ENDING OF WAR

Wairarapa Daily Times, 16 January 1932, Page 5

ENDING OF WAR

BRITAIN’S LEAD

CO-OPERATION WANTED

Press Association Electric Telegraph—Copyright RUGBY, Thursday.

The statement that Great Britain would welcome the completion of the London Naval Treaty by an agreement between France. Italy and herself was made by Captain R. A, Eden, Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, in an important speech at the Mansion House to-day. He added: “It is a source of regret to us that the hope has not yet been realised, and it would be a helpful sendoff to the Disarmament Conference were it able to record in its early stages the concurrence of the two largest naval ■Powers in Europe, after ourselves, in the terms of this latest limitation of naval armaments. ’ ’

Captain Eden was speaking at a meeting convened by the Lord Mayor of London on behalf of the League of Nations Union and attended by civic representatives from all parts of Britain to consider disarmament.

1-Ie said the British delegation could approach the conference with a clear conscience and in the knowledge that Britain, in all fields of armaments since the War, had striven continuously to give a lead in disarmament. “Deliberately, and because of our belief that excessive armaments are not an insurance of world security but a menace to it, we have urged all nations to the reduction of armaments by the most effective means in our power —by example,” he said. Captain Eden continued: “Almost alone among the great Powers, wo have not increased our expenditure on aimaments during the past five years. We have done even more than this, for our reductions since the Armistice lia\e been continuous, drastic, and clear foi all to sec.

“When our obligations to our own people are remembered, when our commitments solemnly undertaken in the eyes of the world are recalled, at once it will be perceived that we have taken risks —graverisks —that our contribution might be effective, striking, and patently sincere. No one will regretthese risks if they bring us the fruits wo seek.” . . The British Army, said Captain Eden was now little more than a police force in no respect larger than immediate Imperial duties require. The Navy had been successfully reduced, first voluntarily at tlie end of the war, and then by successive treaties. But air reductions had been the most drastic of all, for at the end of the war, with her Air Force second to none, Britain voluntarily had scrapped seveneighths of it. To-day, despite London’s vulnerability to air attacks, Britain ranked only fifth among the world’s air Powers. He hoped', the Disarmament Conference would remove that discrepancy. ” Britain could do no more alone, and other nations must do their share. When the Disarmament Conference ended he trusted that at least they would have a method whereby armaments might bo measured and checked, and that the hopes so often expressed would be translated into action. The British Government would enter the conference in no mean spirit, but sincerely anxious to contribute by suggestion and action to a real and progressive reduction because of the vast burden of international armaments which, to-day, clogged world progress.