RIGHT TO ARMS

Taranaki Daily News, 5 September 1932, Page 7

RIGHT TO ARMS

GERMAN VIEWS RECEIVED

CONSIDERATION BY EUROPE

CONSULTATIVE PACT IN USE PLAN TO BOYCOTT GENEVA POLITICIANS STAND, TRIAL By Telegraph—Press Alia.—Copyright. Rec. 11 p.m. London, Sept. 4. France, Britain and Italy have received copies of Germany’s aide memoire demanding arms equality—the right to the possession of arms permitted to other nations but denied to Germany under the disarmament clauses of the Versailles Treaty. The Government of France has acknowledged the document and the British will consider it shortly. Germany next week may ap-. ply its threat to boycott the Disarmament Conference.

The French Cabinet has fully examined the question and has decided on formal acknowledgment. In the meantime France is consulting the signatories to the recently initiated European consultative pact, under which the Governments concerned are pledged to keep one another informed on matters affecting mutual interests and to exchange views thereon with candour. These consultations probably will occupy time because the Ministers of various countries are on holiday or otherwise engaged. Signor Mussolini received the aide memoire from the German Ambassador at Rome, with whom he had a long conversation.

The British Cabinet -will fully review the matter on the return of the Foreign Minister (Sir John Simon) from Balmoral, where he is visiting the King. It is understood Germany will not send a representative to the meeting of the budget committee of the Disarmament Conference on September 12. Thia would be the first practical application of Germany’s threat to boycott the conference unless the equality demand is granted.

Mr.: J, L. Garvin in the Observer says: “The Treaty of Versailles did not envisage Germany held in everlasting subjection. It set forth among other ‘.aims -a general limitation of the arms of all nations,’ yet after 13, years of peace the armament of non-German Europe is far heavier than in 1914. Between now and the resumption of the Disarmament Conference the world will Want to know whether there is any prospect of relief from the burden or whether the moral obligation of the Versailles Treaty is taken seriously by politicians, or whether the politicians are so infatuated as to imagine a nation like Germany can be kept: under a perpetual stigma of inferiority.”