General Smuts said that he had high hopes of genuine
naval reductions, but that military and aerial disarma- ment would be very difficult subjects. Of these two, aerial disarmament was the more urgent, as aerial warfare was a much more serious danger to civilization. It meant ruthless destruction, not of armed forces but of civilian populations behind the lines. Peace must be dynamic. It must not be a static thing holding people down to fixed conditions which might have become intol- erable. As regards the outlawing of war which, after• all, even the Kellogg Pact and the Covenant could not wholly ensure, the difficulty was that the League could not decide how to deal with a disturber of the peace without agreement with the United States. Mr. Hoover had objected to the League's plan of suppressing a disturber and wished to rely entirely upon public opinion. He himself thought that there might be a middle way.
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