NAVAL LIMITATION

Otago Witness, Issue 3808, 8 March 1927, Page 30

NAVAL LIMITATION

THE AMERICAN PROPOSAL. PEACE PRINCIPLES ENDORSED. WASHINGTON, February 28. Britain has accepted President Coolidge’s proposal for a Five-Power Naval Limitation Conference. The British Note said: “His Majesty’s Government of Great Britain. received with cordial sympathy the invitation of the Government of the United States of America to take part in conversations at Geneva on the further limitation pf. naval armaments. The views of his Majesty s Government upon the special geographical position of the British Empire, the length of the Inter-Imperial communications, and the necessity for the protection of its food supplies are well known, and together with the special conditions and requirements of the other countries invited to participate in the conversations must be taken into account. His Majesty’s Government, nevertheless, is prepared to consider to what extent the principles adopted at Washington can be. carried further, either as regards the ratio of the different classes of ships between the various Powers or in other important ways. It therefore accepts the invitation of the Government of the United States of America, and will do its best to further the success of the proposed conversations. It would, however, observe that the relationship of such conversations to the proceedings of the Preparatory Commission at Geneva would require careful adjustThe State Department officials, in making public the Note, said that the department considered it as a categorical acceptance. The Note said that the matter of ratios and the relation of the conference to the Preparatory Disarmament Commission would require adjustment. The earlier rejection of the plan by France and Italy has turned the Administration’s hope to the alternative Coohdge plan for a Three-Power Pact wiSri Britain and Japan, and therefore informal negotiations for an agreement on these lines are expected to begin soon, though Washington officials are only mildly optimistic regarding its success.

FRENCH OPINION CHANGING. WASHINGTON, March 2. Unofficial intimations, from Paris that France may yet modify her rejection of President Coolidge’s naval limitation proposals, which have been received here, are now regarded as a hopeful sign. The intimations are based on the past fortnight’s successful efforts at Geneva to reconcile the French and American concepts of the disarmament problem It is understood, that the French misapprehension that America desired >to establish a construction ratio for the naval Powers similarly to the Washington capital ships’ arrangement has been dissipated,, and the French approve of President Coolidge’s basic belief that competitive’ building in future can be avoided.

It is understood that the French may endeavour to include Mr Coolidge’s proposals at the coining Geneva preparatory conference as a possible preliminary to a separate naval conference. LEAGUE OF NATIONS. RUGBY, March 2. 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 Stresemann, the German Foreign Minister, there will be nine different League meetings during the present month. , Of theso 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.

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