" LOWER TARIFFS AND LOWER ARMAMENTS."
What the purpose of the Eighth Assembly amounts to (for an Assembly does not achieve things, it only plans them) is lower tariffs and lower armaments. The lower tariffs are realities already. Both French and German speakers, for example, agreed that the Economic Conference had had a definite and valuable influence on the conclusion of the recent Franco-German commercial treaty—the first of such accords, said Dr. Stresemann, to be carried through between the two countries for sixty years. Lower armaments are not yet such a visible reality, though it is certain they would be higher than they are if no League of Nations existed. Here much is loped of the new endeavours the Preparatory Commission has been encouraged to make, while the many delegates who believe further guarantees of security are needed before nations will consent to reduce armies have their views fully met by the creation of a new committee, to sit concurrently with the Preparatory Commission and work out within the framework of that fertile document the Covenant (not, be it noted, the Protocol) plans for the multiplication and co- ordination of arbitration agreements and the development of regional security agreements like Locarno.
Fine resolves are only fine resolves till their results become visible, but this at least must be said of the Eighth Assembly,
that it saw pledges of great importance taken by men who, as the authorized spokesmen of their Governments, have the power to honour those pledges if they continue to have the will.—I am, Sir, &e., • Geneva, September 26th:
YOUR GENEVA CORRESPONDENT.
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