Disarmament Postponed
Signer Vittorio Scialoja (of Italy), President of the Council of the League of Nations, officially announced late in the week that the preliminary League disarmament conference scheduled to meet at Geneva on Feb. 15, 1926 (TIME, Dec. 21), has been postponed to an indefinite date which will be set by the Council when it assembles next month.
Between the lines of Signor Scialoja's bland pronouncement, diplomats read the disheartening truth that the world is not yet ready to disarm. For the past fortnight the heads of many governments have been scurrying about looking for a "formula" under which postponement could be effected without branding any nation as unwilling to disarm. France and England have been especially anxious not to incur this disagreeable onus of responsibility--hence the hasty and secret consultation among Premier Briand, Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain, and Sir Eric Drummond, the ever tactful Secretary General to the League of Nations (TIME, Feb. 8, FRANCE).
The Formula. Eventually it was decided that Premier Briand should request Sir Eric to take steps for postponement in the name of France, Italy, Japan, Czechoslovakia and Uruguay--thus mixing and muddling well all question of responsibility. Only the most negligible opposition was encountered to this proposal, although President Coolidge, Premier Baldwin, Premier Briand and many another expressed their pious dissatisfaction over the postponement.
The Real Reasons. Only the most unimaginative correspondents failed to turn up at least a baker's dozen of "paramount considerations" which necessitated the postponement. Some of the most significant:
1) Because the League Secretariat has not been given time enough in which to assemble the necessary research material and arrange the indispensable routine preliminaries.
2) Because Russia obstinately refuses to attend a conference on Swiss soil (TIME, Feb. l),with the deliberate intention of thwarting the League, which of course maintains its large and immovable permanent equipment at Geneva.* 3) Because France and England do not want Germany to sit in at such a conference until she is within the League and has fully complied with the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles.
4) Because France and England fear that if Germany came to the conference she might present statistics to show that France and England are allegedly over armed and have been acting high-handedly in the Rhineland.
5) Because France is afraid that England and the U. S. would try to restrict the conference to considering only land armaments, forcing France to reduce hers, and then hold another naval conference at Washington, where they could apportion the fleets of the world to suit themselves.
6) Because Britain is afraid that France would renew her original intention (TIME, Dec. 21) of trying to make the conference consider every possible form of "invisible armament" (peacetime industries capable of being turned to war purposes, etc.) and so make the scope of the conference so broad that it would wallow hopelessly amid a maze of insoluble questions.
* Switzerland, being strongly anti-Communistic, has refused to recognize the present Russia regime; and the Soviet Government has retaliated by harping on the murder of certain Soviet representatives (notably one Vaslav Vorovsky) in Switzerland, and asserting that Soviet delegates to a League conference would be in danger of their lives.