LEAGUE OF NATIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20039, 4 March 1927, Page 9

LEAGUE OF NATIONS

THE DISARMAMENT ISSUE. GOOD PROGRESS MADE. PREPARATORY COMMISSION’S WORK. (British Official Wireless.) Press Association —By Wireless—Copyright. RUGBY, March 2. (Received March 3, at 5.5 p.m.) In addition to the forty-fourth session of the League of Nations Council which opens at Geneva on Monday next, under the presidency of Dr Stres’emann, the Germaa Foreign Minister, there will be nine different League meetings during the present month. Of these the most important refers to the question of disarmament. The Preparatory Commission on Disarmament will meet on March 21, when it will have before it the whole of the work done by its various technical sub-commissions since June last. It may thus be able definitely to draw up a programme and fix the date of the International Disarmament Conference. The related, though minor, question of the international supervision of the private manufacture of armaments will also be dealt with by a special commission, on which the United States will be represented. This commission will meet on March 14 to draw up a draft international convention for the conference, which is to be summoned by the League in the .autumn. The League’s Financial Committee is to study the possibility of establishing a common scheme of financial assistance to a State which has been attacked, and to consider the legal position which would result from enforcing in peace time the measures of economic pressure, indicated in Article XVI. of the Covenant, particularly by a maritime blockade, i A committee of the council will examine the report of the sub-committee, which met in London last month, under the chairmanship of Viscount Cecil, to study the kind of preventive action which might usefully be taken by the Council when considering a dispute brought before it. Article XVI. of the League Covenant provides that an aggressor nation shall be subjected to the severance of all trade and financial relations with other members; and the signatories undertake mutually to support each other _ in all measures adopted with that end in view.