The LeagUe of Nations

Disarmament—The Next Step ?

THE GENESIS OF THE ANGLO-FRENCH COMPROMISE.

- Now that Sir Austen Chamberlain hasi returned to duty and the immediate echoes of the controversy regarding the -Anglo-French Compromise have died down, the question still presents itself, What is to be the next step in the direction of disarmament ?

But before facing the question where are we to go, it may be well to ask first, Where precisely do we stand ? That is by no means easy to say. The Anglo-French Compromise as such is dead. There can be no reasonable doubts about that, and there will be no regrets at its demise. Technically, of course, the Compromise was a development of the last effective meeting of the League of Nations Preparatory Commission in April, 1927, for the Three Power Conference at Geneva a few months later had no connexion with the League, though obviously the points of view adopted there must be taken into full account in shaping future plans in the field of naval reduction under the aegis of the League. Indeed, what fatally vitiated the Anglo-French proposals was that they showed so flagrant a disregard for certain features in the policy of the United States as expressed at the Three Power Conference.

THE PREPARATORY COMMISSION : DATE OF MEETING.

The position, therefore, is that no visible progress has been

achieved since Preparatory Commission adjourned in April of last year. And the next step in the League pro- gramme must be another meeting of that Commission. But apparently we are not any nearer to that than when the matter was discussed at the Ninth Assembly of the League in September. It will be remembered that, broadly speaking, three different attitudes were taken by the principal Powers of Europe. Germany was in favour of fixing a date both for the Preparatory Commission and for the full International Conference ; France was for convoking the Preparatory Com- mission and leaving the date of the Conference to be arranged in the light of the Commission's success or failure ; while Great Britain was in favour of saying nothing about the date of either Commission or Conference, on the ground that if the former met and again found itself powerless to reach agreement because the principal Naval Powers had not composed their differences in advance, the result would be worse than merely negative, for the League itself would be seriously discredited.

Much might be said in regard to these varying views, but the fact remains that the Assembly ultimately decided that the Commission should be convened by its Chairman, M. Loudon, the Dutch Minister in Paris, as soon as the Naval Powers had reached some agreement, or in any case not later than the beginning of 1929.

Whatever chronological interpretation may be set on the phrase " the beginning of 1929," it is clear that a meeting of the Commission in the near future is inevitable. It may or may not be postponed till Mr. Hoover has taken office in the United States. If it is so postponed it is likely to take place on the eve of a General Election in this country : but it is obvious that there must be some limit to the subordination of international engagements to national conveniences. What matters, however, is not so much when the Commission meets, but what it is to do when its members have actually assembled. How far has the naval situation been modified since the failure to reach agreement in 1927 or, for that matter, since the Anglo-French Compromise was given its quietus by the American Note of September 1928?

RECENT PRONOUNCEMENTS BY STATESMEN.

So far as international agreements go, there is no progress at all to be recorded, but certain declarations on both sides of the Atlantic would appear to suggest that given reasonable good will and, not less, good sense, and assuming that poli- ticians have a policy and are prepared to act on their professed assumption that the contingency of a war between Great Britain and the United States can be left out of reckoning, there is no reason why the League's Commission should not make some progress towards a definite agreement on naval matters-

The outstanding feature of the American Not was its moderation. It is quite true that the Bill providing for the construction of fifteen 10,000 on cruisers will almost certainly get, through Congress. Iisychologically it may prove all to the good that this should happen and opinion in this country show itself completely undisturbed thereby, The cruisers will take long to build, and if some limitation agreement is reached affecting their existence within the next twelve months there will be plenty of time to modify the programme. The fundamental fact is that there is obvious scope for such agreement on the basis of the last paragraph of the American Note, suggesting a plan of limitation of tonnage by classes together with provision for some variation in the distribution of tonnage within those classes, subject always (apparently) to the maintenance of an agreed total tonnage for the whole fleet. That is a constructive proposal which bears a close resemblance to the plan put forward by the French at the meeting of the Preparatory Commission in April, 1927, and there would appear to be no obvious reason why it should not commend itself to the British Government.

But the American proposal is only one of the factors as the case presents itself to-day. The declaration made by the Prime Minister at the Albert Hall on October 26th, to the effect that we have no intention of building in competition with the United States, is of the first importance, provided, of course, that it means what any ordinary man would take it to mean. Hairs can no doubt be split over individual words in Mr. Baldwin's statement. It may be said that we have no present intention to build in competition but that we reserve the right to change our minds on the subject. It is not to be believed that that equivocation was ever in Mr. Baldwin's thought. If he means, as he must be assumed to mean, that our policy at future discussions on naval limitation will be at no point influenced by any fear lest America should be left with a more powerful fleet than ours, then most of the difficul- ties that have so far impeded agreement will be removed.

Hitherto the experts have been given free rein to work on the basis of the " unthinkable," i.e., an Anglo-American war. If that obstacle to an accord is now removed by the Prime Minister's declaration, the situation becomes radically

different. - A POSSIBLE BASIS OF AGREEMENT.

What the actual basis of agreement should be is a matter of technical detail hardly suitable for discussion here. Mr. Coolidge is reported to have indicated that in his view progress could be achieved on the basis of a plan vaguely outlined by Lord Cecil in the recent debate in the House of Lords, the essential features of which were complete equality, ton for ton; and gun for gun, between the two navies, but with some reasonable freedom for the distribution of tonnage and gun. power to meet each nation's requirements. If the experience of the Three Power Conference is any criterion; Japan would readily accept her appointed figures under the old 5:5:3 ratio extended from capital ships to other types, and the resemblance between the proposal in the American Note and that put forward by the French in 1927 is so close that no difficulties should arise in bringing France into a limitation scheme, while Italy has more than once declared that so long as she stands on an equality with France she does not mind how low the naval figures are.

The outlook, in short, should not on technical grounds be considered discouraging. But the actual date of the next meeting of the Preparatory Commission is in itself an impor- tant and delicate question. It cannot be postponed inde- finitely, and there is much to be said for the argument that in the situation into which things have drifted open discussion is likely now to achieve better results than further private conversations. One meeting to break new ground and perhaps set a sub-committee working, with another meeting a few months later to reach 'definite conclusions, might be the best procedure. But as Lord Lee of Fareham so impres- sively demonstrated last week, reccignition of national statesmanship and psychologies must play a far larger part in future discussions than it - has -hi the past twelve months.

H. WILSON RABBIS.