DISARMAMENT

Hokitika Guardian, 20 April 1932, Page 5

DISARMAMENT

REDUCED STAGES

ACCEPTED BY COMMITTEE.

(United Press Association.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.;

GENEVA, April 19. The Disarmament Conference’s general Committee has accepted the principal of arms cuts being made by stages. The Russian, Turkish and German delegates pressed for a single convention settling the disarmament problem once and for all; but the British, Trench, Italian and other delegates supported a resolution as follows: “That the reduction of armaments can be achieved only by stages, and By mean© of frequent revisions.” This resolution, all of the delegates eventually accepted.

Sir John Simon stressed, that it was the first stage which counted and that the first stage should see the fullest possible measure of reduction.

FREEDOM OF THE SEAS,

franco-ameßican Dispute

LONDON, April 18. The Daily Express correspondent at Geneva says: France, a@ the price for her .disarmament, demanded 'that the United States should abandon the doctrine of the traditional freedom of the seas, and-that, instead, there should be an .enlargement of the Kellogg ' (Pact, whereby 'the United States would undertake not to 'trade with any State which the Council of lb League of Nations had defined as an aggressor. It is understood (that Sir John Simon again tried to persuade M. Tardieu (French Premier) to re-open negotiations with Italy in order that both might sign the Naval Agreement ( that was drafted at London in 1930, and which is meantime abortive owing -to France and Italy declining to t sign.