FOUR-POWER TREATY.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 December 1921, Page 5

FOUR-POWER TREATY.

DEBATE IN THE SENATE. SOME OPPOSITION. STRICTER DISARMAMENT. (From the Special Representative of th«Australian Press Assn.) Received Dee. 13, 10.20 p.m. Washington, Dee. 12. The Senate lost no time in expressing its views regarding the new quadruple alliance. Senator Borah opened the debate, threatening opposition if the naval disarmament agreement did not include submarines, poison gas and other terrible weapons of war, instead of confining itself to the abandonment of ships of obsolete and obsolescent types. As matters stood the quadruple treaty was simply a military alliance which made it absolutely necessary that real disarmament should take place. Senator Borah said he thought Japan had proved that she could look after herself. Several other •“irreconcilables” supported Senator Borah. Senators Poindexter and Kellogg who fought the Versailles Treaty, favor this treaty, pointing out that under the quadruple treaty and the Yap convention the United States get all the benefits of nembership of the League of Nations without assuming any responsibilities. FRENCH WRITER PESSIMISTIC. Paris, Dec. 12.* Pertinax, writing in the Echo de Paris, predicts that a definite naval agreement is still distant. COMMENT IN AUSTRALIA. Sydney, Dec. 13. The Daily Telegraph, in a leader, declares that it scarcely needs saying that the Pacific agreement will be warmly welcomed in Australia. After dealing with the position assigned to China by the Conference, the paper says; “The right of any country to control the composition of its own people and the direction of its trade was not publicly debated at the Conference, but we gather from the compliments paid to the Australian and New Zealand delegates that it was discussed in committee. We may be confident that these delegates have dissipated any fahie idea of the aims of the White Australia policy and any exaggerated impression of the resources that are withheld from development by the exclusion of alien races, but it is clear that for the future any nation must conduct its policy under the eyes of the whole world. International opinion has been invoked and for the future will exercise its influence. We now hold our territories subject to the review of the association which Washington has brought into being.” Melbourne, Dec. 13.

The Argus, commenting on the Pacific Treaty, says: “It is difficult to grasp at the first reading its full significance to Australia. The adequate defence of the Commonwealth has been the subject of growing anxiety, but when the treaty is rati--sed those fear« may be banished and she may proceed with hew peaceful development undisturbed. The treaty is not necssarily to abolish wars, but it provides such safeguards that war in the Pacific henceforth is almost inconceivable. The AngloJapanese Alliance will be annulled, but Australians will change the old love for the new without regret. If the Washington Conference should bear no more fruit than this, it will still have carried the world far along the road towards the goal of perpetual peace.”