Disarmament Debate

The world press partly discovered and partly created a new hero last week. His very stature is heroic--six feet six--and his broad shoulders support a massive head crowned impressively with snowy hair. As the representative of the British Empire, he strode into the Glass Room of the League of Nations, at Geneva, and delivered a speech which was soon compared to the great orations of Cicero. . . .

The maker of this flattering comparison was the U. S. Ambassador to Belgium, suave Hugh Simons Gibson, who represented the U. S. before the League. The new hero, the orator who was discovered to resemble Cicero, is Baron Cushendun, who last fall replaced Viscount Cecil of Chelwood at Geneva.

Last week everyone forgot that less than six months ago Lord Cushendun was only Rt. Hon. Ronald F. M'Neill, Financial Secretary to the Treasury. He loomed suddenly as a champion of Western Europe against Soviet Russia. The occasion for his Ciceronian oration was the most important meeting thus far held by an august body whose title runs to 22 words: The Preparatory Commission for the Disarmament Conference, being a Commission to prepare for a Conference on the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments (TIME, May 24, 1926 et seq.).

The Commission had assembled amid acute embarrassment. It found itself forced to consider, at last, the breath-taking proposal for "immediate and complete disarmament ... of all nations" which was challengingly submitted to the League, some months ago, by Soviet Russia (TIME, Dec. 12).

To ignore Utopia, thus offered on a platter, was impossible last week. Already resolutions endorsing the Soviet proposal had poured in from 124 prominent societies and political organizations in 13 countries. The Soviet Government had neatly placed the Commission in the difficult position of having to explain to the world why it could not favor "immediate and complete disarmament."

Further to harass the Commission, there was present in Geneva the author of the Russian project, Comrade Maxim Maximovitch Litvinov, a round-faced, round-bodied but keen-witted little man who is Soviet Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs. Bustling straight to the point, he stood up before the Commission and charged that, although the League Assembly & Council have considered the problems of disarmament on 38 separate occasions, and although its deliberations have been continued by 14 committees during more than 120 series of sittings, still the fact remains --said Comrade Litvinov--that "not a single real step had been taken [by the League] toward realization of disarmament."

Since the League road is thus proving so infinitely long, why not take the Soviet short cut? Solemnly Comrade Litvinov concluded: "The Soviet Government declares it is ready to abolish all military forces in accordance with its draft convention as soon as a similar decision is passed and simultaneously carried out by other States. The Soviet Government asks the other Governments represented here if they also are ready."

Faced by this project for speedy disarmament, could League slow-pokers retort successfully to the plausible if specious Soviet plan? Could they discredit it, tear it to tatters, and at the same time justify before public opinion the League's slow, plodding ways? Such a task required _a Cicero -- or, as Anglo-Saxons said, later in the week -- a Cushendun.

The hero, Baron Cushendun, rose and towered six feet six over the wide horse shoe table in the League Glass Room. With biting innuendo and battering logic for more than an hour he attacked the Soviet draft convention article by article, and finally in principle.

Some Cushendunings:

"There are two kinds of war. . . . There are international and civil wars, and of these the civil is the more horrible. ... It is a fair question to ask whether the Soviet Government sets its face against civil war as resolutely as against international war. . . . For years past the whole basis for the Soviet world policy has been to produce armed insurrection amounting to civil war in every country where they can exercise influence. . . .

"The Soviet's purpose here is not really to give us genuine assistance. . . . There is an ulterior motive . . . sabotage of the League by the Soviet Government. . . .

"I ask you to look at this draft convention. From the first word to the last there is no mention or allusion to the League of Nations. . . . [This shows a] fixed purpose of boycotting the League and all its works. . . . Article 63 [of the Soviet draft convention] declares that five copies should be deposited in some capital of some country of five continents. This shows imagination, but it is unnecessary to insult the League in this way and has no bearing on general disarmament. Copies can be sent to Geneva as well as to Timbuctoo."

In a scathing conclusion Baron Cushendun remarked that although "some of the Soviet suggestions would make for a better and brighter world . . . don't let us make the mistake of imagining we can reach the goal more quickly ... by taking wild leaps . . . instead of setting to work with patience and perseverance. . . ."

The rebuttal to Baron Cushendun soon made by Comrade Litvinov was phrased almost exclusively for home consumption. For example he defended the Soviet Government against charges of bad faith by declaring that it had championed disarmament as far back as the Genoa Conference of 1922.

Perhaps the most important development of the debate last week, was the close lining up of the U. S. with Great Britain in opposition to Soviet Russia. Thus U. S. Representative Hugh Simons Gibson followed Lord Cushendun with a speech in which he went even further toward condemning the Soviet proposal and roundly advised that the Commission waste no more time upon it. Meanwhile the German and Turkish representatives had taken the stand that they approved the Soviet proposal "in principle"; but all the Latin nations showed themselves unalterably opposed. As a result, the Commission prepared to put the. Soviet draft convention again into storage by delaying any further consideration which may be accorded it to a future session.

The Soviet delegation, although now definitely put out of Court, rallied by presenting a new proposal. This envisioned not "complete disarmament" but the slashing of the armaments of major powers in half and proportionate scaling down of minor nation armaments. When the Commission moved to delay consideration of this second plan, the new Soviet proposal was roundly championed by the representative of Germany, Count Johann von Bernstorff, famed pre-war German Ambassador to the U. S. Said he: "For the last two years ... the [League] delegates have said it was absolutely impossible to disarm without Russia present, but now, when the Soviet is here, its presence is used as an excuse for doing nothing."

Such support from a Great Power for Comrade Litvinov made certain that he would be able to return in some sort of triumph to Moscow and pose there as having "exposed" the determination of a majority of the League powers not to disarm.

Most fervent in expressing this confident Russian view, last week, was Ivy Litvinov, the irrepressible British wife of Comrade Maxim Maximovitch Litvinov. Although this lady claims that she is the niece of a former Lord Mayor of London, she regaled correspondents, last week, with her favorite oath, "My God!" and slangily declared that if the truth were admitted "Old Cushy" had been outclassed in debate and the League outmaneuvered by "Max."

The final and almost the only definite act of the Commission last week was to adjourn "until the Chairman [Dr. Louden, representing the Netherlands] may deem it practically useful to reconvene."

Chairman Louden, in his peroration, addressed Comrade Litvinov as follows: "We are old in experience; you are young. We hope you will continue to come here, but in a constructive instead of a destructive spirit."

Since this was bringing the deliberations of the Commission down to a plane of senile, grandfatherly reproof, Lord Cushendun made a final post-mortem effort to save the proceedings of last week from the stigma of total sterility. He hastily submitted to the U. S., French, Italian and Japanese delegations a proposal that those powers convene a new naval limitations parley similar to that which was called by President Calvin Coolidge (TIME, June 27 to Aug. 15) and which broke up amid Anglo-U. S. recriminations. When the new British proposals were studied, they were found to embody precisely the same British terms of naval limitations which the U. S. rejected at the Coolidge conference.

Sterility had begat sterility.