DISARMAMENT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 26, 28 December 1932, Page 8

DISARMAMENT

LORD GREY’S TRIBUTE TO FRANCE.

Lord Grey of Fallodon, addressing a League of Nations meeting in Liverpool, on November 11, said since Inst Armistice Day the League had been passing through a trying time, and many of them felt depressed. He felt now more hopeful than be did. He would not say that they were not still in the dark, however, but he had a feeling that the dawn was not so far off ns a little time ago they feared it might be. He did not think that the difficulties about disarmament would long withstand the great pressure of public opinion that progress should be made.

He was more hopeful because of the French plan for disarmament. He considered that most important and a very great advance. We should not know tho details of the plan yet, and it might need modification or amendment or supplement, but it was n genuine and great attempt to remove one of the greatest obstacles in the way of disarmament —Germany’s demand for equality of status. The French plan did meet that demand for status. It was evidently based on the idea of transforming the forces that did exist on the Continent of Europe from possibly aggressive forces into purely defensive forces. Those two things were so important that he sincerely hoped that the French plan would not be rejected and that it would become a basis, for discussion, because it was a more valuable and practical contribution to the solution of the problem of disarmament than any scheme which had hitherto been proposed. EQUALITY OF STATUS.

In regard to equality of status for Germany, the first public pronouncement he read about the German demand was very alarming and gave the impression that German was ging to disregard the Treaty of Versailles and go her own way about armaments. That was a thing we could not have possibly agreed to. Whatever happened in disarmaments, it must be a conotniid—? armament, It must be a condition of the future that equality of status of Germany or anybody else was not reached by rearming those who were now partially disarmed, but by reducing armaments until equality of status was reached by reducing the level of armaments and not by increased competition in them.

The German Chancellor, so far as he understood him, did not propose any rearming of Germany, but saitl Germany would prefer to achieve equality of status by a reduction of armaments and not by an increase on their part ot armaments. What he contended was that the limitation that Germany accepted should also be the limitations which other countries accepted and one of the great recommendations of the French plan was that it did meet that demand tor equality of status, and this he was glad to see had been recognised by the German Chancellor himself. Every one felt that Germany could not permanently be in humiliation. llie French plan had done something to clear the difficulty iu the way ot progress of disarmament. FRENCH PACIFISM. There had been a great deal of impatience about the extent of the French . armaments, but we must make no mistake about this, that, whatever, French armaments might have been, the French had been a pacific people. The French had not wanted war, anu someone recently defined the French people as armed to the teeth and pacific to the core. (Laughter). They were promised a Franco-British and a Franco-American guarantee, and when those guarantees went it was not surprising France kept up armaments. This was always to be borne in mind in judging French armaments, but now her plan would dispose of that difficulty. We should welcome that plan and do all we could to recommend it to the other Powers as a great advance. In our foreign policy there were three things our Government should reiterate —that we stood by the Covenant of the League of Nations; that we stood for the Kellogg-Brinud Pact, and that we liefcl, not that treaties might not and should not be altered, but if altered it must be by consent, not bv unilateral actions of force, but through the machinery of the League. In an allusion to the coming World Economic Conference, Lord Grey isaid it would be intertile and achieve ! nothing unless there was political conI fidence, and political confidence depends upon the settlement of the disarmament question and growth in prestige and luduence of the Pact of Peace and the Covenant of the League of Nations.