Public opinion is stirring in Europe, but I received the
impression that we may have to wait for 1929 to see the first successful Disarmament Conference. Very likely it will conclude an unambitious Limitation Treaty, rendering com- petition difficult. That, I think, will be the first step. The next move will be the elimination of the so-called experts from the councils of statesmen. Only the Press, and the will to peace that it represents, can succeed in relegating all these admirals and generals to the clubs where they belong. But until they retire there, to lament the passing of the heroic age, we can have no peace. While they discuss tonnages and calibres, the tax-payer groans. One day he will hit back, shattering the edifice of nonsense that has been built up round the theory that security rests on armed force in the modern world. It is useless to tell the man in the street to-day that we are arming purely for defence. He remembers what happened before—many of us carry the marks on our bodies. We know that the big guns of Europe are meant to kill with an intensity and an indiscrimination never before known in history. Are we who fought in the last War, then, to see our children suffer in the same Way *?
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