The Dominion THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1928. A MODEL TREATY

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 124, 23 February 1928, Page 10

The Dominion THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1928. A MODEL TREATY

The Conference of the Committee on Arbitration and Security at Geneva has opened auspiciously. It augurs well for agreement on practical suggestions for consideration by the Preparatory Commission on Disarmament at the March meeting of the League of Nations Assembly. It will be remembered that at,the last meeting of the League Commission, those who were endeavouring to find a way to the establishment of peace by disarmament found themselves unable to solve the very difficult question of security, on which French opinion was very definite and insistent. Security first, disarmament after, was the French dictum, shared by certain other States whose geographical position made the question of disarming without some guarantee of security seem a dangerous experiment. The League thereupon decided to set up a new sub-committee to deal exclusively with the problem of security, and report to the Preparatory Commission on Disarmament in time for consideration at the March meeting. Lord Cushendun, the British delegate on the sub-committee, recommends as a possible solution of the difficulty a series of treaties based on the Locarno Pact, which he describes as “a model treaty.” There are two essential differences between the Locarno Pact of 1925 and the Geneva Protocol of the previous year. The latter, largely the product of the Ramsay MacDonald Labour-Socialist Government, affirmed, in the first place, that it was possible to enforce peace; secondly, it committed the British Empire as a whole to armed intervention, if the necessity arose, whether the overseas Dominions approved or disapproved. This latter highly dangerous proposal evoked some sharp overseas criticism, notably from Canada and Australia. The Locarno Pact, on the other hand, sought the attainment of a condition of peace by a series of treaties aimed at the removal by discussion, or arbitration if necessary, of questions at issue between any two nations. It was a multilateral proposition, based on the principle that if disputes between any two nations could be satisfactorily settled, the general result would be that all differences would eventually be resolved. The obligation of armed intervention remained, but in the case of Great Britain it was restricted to the extent that the overseas Dominions were given discretionary rights. The recent negotiations between the United States and France for a treaty of arbitration outlawing war follows the same principle.

The practicability of the Locarno Pact rests very largely upon the fact that it was devised to counter a dangerous state of tension in Europe. Had agreement not been reached on the basis of the Locarno Arbitration Treaties between the seven great signatory Powers, who but a few years before were locked in a life-and-death struggle, another war, it was generally agreed, would have been quite probable. Under the pressure of such an appalling contingency, the statesmen of the nations concerned forced themselves to face the issues involved, and to devise a means of avoiding an outbreak. They bound themselves to deal with each and every question the prolongation of which threatened to sustain the international tension which then prevailed. So bound, many danger points of conflict have since been removed, or materially modified, and the way made clear for a further advance on the more academic question of achieving a general state of peace by a process of disarmament.

That is the basis of Lord Cushendun’s plea for security based on treaties of the Locarno pattern. There are signs that the other European States are becoming impressed with the practicability of similar multilateral arbitration treaties, and if such a course should be recommended by the sub-committee, as seems not unlikely, then a great step forward towards the solution of the larger peace issue may be made at the next meeting of the League.