Monday, May. 13, 1929
Battling for Reduction
Comrade Maxim Maximovitch Litvinov continued in Geneva last week his sport of making it appear that Soviet Russia and Germany are the only Great Powers which are ready and eager to join the U. S. in championing President Herbert Hoover's thesis that the nations must now strive to achieve not limitation but reduction of armaments (TIME, May 6).
This point was the very core of the U. S. proposals presented in Geneva a fortnight ago by Ambassador Hugh Simons Gibson, personal friend and confidential representative of Mr. Hoover. At the earliest opportunity last week Comrade Litvinov rose and moved a resolution closely paraphrasing Mr. Gibson's speech. The delegates of the League of Nations Preparatory Disarmament Commission were asked by the cheerful Russian to declare that they are engaged in promoting "drastic reduction of armaments."
When this motion dismally failed to pass, newsgatherers one and all cabled that the cardinal principle of the Hoover plan had been rejected. Apparently this "news" was taken very ill at the White House. Next day the State Department pointed out that the Litvinov motion had not been voted down but merely tabled on a point of order. The distinction is doubtless important, but the fact remains that no delegate except Red Russia's Litvinov proposed anything remotely approaching an endorsement of the cardinal Hoover point.
On successive days no small divergence in interpreting events at Geneva widened between correspondents on the spot and the press officials of the U. S. State Department. The former developed a pessimistic and the latter an optimistic view of chances that the Powers would agree to reduction of armaments. "Mischievous" became official Washington's adjective to describe what was coming over the cables. Finally the views of the President were made known in the following sense:
Reduction of armaments is held by the Administration to be the great problem faced by the nations of the world.
Whatever concessions are made by the U. S. in Geneva are to be interpreted in no other sense than as efforts to advance toward the cardinal ideal. This applies in particular to Mr. Gibson's abandonment a fortnight ago of the traditional U. S. demand that "reduction of armaments" must include curtailment of the numbers of "trained reserves." This concession and a supplementary announcement by Mr. Gibson last week that the U. S. will also stomach the existence of unlimited stores of military supplies are not to be misinterpreted.
The Hoover Administration is not yielding or backtracking on the cardinal ideal, but simply feels that a primarily naval power such as the U. S. should keep hands off the problem of land disarmament, leaving it to be thrashed out among France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the other land Powers.
Since ignored Russia and impotent Germany could not influence the decisions of the statesmen in Geneva, a practical effect of the Hoover decision was to enable France and Italy to carry their point that "trained reserves" and "military supplies" shall not be reduced. The German delegate, Count von Bernstorff, expressed his chagrin as follows:
"I consider that essentials for the reduction of land armaments have been eliminated. The committee has entirely lost sight of its real task. We of the Reich are inclined to wash our hands and assist no further at this accouchement."
"Perhaps the mouse whose birth you expect will turn out to be a lion after all," suavely suggested Acting Chairman Nicolas Politis of Greece.
As the tense situation was eased by the laughter of august statesmen, Count von Bernstorff genially exclaimed, "I hope with all my heart the child will be an elephant!"
Further debate revealed that the commission could not agree last week on any method of reducing or even limiting land armaments except "publicity on expenditures" -a vague three-word phrase beyond which the commission could not advance. The idea is simply that if each War Office states the annual total of its expenditures then the voice of public opinion may figuratively cry (as it has so often and so impotently cried before), "You are spending too much!"
In moving the adoption of this "'method," Ambassador Gibson said: "We are all reduced to taking the best we can get, and from that point of view I maintain that there is nothing better than this resolution. Surely, these long debates have exhausted the subject. . . . I propose an immediate vote."
With Germany abstaining and Russia and China casting the only negative votes, the motion passed. Count von Bernstorff then arose and quietly said that since the proceedings had been a complete fiasco, so far as military disarmament was concerned, the German delegation would cease to consider themselves active members, would stay on as observers only.
"As regards naval disarmament," the Count concluded, "an encouraging beginning seems to have been made."
From a U. S. view the last point made by Count von Bernstorff eclipses in importance all the others, suggested that even though Ambassador Gibson's concessions did not open the way to reduction of land armaments, still President Hoover may be able to press on through the maze of European cross purposes toward reduction of the world's navies, his primary concern.