BRITISH ARMAMENTS.

Wairarapa Age, 29 July 1936, Page 5

BRITISH ARMAMENTS.

WILL NEVER BE USED IN WAR OF AGGRESSION. OPPORTUNITY FOB LIMITATION THAT MAY ARISE. MR. ANTHONY EDEN’S HOPE. RUGBY, July 27. Concluding his foreign affairs speech in the House of Commons, the Foreign Secretary, Mr Anthony Eden, twitted the Opposition with inconsistencies which he found in its attitude. Mr. Eden said that the armaments for which they were asking would never be used for a purpose inconsistent with the League Covenant or the Pact of Paris. They might, if occasion arose, be used in self-defence. They might be used in coming to the help of a victim of aggression. But they would never be used in a war of aggression. The Minister added that it would clearly remain the duty of the Government to seize any opportunity for limitation of armaments. It was possible that an opportunity might come sooner than some people thought, for the pressure on the economies of nations was extremely severe and that might come to be appreciated even in many quarters where it would be ridiculed at the present time. They would not, however, in the present troubled state of the world aid the cause of disarmament by a blank refusal to take note of events.

They lived in a Europe, concluded Mr. Eden, which was suffering from an almost total eclipse of freedom-loving nations—a Europe where therq was a tendency for extremes tb rule, Extremes with which no section in that House could feel sympathy. Their libertiea, which they meant to- maintain, carried with them responsibilities. Democracies must show unity if -they were to survive and hand on to later generations the liberties of which they were proud. MANDATES & MATERIALS. Towards the close of his speech, the Foreign Secretary dealt in rapid succession with a number of subjects, including Danzig, mandates, raw materials, disarmament, and reform of the League. On the last point he declined to define the Government's attitude while consultations were still going qn. Speaking of transference of mandated -territories, Mr. Eden declared that any question of transfer would inevitably raise grave difficulties, moral, political, and legal, for which his Majesty’s Government must frankly say it had been unable to find any solution. His Majesty’s Government therefore hoped, with so many other international questions still unsolved, that' there would in no quarter be a desire at this time to introduce a further cause of differences between nations. Mr. Eden emphasised the distinction between the question of transfer and the question whether arrangements were necessary or desirable for giving all countries freer access to raw materials produced in mandated territories or in colonies. The Government was fully prepared to discuss the latter question at some international conference under the League of Nations, and an approach might well be made in its view at the forthcoming Assembly meeting.— (British Official Wireless).