NEWS OF THE WEEK
THE most notable comment on the latest develop- ments in international affairs is the statement, unofficial and quite possibly unauthentic, that President Roosevelt, as a result of the Japanese declarations, is proposing to make use of the power Congress has given him under the Vinson Bill to push ahead with an extensive programme of naval construction. That would be the more significant since no more than about ten days ago Mr. Roosevelt was explaining that the fact that money had been voted for naval expansion did not mean that naval expansion would necessarily be carried out, and that he personally hoped to see a naval conference held in 1935, and further reductions agreed on. The prospect of that has becOme increasingly remote, and in the meantime no visible progress is being made with any disarmament negotiations in Europe. Signor Suvich's talks with Sir John Simon were no doubt useful, but there is no indica- tion that they led anywhere, unless indeed the Foreign ' Secretary succeeded in convincing his Italian colleague that the Italian plan of general limitation on the basis of the status quo is impracticable,. because it would involve enumerating in detail the existing armaments of every country. The British proposals, which ban certain cate- gories of weapons altogether—qualitative disarmament at opposed to quantitative—are certainly more capable of ' execution. As for Geneva, there now seems likely to be no disarmament activity there till the end of May.
