News of the Week
SM JOHN SIMON'S declaration of policy at Geneva will be made after these pages are in print. All therefore that can be said of it here is that, if it follows the lines indicated by Mr. Baldwin in the House last week, and provides for the total abolition of military aviation, it will be a contribution this country will enhance its credit by making. Also Sir John will have tol declare himself more or less definitely regarding the French plan, a task in which his path has been made considerably mOre difficult by the German newspapers' regimented denunciation of the French proposals. There has always been one danger about the support rightly given in this country to the German claim for equality— that the Germans, seeing their reasonable claims so strongly sustained, should take that as ground for putting forward others much less reasonable. The complaint that the 'French Government is seeking to erect a European political system for the maintenance of the status quo deserves no support. Europe badly needs a political system, and as for the status quo, while in some respects it needs changing, it is imperative that no attempt be made to change it by war. There are many features in the French plan that need revision, but France " under M. Herriot has moved astonishingly far, and it would better become Germany to recognize that than to start making further stipulations about her return to the Disarmament Conference.
