THE TRAFFIC IN ARMS

Waikato Times, Volume 111, Issue 18641, 20 May 1932, Page 6

THE TRAFFIC IN ARMS

It is well known that Britain has recently been granting licences for the export of arms from her shores. Natural uneasiness will not be relieved on learning, from answers to recent questions in the House of Commons, that a strict impartiality is preserved —that if Japan is allowed to purchase the sinews of war from her so equally is China. Yet if such exports are permitted in peacetime there seems no logical reason for forbidding them in iime of war. Also, of course, the trouble in the Far East has never been officially declared a “war.” To ban the export of arms would relieve some troubled consciences, but it would not prevent the belligerents from obtaining them elsewhere. The chief call should be for a stringent International control of the arms traffic. The League Convention of 1925, which provided for a strict system of licensing and registration, lias never been put into force. Some countries refused to ratify it. Others, Including Britain, ratified, but refused to apply it until others did the same. In 1930, Mr Henderson proposed that a conference should be called to fix a date for its general adoption. This plan, however, was not carried through. The subject was being considered by the Special Commission when last summer the League Council decided that further discussion should he postponed until the Disarmament Conference had come to a decision on the question of publicity. Such a decision must certainly be arrived at if these exports are to bo controlled. It is obvious that unless the nations are prepared to be perfectly open regarding their armaments, any system of licensing must break down. It is equally obvious that they will have io be more candid than they are at present before they can claim to have fulfilled the provisions of the Covenant which binds them “to interchange full and frank information as to the scale of their armaments.” We must hope that in this matter -some progress will be made at Geneva. No one can maintain [hat arms are ordinary merchandise. Their manufacture and exchange must clearly be controlled in the interests of tho common good.