Two Speeches

The Mayor of Badenvillier sat on a platform last week, a tricolor sash wrapped round his stomach. Before him on a velvet cushion lay the cross of the Legion of Honor, presented to the commune of Badenvillier by the French government. Donor of the cross, chief orator at Badenvillier's celebration was chunky, heavy mustached Paul Painleve, French Minister of War. Said he :

"There are critics abroad who say that France is blocking land disarmament. Yet no country has consented to disarmament as fully as France when she decided to reduce her period of compulsory military service from three years to a year."

Two days later in a message to the Chamber of Deputies' Finance Committee M. Painleve explained that plans to fortify France's northern and eastern frontiers will take five more years to complete, cost a hundred million dollars. Wrote he:

"Owing to the financial effort demanded by the restoration of France's devastated regions, the general plan for a defensive system could not be formulated until two years ago. The program involves the construction of roads, railways, underground telegraph systems, and the stocking of frontier posts with engineering and artillery equipment. "Not only are old forts being brought up to date, but new works are to be constructed as close as possible to the frontier . . . especially in the newly recovered territory. The most important features of the plan will be executed within 18 months. "I wish to take this opportunity to reassure Deputy Serat concerning researches and experiments which the government is making with respect to chemical and other advanced methods of warfare. They are being actively pressed by French scientists." In Nottingham, England, last week wiry Welshman David Lloyd George, suffering from a bad cold, said the MacDonald doings were "only a beginning" and bitterly flayed "huge war equipment." "In view of the Versailles Treaty," said he, between sniffs, "and the covenant of the League of Nations, this equipment is a farce, a discredit and a dishonor as well as a menace. Is a nation going to refer its vital issues to arbitration when it has millions of men and 50,000 guns to put against a nation with 166,000 men and no guns? So long as these instruments of war exist there can be no real peace."