The Daily News MONDAY, JUNE 8, 1931. DISARMAMENT PROSPECTS.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 June 1931, Page 6

The Daily News MONDAY, JUNE 8, 1931. DISARMAMENT PROSPECTS.

The official wireless report of Mr. Arthur Henderson’s lecture in London on “Consolidating World Peace” may have suggested that the British Foreign Minister has taken a rather gloomy view of the prospects of the great conference to be held at Geneva next February. His fear is that ‘‘the nations will not show their Governments in time that, they can count upon their support for all reductions in armaments, however drastic, to which the conference may agree.” To Mr. Henderson it appears that with respect to every forward policy in the last twelve years public opinion has always been ahead of what the Governments were prepared to do. He considers it essential to the success of the Disarmament Conference that the public should make the Governments understand that their delegates cannot “be too bold or go too far,” and therefore he is very anxious that the whole world should “understand the chance” presented by the conference. By this time, one would imagine, the world is -well informed as to the progress that has been made during the last twelve years in the direction of disarmament and the procedure that the League of Nations has been following in its preparations for next year’s gathering. The first great step, of course, was the establishment of the League itself as the outcome of the Peace Conference. Mr. Henderson himself paid a tribute to the League when he referred to the strengthening of its general authority and prestige, and declared that the day was near, if it had not already come, when it should be unthinkable that a nation should refuse to submit its quarrels either to the League Council or to arbitration. The existence of the Court of International Justice bears testimony to the soundness of the Foreign Minister’s view, for it is an earnest of the nations’ desire to settle disputes by amicable means. And both the will for friendliness and the urge to reduce armaments have found expression in the Washington Treaty, the Locarno Pact ' and the London Naval Treaty, which is still the subject of negotiations. Valuable as all these forward steps have been, they fall very far short of the ideal which the League has been pursuing. For nearly six years the preparatory commission appointed by the League has been busy with the spade work considered necessary to permit the conference to function effectively. The commission’s task has been to gather all the data that may be required when the nations’ delegates meet, and actually to draft a .scheme for their consideration. The full report was presented to the Council at Geneva, last January, and all the Governments concerned arc now presumed to be forming their opinions on it. The draft scheme, or convention,

covers six points. The first is the personnel of defence forces, the aim being to limit the 'numbers of men under arms and regulate their period of service. Next it is proposed to limit annual expenditure on material for land, sea and air armaments. This portion of the convention incorporates the. Washington and London Treaties and provides for further curtailment of naval forces and restriction of aircraft. The third section of the draft has to do with the limits to be fixed for total annual expenditure on all forces, and the lifth prohibits the use of poison gas in time of war. The fourth section proposes machinery for the exchange of information on personnel, material and expenditure, the idea being that each nation should annually submit something in the nature of a balance sheet to all the rest, the League, of course, forming the central clearinghouse. Finally it is suggested that the conference should establish a permanent disarmament commission, which would become the guardian of the treaty to be made at Geneva in the event of the conference achieving the desired success. The preparatory commission has not, of course, attempted. to fix the actual limits of armament for the nations, its object being to establish principles. Once these are agreed upon the delegates at Geneva, or their Governments when they report, will be expected to fill in details. It b not intended that next year’s conference shall be the last word on the subject of armaments; rather it is hoped that the nations will regard the conference as an opportunity to begin a progressive scheme, and that from time to time they will meet again and will be encouraged by experience to continue the reduction of their defence forces. In that way they may eventually reach the goal of universal disarm ameiit. Fortunately such important nori-mem-bers of the League as the United States, Russia and Turkey have participated to some extent in the preparations at Geneva, and it is hoped that they will retain their interest and help to make, .the great gathering a world conference. The. scope is so wide and the preparation hds been so thorough that there seems to be more reason than ever before to hope that the world will begin organisation for that universal peace which. Mr. Henderson so ardently desires.