DISARMAMENT.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17106, 30 March 1921, Page 7

DISARMAMENT.

♦ AN AMERICAN MOVEMENT. STATEMENT BY SENATOR BORAH. ] (By CaMe—Press Association—Copyright.) (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) WASHINGTON, March 28. Mass meetings to demand the reduction of armaments were held in fifteen States, under the auspices of the Wo- ; men's World Disarmament Committee. Senator Borah addressed the Washington meeting, which adopted a resolution asking President Harding td summon an international disarmament conference. Mr W. J. Bryan telegraphed to the meeting, stating.that he was heartily in favour of disarmament, bj agreement with other nations if possible, and by example if necessary. Senator Borah said that in 1920 Great Britain, the United .States, Japan, France, and Italy expended, for military and naval purposes, 16,442,000,000 dollars, which was. 2,000,000,000 dollars more than they expended for the same purposes during the fourteen years from 1900 to 1914. And America was to have the greatest navy in the world. Thus the race was begun—a mad race which, between 1900 and 1914, brought England and Germany, hitherto close friends, to war. He could see no relief for overburdened Americans if the naval race continued. The hope that practical and immediate steps would be taken to reduce naval construction has beeji destroyed by the action of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in amending the Borah resolution, wrote the Washington correspondent of the "Morning" Post" on January 21st. The Committee agreed to a favourable report to the Senate,, which should mislead no onej but so amended the resolution that it is deprived of all vitality, and makes for indefinite delay. The resolution, as introduced into the Senate by Senator Borah, provided for an agreement between Great Britain, the United States, and Japan to reduce their naval construction during the next five years; the resolution, as amended by the Committee, requests the President to advise the Governments of Great Britain and Japan that the American Government will tnke up with them the question of naval disarmament "with a view of promptly entering into a treaty by which tho naval programme of each of the said Governments shall be reduced annually during the next five years to such an extent and upon such terms as mav be agreed upon." The nigger in the woodpile, to use an American expression,. is in the amendment, which requires a tripartite treaty before naval reduction can become effective. We know from bitter experience the fate of a contentious treaty in the Senate, and the use that can be made of a treaty to bring about interminable delay. If the men who voted in the Conlmittee for the amended resolution are sincere, they have displayed singular ignorance of senatorial psychology and senatorial methods, and that is hardly possible considering their long experience. If the Borah resolution had been reported as introduced, the President, unhampered, could, have opened negotiations with.Great Britain and Japan, and any agreement reached between the three. Government's would have automatically gone into operation; but by amending tho resolution and reauir- ' ing an. agreement to be reduced to treaty form the way is thrown open to debate, which may last for weeks or months, and, moreover, two-thirds of the membership of the Senate must approve a treaty. No treaty, in my experience, remarks the correspondent, that has been opposed by a' respectable " minority has ever been ratified, and there exists to-day in the Senate a strong minority opposed to any interference with the American building, programme until the American Navy is at least the equal of the British. That this opposition exists the discus- , sion- in Committee showed. Senator jLodge, who is a Big' Navy man, told the Committee that no action ought to be taken ' until the, incoming, of the Harding Administration, and that he would, if he considered it necessary, vote against the resolution when it reached the Senate. Senator Knox also urged delay, and it was on his motion* that the resolution was amended to provide for a treaty. Both. Mr Lodge and Mr Knox have been consulted by Mr Harding in regard to the foreign policy of the new Administration, and it was naturally assumed that they represented the views of the President-elect, and spoke with his authority, and that he may also be counted among the Big Navy men. The two Senators denied that they were inspired, but the impression remains. An easy way of bringing the question of disarmament to a practical issue would have been the adoption of the Walsh resolution authorising the President to appoint an American member of the Disarmament Commission of the League of Nation's, but the proposal was rejected summarily by a party vote. The Republicans will not soil their fingers by touching anything contaminated by the League of Na-