Peace & Disarmament

Seldom or never have so many statesmen wrestled with the problems of Peace and Disarmament in so many places as last week.

Washington. President Herbert Hoover well knows that few U. S. citizens will agree to any program which would leave the country without sure defense. Therefore he postulated to the nation in a radio speech last week that he stands for "adequate preparedness ... as one of the assurances of peace."

Referring to the now almost complete Anglo-U. S. naval agreement (TIME, Sept. 23) the President said: "There are proposals which would preserve our national defense and yet would relieve the backs of those who toil from gigantic expenditures and the world from hate and fear which flows from rivalry in the building of warships." To define as narrowly as might be prudent his conception of what constitutes "adequate preparedness" he declared: "That preparedness must not exceed the barest necessity for defense or it becomes a threat of aggression against others and thus a cause of fear and animosity in the world."

London. It appeared certain last week that Britain and not the U. S. will call the Five Power Naval Conference scheduled for next January at which the tentative naval agreements thus far reached by President Hoover and British Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald will be laid before France, Italy and Japan. Tall, cheerful Scot MacDonald put in the week quietly preparing for the good-will visit to Washington which he will make next week to smooth the way for the Five Power Conference. With his apple-cheeked daughter Ishbel he motored out from London to Sandringham "by royal command" and reported to the King-Emperor the basis on which Britain and the U. S. propose to achieve naval parity and eventually a large measure of naval disarmament.

Parity in destroyers is to be struck at around 150,000 tons for each Great Power, and parity in submarines at roughly 88,000 tons. In the more ticklish category of cruisers the U. S. is asking 315,000 tons and Britain 339,000 but this too is supposed to represent "parity" because the U. S. cruiser fleet will have a larger proportion of heaviest 10,000-ton, 8-inch cruisers than the British.*

Tokyo. Japan's Naval Minister, suave Admiral Takeshi Takarabe, told correspondents in Tokyo with polite circumlocution that he considered the Anglo-U. S. figures for achieving parity somewhat too high. The policy of the Imperial Government at the Five Power Conference, he said, would be to urge slightly lower fleet tonnages for all concerned in all categories. Japan will ask to be allowed to maintain a cruiser fleet 70% as strong as that of either Britain or the U. S., will demand absolute parity with the major powers in submarines. Today under the famed 5-5-3 ratio of the Washington Conference Treaty limiting capital ships the proportionate strength of Japan in that class is of course but 60%.

Geneva. Sessions of the League of Nations Preparatory Disarmament Com mission in Geneva last week were enlivened and made acrimonious by Great Britain's famed Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, tire less apostle of Disarmament, winner of the 1924 Woodrow Wilson Peace Award (TIME, Dec 15, 1924).

Last Spring the French and their Continental allies put through with the con sent of the then Conservative British Government a resolution providing in effect that the Preparatory Disarmament Commission should not seek or even con sider ways of limiting either war mate rials held in peacetime readiness by a nation or the number of its trained re serves. Since the military might of France is chiefly based on the huge number of her annually conscripted reserves and the vast supplies of guns, shells and tanks always at their disposal, the pur pose of the French move was obvious. Last week Lord Cecil demanded, in the name of the new British Labor Government, that both war stocks and trained reserves should be put back on the list of "armaments" which the Preparatory Commission is seeking ways to reduce. Stressing particularly the urgency of limiting engines of warfare, Lord Cecil cried: "I consider machines rather than men the most vital factor in the world movement to end war. Nonlimitation of war materials is equivalent to non-disarmament!"

After days of furious debate on the Cecil resolution it was considered still too inflammatory to Latin passions to put to vote. To the rescue came. Greece's confident Nicholas Politis, practiced handy man at loosening League pinches. He drafted a compromise resolution which "... confidently hopes the preparatory Disarmament Commission will be able to resume the work interrupted at the last session with the view of framing a preliminary draft convention for the reduction and limitation of land, naval and air armaments as soon as possible."

Loosened of its pinch, the League assembly unanimously voted the Politis resolution.

Paris. Throughout the week the French Government appeared to grow steadily more apprehensive lest the U. S. and Britain were drawing too closely into disarmament cahoots. Fear that Italy and France may be brusquely dictated to by Britain and the U. S. at the Five Power Naval Conference was increasingly manifest in the Paris press. Said the Journal des Debats:

"We have never challenged either British or American naval power and we are willing to accept with good grace that there should be two naval powers which share hegemony ... on a basis of parity. But what interests us is that we should not have to pay the costs of the combination. That is to say that we should not have to pay for it with the loss of our independence.

"There are three things which we cannot renounce. First, we wish to keep our submarine fleet which we believe is strictly necessary for the defense of our shores and our colonial empire. Second, we must assure the protection of our colonial routes, otherwise our colonial empire will disappear. Third, we cannot forget that our needs must be calculated after account has been taken of the fact that France has coasts in two widely separated seas.

"In consequence we cannot subscribe to naval parity with any other European Continental power such as would result in our Mediterranean fleet being in a position of inferiority in that sea.

"Without assurances that on these three vital points our program will be respected we cannot appear at the naval conference."

* U.S.: 21 eight-inch gun cruisers plus 15 six-inch gun cruisers making 36 cruisers in all. Britain: 15 eight-inches plus 35 six-inches or 50 cruisers in all.