Wanganui Chronicle. "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA.” MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 1924. THE WORLD’S ARMAMENTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 18917, 21 January 1924, Page 4

Wanganui Chronicle. "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA.” MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 1924. THE WORLD’S ARMAMENTS

In some quarters there is an impression that the Washington Conference broke up 'the ruinous armament rivalry between the Great Powers and opened an era of pacific development. The Washington Conference undoubtedly achieved a good defi.l. But it was barren of results so far as submarine, aerial, and chemical methods of warfare are concerned, and it left the way open for nations, under the spur of fear or suspicion, to build up enormous armaments. Quite recently we had the declaration of a responsible naval expert that larger sums are being spent to-day in preparation for further warfare than at any previous epoch in history, and in face of the fact that every nation concerned is groaning under almost unbearable burdens of taxation. Impressed by the significance of this statement a contemporary writer has considered it worth while to examine the statistics relative to the land forces of the world, and as a result he was staggered to find that during the year just ended the standing armies of Europe alone increased by 1,303,921 soldiers, as compared with pre-war figures. It must not be concluded from this that the Great Powers in Europe are feverishly augmenting their armies with a view to some imminent military shock. The Great Powers are not increasing their land forces at all. Some of them are reducing them. The rapid growth of armed soldiers in Europe—a growth aptly described by Marshal Sir Henry Wilson as 11 terrifying’’—is due entirely to the formation of new States and the consequent development of their local defences. To take just one example, there is the new and ambitious republic of Czechoslovakia, which has just entered into an alliance with France. When this nascent State was governed from Vienna in the pre-war days of the Austro-Hungarian glory, its quota to the national army was only 73,000 men. But now, as a separate Power of some fame in the European system, it feels obliged to maintain a standing force of over 150,000 soldiers. Similar increases have taken place in other new countries, so that, while the standing armies of the three great European Powers, Great Britain, France, and Italy, to-day number 1,000,000, those of the remaining smaller European States actually total 3,000,000. It is not only on land that armaments are ominously growing. Capital warships are severely restricted by the Washington pacts, but that does not prevent fear-pressed nations from building numerous light cruisers with 8-inch guns and sea-going submarines. In a recent number of the Fortnightly Reveiw, that authority on naval matters, Mr Archibald Hurd, illustrated how the building of warships up to the 10,000-ton limit is becoming a new form of armament rivalry amongst some of the nations, and is seriously straining the finances of the countries in question. Possibly a study of the balance-sheets of the world’s leading nations to-day would hasten the popular demand for further concerted action along disarmament lines. Japan’s destructive earthquake leaves that Eastern nation with little financial reserve available for costly armaments, and her sea, land, and air forces will probably have to be cut down to a minimum for some time to come. France also is financially troubled in spite of her ability to lend some large sums to her new Czechoslovakian ally, sums which, of course, will be spent almost entirely in France itself. Great Britain is the most heavily taxed nation in the world, while the United States has lately indicated a desire to see her armament bill further reduced. Only the other day the United States Congress, discussing its Naval Appropriation Act of 1923-24, officially asked the President to enter

into negotiations with other Great Powers to limit the building of all types of surface and sub-surface warcraft of 10,000 tons standard displacement or less. An Australian contemporary regards the conditions prevailing throughout the world as sufficiently ominous to raise the question as to whether the time is not ripe for another and more searching world conference for gradual disarmament, and it is more than likely that most of the Great Powers, heavily burdened and sorely perplexed as they are to-day, would welcome such negotiations.