THE TRAFFIC IN ARMS
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—News of quick work comes from Geneva, where a committee of the Disarmament Conference has already adopted a really businesslike draft convention for controlling the arms traffic. It is based on the recent Uriited States proposals for a system of national licences for manufacture. import and export of arms, checked by an international authority and speedily published in full. It has now been sent to the various Governments.
In face of this determined attempt to solve a key problem, what are we to make of the recent statement, by two British Cabinet Ministers, that the Conference is dead and done with ? That statement is even more sinister than the announcements of armament increases which it accom- panied. And it simply is not true.
Was the wish father to the thought ? SuspiCion is all too natural if one remembers how our Government protected private armament firms in this country by giving a misleading answer to a League questionnaire ; opposed limitation of expenditure on arms, giving as excuses certain technical difficulties already solved by a committee of the Conference ; and obstructed the widely accepted proposals for inter-. nationalizing civil aviation and abolishing air forces, telling us that it was other countries that did so.
If the British Government are, after all, in good faith about disarmament and wish to show it, they must, among other things, adopt the new convention for controlling the arms traffic, without reservation, and without delay.—I
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