An Arms Control Convention The Arms Control ConventiOn laid before
the Disarma- ment Conference on Tuesday deserves cordial support from every quarter, and it is satisfactory that Mr. Eden was able to assure the American delegate of the fullest British co-operation. As Mr. Hugh Wilson in introducing his draft convention said, it will, if it does nothing else. shed light into murky corners. In view of the disclosures before the American Senate's Commission of Investiga- tion into the arms traffic nothing is more needed than such salutary illumination. The Convention provides not for the total abolition of private manufacture— though President Roosevelt is rumoured to have set his mind on that so far as the United States is concerned— but for the same kind of strict Government supervision and licensing, the same full communication of informa- tion to a central body at Geneva, and the same publicity, as is already in operation in connexion with the traffic in dangerous drugs. The adoption of such a Convention —and it is to be hoped that in spite of the non-committal attitude of Italy and one or two other States, this Con- vention will be rapidly and unanimously adopted— will remove many at any rate of the admitted evils attendant on the private manufacture and the export of arms, and will in no way prejudice possible proposals for the complete abolition of private manufacture.
