DISARMAMENT AND DISTRUST

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5278, 13 December 1946, Page 4

DISARMAMENT AND DISTRUST

♦ "OEACTIONS to the forthright offer of Sir Hartley Shawcross on behalf of the United Kingdom Government to reveal all information * on her armaments as soon as an international system of inspection was created, clearly indicate that the two other Great Powers intend on no account to concede any present advantage they believe they hold to allow of a rapid and, | universal concentration of military power under the United Nations. The. Americans stand fast in defence of their precious atomic bomb and the Russians ar§ unwilling to f orego the right of veto of the proposed activities of 4my supervi'sory commission on armaments. Thus, while the Soviet delegate agreed some time ago that the furnishing oi particulars K concerning ; troops mamtained by the Powers outside their frontiers should in-

clude friendly as well as former enemy countries, he continues to resist a census of f orces maintainecl at home. Both Britain and America have given official figures of the total strength they are keeping under arms. In the House of Commons, the Prime .Minister, Mr. Attlee, said that Britain's armed forces amounted to 1,300,000, "or one hundred thousand more than it might have been if the peace treaties had not been delayed." Senator T. Connally, , on behalf of the United States, told the Security Committee that 800,000 troops were still on an active footing. Nevertheless, there is little value in these figures, however exact they may be, if the census does not take into account, as M. Molotov insisted, details of the equipment with which troops are armed, inclucling jet-pro-pelled weapons, atomic bombs and all other types of arms. Siinple acceptance of both these pfopositions would make the way clear for the early establishment of international control and make an end to the unedifying shilly-shallying that has characterised most of the discussion thus far. One of the most ironicapfeatures of the relations between the Big Three is the impressing of German seientists to work in the respective countries on jet and atomic researeh. The conditions of their employment, in the United States at least, are „ .inferior to those of their eollaborators but to them has been held out the prospect of eventual naturalisation, if they care to apply. There is no answer to the challenging statement of Mr. Henry Wallace that the governments are acting as if they had • a mandate to prepare for the winning of the next war. Herein lies their diffieulty, for they feel bound to take whatever measures they deem necessary for the protection of the people just as long as some of the cards in this international game reImain in hand, instead of all being tabled simultaneously.