WAR NOT LIKELY AMONG NATIONS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19242, 2 December 1930, Page 1

WAR NOT LIKELY AMONG NATIONS.

WILL ARBITRATE THEIR FUTURE TROUBLES. (United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) RUGBY, November 30. Under the terms of the general act of arbitration, which had been drawn up at Geneva, and which the British Government intended to accept, every dispute between the nations would be referred to an impartial arbitral tribunal, said Mr Arthur Henderson, Foreign Secretary, in a speech at Cardiff. “ As a result of the discussions at the Imperial Conference,” continued Mr Henderson, “We may now hope that all the self-governing dominions will act with us in taking this new farreaching step. The British Commonwealth having given the lead, other powers, I am certain, will follow the example. We sha’l then have made another great step forw T ard toward completion of our system of safeguarding against war.” On world disarmament, he said, the Government were also in complete accord with the dominions. The Preparatory Commission on Disarmament at Geneva was making very satisfactory progress, and he could not appraise too highly the work of Lord Cecil.

. Plainly, we must have some limitation of the man-power of, the armed forces to be maintained, if the Treaty comes into operation, and we must have some limitation of material. We must have publicity so that we may know what the Governments are doing. e must have some sort of supervision and control by a League of Nations commission whose task shall be to ensure that the limits included in the Disarmament Treaty shall be subject to revision, and, if experience of the first five years shows the Treaty needs improvement, we shall be in the happy position to set about making that improvement. When we have the work of the Preparatory Commission compTeted we hope, before many months, that there will be a disarmament conference representing the whole world.”