“INEXPLICABLE LEAKAGE”

Taranaki Daily News, 8 October 1928, Page 9

“INEXPLICABLE LEAKAGE”

ANGLO-FRENCH AGREEMENT BRITISH VIEW NOT AFFECTED. By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Received Oct. 7, 5.5 p.m. United Service. London, Oct. 6. Downing Street regards the Echo de Paris disclosures regarding the nature of the Anglo-French disarmament notes as an inexplicable leakage. It appears to be a substantially accurate summary, but does not affect the British view regarding the proper time to issue the documents, over which negotiations are still proceeding. Commenting on the disclosures, the Daily Telegraph’s diplomatic observer says it will be seen that French military authorities are also concerned in a discussion which must have been conducted simultaneously. “The most striking feature of the correspondence is that the British Government's acquiescence in the French standpoint on the question of military reserve was an integral part of the naval agreement, not a separate, independent, unconditional concession. “It is gratifying, in view of this bargain,” says the writer, “that there is | now no valid reason why the military I side of the agreement should stand now I that America’s opposition has killed the naval side.” I Last March, at the Disarmament Conference, Great Britain upheld the principle that limitation of armaments on land ought to include trained reserves as well as standing armies. Apparently under the naval compromise with France this support, was to have been withdrawn, and there was strong feeling in Great Britain that if it were the cause of disarmament would suffer greatly.