WORLD’S ARMAMENTS NOW GREATER THAN IN 1914

Stratford Evening Post, Volume I, Issue 258, 9 October 1931, Page 5

WORLD’S ARMAMENTS NOW GREATER THAN IN 1914

HEADING FOR DISASTER GREATER THAN LAST WAR When Lunatic Presses Button Humanity Will Be Trapped Press Association. —Copyright. Reed. 11.30 a.m. LONDON, Thursday. GENERAL SMUTS, speaking on disarmament at Sheffield University, said the armaments of the world are now greater than in 1914, -Unless a real measure of disarmament ends this armed peace, we are heading for a cataclysm infinitely worse than the World War. Fighting forces will go straight to urban populations, using unheard-of chemicals and biological weapons, which will cover cities with poison and disease germs. Already the laboratories of three continents are busy with deadly researches, and when a lunatic or a criminal presses the button, the flower of the human race will be trapped. Unless a beginning is made with a policy of disarmament Germany may claim the right to arm once more, and decline to continue to sit among her peers on the League as an inferior. Yet the question of allowing Germany to re-arm would raise even more dangerous issues than general disarmament.