NEWS OF THE WEEK
THE Bureau of the Disarmament Conference resumes its sittings at Geneva next Tuesday, but what it can do when the meeting opens no one knows. Con- versations between. the Powers are still continuing. France has not yet given her official reply to the British enquiry as to what she really wants in the way of guaran- tees, and when the answer does come the Cabinet in this country will have to consider it. There is little prospect, therefore, that the British member of the Bureau will have any clear instructions to guide him. France, unfortunately, is still so preoccupied with her internal difficulties that disarmament has taken a second place, or fallen back into the hands of the technicians, which is worse. Mr. Henderson, as President of the Disarmament Conference, is in a serious dilemma. If he calls the .Bureau, as he has done, he is faced with the prospect of delegates meeting with blank faces and a general inability to take any resolutions at all ; if he does not the conversations between individual Powers may drag on for ever. The one hope, and it is singularly slender, is that the French reply to Great Britain may suggest some possible basis of agreement between the two countries, enabling them to frame joint amendments to the British Draft Convention, whose revision is the real business of the Geneva meeting.
