THE ARMAMENTS INDUSTRY
The private manufacture of arms is a subject on which a good many vague charges are bandied and very little reliable information is obtainable. Cases are no doubt on record in which one Government has been definitely instigated to give orders for weapons hy reports, circulated by the purveyors of weapons, that another Government has lodged orders already. Connexions between armament firms and the Press do exist ; witness the association of the Temps and the Debats in France with-the Comite des Forges. Such firms in different countries do interlock—Skoda and Schneider.. Creusot, for example. The bribing of Government officials by firms anxious for orders is by no means unknown. The Union -of Democratic Control has collected all the facts it could unearth in a pamphlet called The Secret International (U.D.C., (Id.) which should appeal to both advocates and opponents of the abolition of the private manufacture- of arms—to the former because it adds a stock of concrete instances to their armoury, to the latter because the stock on the whole more exiguous than (from their point of view) might be feared. There is not much proved against British firms. except that they have prospered, and they_are not even doing that now. But one or two ugly charges of bribery are quoted against them on the authority of an English paper in Japan. There-is nothing-else that- quite co fers the ground of this pamphlet and from any point of view it deserves attention.
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