DISARMAMENT

Waihi Daily Telegraph, Volume XXVI, Issue 7907, 26 September 1929, Page 2

DISARMAMENT

BfIITtIN'S ATTITUDE CRITICISED V LORD CECIL ASTONISHED GENUINE DESIRE FOR PEACE (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, September' 24. Viscount Cecil expressed astonishment at the League Assembly at Geneva to-day at the suggestion that he was trying to diminish security. He said: “I am amazed that any member of this Assembly should think such a thing. I should be the first to oppose such a course. “I have only one thing in mind and that is peace. Peace is the • greatest security you can get. Peace can only be the reduction of armaments, and you cannot get reduction of armaments without limitation of war material.” He announced that Great Britain intended to ratify the convention on the private manufacture of arms and munitions. No country, he said, was anxious to pledge itself until it saw that other countries would do the same. It was possible, therefore, that Great Britain might ratify the convention with a reservation demanding the signatures of the other countries. On the broad question of disarmament, Lord Cecil said that he realised that the Assembly, for the time being, could do nothing directly in this matter. It had appointed a Preparatory Commission, and it was for that commission to take positive steps and to draft a convention. Critics of his resolution had attributed varying motives to it. Some thought that it was designed to postpone the work of disarmament, and others that it was intended to obstruct. Both charges were unjust and unfounded. He simply sought to emphasise. certain general principles which he believed to be of vast importance. Lord Cecil repeated the points in his resolution, namely, the application of-the same principles to reduction and limitation of personnel and material, whether land, sea or air, the limitation of the strength of forces either by number of by a period of training, or both, and the limitation of material.