Expanding Armaments In spite of all the pacific protestations in
the House of Common's last Monday it is hard to reject appre- hensions about a race in armaments when the daily papers of the same and subsequent days are full of such items of news as Germany's intention to provide herself with a 'military air force open and undisguised, and France's intention to increase her term of military service from one year to two, and to lay down a second 35,000-ton battleship. There are, no doubt, mitigating factors. Germany was promised equality of rights more than . two years ago, and is at present being invited to join in an Air Pact for mutual defence on terms which postulate her command of a force of substantial strength. France, on her side, aims not at increasing her military strength, but at preventing it from, dropping to an alarmingly low level owing to the conscripts now due for service being those of the low-birth-rate years of the War. But wherever we are moving it is certainly not towards disarmament. The movement is always upwards and the increases in our own estimates have encouraged the militarist and discouraged the pacific elements in France. The increases can be defended, but unless they are accompanied by redoubled efforts on the Govern- ment's part to achieve both disarmament and security agreements they will inevitably be taken as ground for other increases elsewhere—and those in their turn will compel the further inflation of our estimates next year.
