Brakes & Jolts

Like a balky bus. the Disarmament Conference moves fitfully. It took a tremendous leap forward last week when diplomats in Rome agreed to a revised version of Benito Mussolini's Four-Power Pact, when U. S. Ambassador-at-Large Norman H. Davis pledged a mild degree of U. S. co-operation in enforcing peace (TIME, May 29). Last week the bus jolted to an abrupt halt. Brakes were applied by French Foreign Minister Joseph Paul-Boncour before even his own Prime Minister realized it.

Under the impression that everything was rolling smoothly. Premier Daladier rose in the Chamber of Deputies to retort to ultra-Nationalist Louis Marin. If the Daladier Government signed the Four-Power Pact the Nationalists threatened to overthrow the Cabinet. Snapped Premier Daladier:

"Heretofore you have not supported me much, and I will sign the pact hard and fast."

From Geneva, where Foreign Minister Paul-Boncour had been studying the agreement carefully there came a sudden telegram. Premier Daladier instantly subsided. Delegate Paul-Boncour's first job was to rush to France's excited allies. Rumania, Jugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Poland, and assure them that nothing had been signed, that there was no immediate threat to all the land acquired by them through the Versailles Treaty.

At the same time he tossed a deft monkey wrench into the Conference's gears. Nation after nation was withdrawing objections to Ramsay MacDonald's Disarmament Plan (TIME, March 27). One of its chief points--elimination and destruction of present stocks of heavy siege guns, large bombing planes and tanks weighing more than 16 tons--was in a fair way toward adoption when up stepped Joseph Paul-Boncour.

''When the time comes for definite decisions," said he, ''we shall then express the definite view which we have frequently expressed before, that destruction of the so-called weapons of offense would be an abdication and desertion of the League of Nations. . . . It would seem illogical and dangerous that it should, instead of being prepared to take over the responsibility for existing weapons, direct that those weapons should be destroyed, only to find later that it is necessary to give financial assistance to any state unjustly attacked.

"When that time comes we shall press very hard that the League should not be deprived of material which is at its disposal when there are states, such as France, ready to hand over these means in order that they might be used against states guilty of aggression.'1

Here was France, in other words, with its old demand for security before disarmament, the security to be an international police force to back the League's decisions. Other nations have always jumped so quickly on the idea that a definite organization for such a force has never been presented. Most accepted version is that a certain proportion of each army be internationalized under League officers, kept in its own country ready to be sent wherever needed.

The next two checks came from Britain and Japan. Norman Davis' blunt definition of an aggressor--one whose armed forces are found on alien soil--was amplified to include a country that had taken any one of the following steps:

1) Declared war.

2) Attacked another state by land, naval or air forces.

3 ) Instituted a naval blockade.

4) Supported armed bands within another state.

Not only did this point straight at Japan on three out of five counts, but it was much too definite for Britain's Captain Anthony Eden who insisted that the background of each case must be studied first.

Japan's Naotake Sato suddenly announced that his country would not accept the proposed disarmament convention unless an amendment was adopted removing mention of specific tonnages from the London and Washington naval treaties. Japan was, in a word, pointing for naval parity with Britain and the U. S.

The week's disarmament news was not entirely black. Britain's Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon climbed into a plane to fly to Paris and wring additional concessions from Premier Daladier. He nearly crashed into a mountain side in the fog, hastily returned, flew to London instead. There he addressed the House of Commons:

"The American people are prepared to abandon a tradition which they have most jealously guarded and have made a fundamental change in their country's position. . . . America now says: 'Trust us to face the situation when we have consulted together. If we come to the conclusion that we agree with the rest of you. we give our word that we are not going to stand on the strict letter of the law of neutrality. You shall have not only our goodwill and our blessing, but our promise that we will withhold from our own citizens, if they are tempted to exercise strict neutral rights [e. g. sell munitions to all combatants], the protection that would otherwise be theirs.' '

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