity to its considered conclusions. Its findings are voluminous but not at all bewildering. They fall into logical divisions and have a relation, even a sequence, helpful to discussion and decision by the conference. That these results of thoroughly expert and painstaking work have not been accepted unanimously as a starting point is tho chief element in the dissatisfaction that must be expressed, as the tardiness of the conference is considered. And there is raised the question of the reason for this hesitation to take the. path blazed by the commission. The reason is manifold, taking different forms according to diverse national outlooks at present. Germany objects, for instance, to any effort to fix a scale of reduction and limitation that fails to bring every other nation to the limits imposed on her as an outcome of the war, while Russia is equally averse to any sliding-scale method of restricting armaments, for reasons of her own. Yet at bottom all the objections to use the formulated scheme, which endeavours to make provision for varying national needs as to defence, arise from a prevalent feeling of insecurity. This feeling, it was hoped, would prompt rather than chock willingness to disarm, but the times, it must frankly be said, are not as propitious as they were expected to be, and there has been met a reluctance to agree on schedules for the conferring Powers, and even on schedules at all. This reluctance, described by the Geneva correspondent of the Times as "a polite sensitiveness," which causes the conference so far to avoid citing names of counlries and to refer to tonnages and troops in algebraic terms, has kept the delegates on flic unadventurous ground of generalities. If nothing more than these is 1«-» come from the sessions, these delegates might better have staved at home. There, have her-n generalities more than enough already in the preened speech of diplomats on high occasion. The world is getting weary of them, if disarmament is practically impossible, for any reason, it, would he well for Geneva to say so. Then all the Powers would know where they are, and Britain, having gone to quixotic extremes hi disarming because of the hope that example would be more influential than precept, would think afresh on the subject. So pessimistic an outlook, however, is not, vet, warranted. There is still time to get to grips with the initial requirement --a workable set, of schedules ('numeral ing the defensive needs of the various countries under practically stable con-ditions—-and to make this a, common starting point for the computing of reductions. This, unless the current of peace seeking ideals is to lose itself in a morass, is to bo looked for after the Jjaster recess.