BRITAIN WILL LEAD

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 931, 26 March 1930, Page 9

BRITAIN WILL LEAD

SMALLER ARMY VOTE IS EXAMPLE TO WORLD LIMITS OF DISARMAMENT British Official Wireless RUGBY, Tuesday.

While the Army Estimates, which, represent a reduction of £605,000, were before the House of Commons, Mr. Tom Shaw, Under-Secretary for War, said it was assumed by some theorists and speculative philosophers that if Britain reduced her armaments considerably and consistently, without regard to other nations, she would help along general disarmament. Unfortunately, the facts confounded the theorists. The Government was not merely willing to take part in an effort for international disarmament, but to take a leading part. She was not prepared, however, at present to go further in unilateral action. It seemed to him that if one thing had become clearer than another since the war it was that both economically and politically, whether they liked it or not, they were bound to an international system.

SUPPLY OF OFFiCERS With regard to the question whether public money should be spent on officers’ training corps and cadet corps at public schools, Mr. Shaw said lie had come to the conclusion, on definite expert advice, that officers’ training corps were really valuable organisations for providing a supply of officers. So long as the army existed on a voluntary basis there would have to be some such form of, army recruiting. No compulsion was exercised by the Army Council, or by the Government, to compel any boys to join these corps. They would continue to receive the Government’s grant. The Minister said he could.not take the same attitude, however, about cadet corps. Teachers in the elementary and secondary schools appeared, in the great majority of cases, to be against that particular training on educational grounds. He agreed with those representations and intended, with the consent of the House, to cease to give War Office assistance to those bodies when the existing contracts expired. FOOD FOR THE TROOPS Reed. 9.30 a.m. LONDON, Tuesday. In the House of Commons, Mr. E. Shinwell, Financial Secretary to the War Office, dealt with the question of the supply of British meat and bread for the Army. He said the Conservative Government previously had insisted that the cost of purely British supplies was prohibitive. Moreover, most of the Army’s beef was drawn from the Dominions. Were they to destroy the Dominion trade because of the dubious, advantage to British farmers to supply the Army? British-grown beef in six months had cost £200,000.