ARMS LIMITATION

Southland Times, Issue 22293, 7 April 1934, Page 5

ARMS LIMITATION

CUTLOOK REVIEWED. QUESTION OF GUARANTEES. (British Official Wireless.) Rugby, April 5. Reviewing the outlook for disarmament. with particular reterence to the meeting of the Bureau at Geneva, The Times says: “The view is undoubtedly proving common that a distinction may, and should be, made between the giving of a guarantee for the maintenance of the exact positions established by the peace treaties and the giving of a guarantee for the maintenance of a new international system based upon an armaments convention. The general guar- ■ antee of security must be directed to the crossing of a frontier or to some other act of overt aggression which is or is not justified, and in which there may or may not be doubt whether in fact the action may properly be held to have constituted aggression. In guaranteeing an armaments convention these doubts are unlikely to arise. The observance of agreed limitations is to be checked by a direct international commission, and there will only be a case for taking sanctions if the commission has definitely reported that a particular State has exceeded its permitted armaments. “Furthermore, the presumption is that in one case hostilities will already have broken out before collective action has to be taken, but an infringement of an armaments convention would not be the same irreparable disaster. That alone is a convincing argument in favour of a guaranteed convention. Another hardly less point in British eyes is that a convention would stand for a new and better system, whereas a general guarantee of security must inevitably be inseparable from the provisions of the peace treaties.”