News of the Week
THE deadlock, created by Germany at the Disarmament Conference continues, and the Conference has relapsed once more into private con- versations in the hope of finding some issue. The situation is all too plain. Germany is deliberately persisting in proposals which, if adopted, would wreck the British plan, which is the only concrete proposal, now before. the Conference. The result of that would be the breakdown of the Conference, for the whole world is weary. of futile attempts to gloss over differences and pretend agreement where • no agreement in fact exists.
Such a development would, of course, provoke the gravest _ , apprehension, It would 'mean, to begin with, that the Economic 'Conference was not worth holding. In all his recent- announcements President Roosevelt has rightly placed the settlement of the disarmament question first,. and Mr. MacDonald has done very much the same. Meanwhile no doubt Germany would re-arm, or at the least maintain the obviously illegal armed formations which she supports in violation of the Treaty of Versailles today. That would inevitably be brought before the League, which would be confronted with an issue which it could not conceivably evade, but which could only be squarely faced at the cost of the most pro- foundly serious decisions. It is well that everyone concerned, not least Germany herself, should realize beyond any possibility of misconception the immense gravity of the developments to which the present German attitude at Geneva mist infallibly lead.
