News of the Week T HE French Disarmament plan, so far
as its purport has been disclosed, is analysed by Lord Cecil on a later page, and more broadly discussed in a leading article. A closer examination will only be practicable when the text of the plan itself is published. The most notable fact about it in some ways is that though it clearly involves revision of a highly important section of the Treaty of Versailles, M. Herriot, after expounding it to the Chamber was given an overwhelming vote of confidence. Mean- while our own Cabinet has been devoting lengthy sittings to the disarmament problem, and it is understood that a new British plan is in preparation. To advance it as in any way a competitor of the French plan would be a profound ._mistake, but the French proposals so far dis- closed say little or nothing about naval or aerial reductions or the abolition of aggressive weapons. The British Government committed itself at Geneva in July to what is vaguely termed qualitative disarmament, but the proposals it put forward for the abolition of certain types of weapons fell hopelessly short of anything that could be described as equality in relation to the prohibitions imposed on Germany. There is consequently ample room for improving on them now. The capital ship question is peculiarly urgent, for the decision of the French to lay down the battle cruiser ' Dunkerque ' means that a new race is on the point of beginning in vessels of a size (28,000 tons) our own Cabinet approves of for replacements of the present 35,000 ton ships. Unless that competition is stifled forthwith it will be disastrous on both economic and psychological grounds: Unfortunately there:is no sign that the Cabinet has- in contemplation- any measures to -prevent it.
