raw materials, and the moral and military spirit of the people be ignored when we wish to estimate the capacity of any particular country to create a formidable war machine. It is difficult to see how all these various factors can be tabulated and reduced to a single common denominator; yet, if that is not done, it is impossible to compare the fighting strength of the various Powers with any degree of fairness and accuracy. However much we may succeed in reducing actual armaments— and that is difficult enough-no scheme has yet been devised for reducing potential armaments, and even if such a one were devised it could only be carried out by handicapping the general economic progress of the world and reducing its industrial efficiency to the level of those countries where it is lowest.

One has but to follow the debates at the various disarmament conferences, whether at Geneva or elsewhere, to realise that the various delegates were almost invariably inspired by the conditions, interests, and aspirations of their respective countries. This is, of course, natural and indeed meritorious; but it would perhaps have been preferable if some of those delegates had not tried to camoufler their patriotic anxieties under the guise of international pacificism. The result has been to engender a considerable measure of scepticism in public opinion generally as to the motives of the said delegates, and to arouse distrust against the countries they represent, even when there were no grounds for it.* Thus we find some of the British delegates anxious to secure a wide measure of land disarmament, while they demanded the standardisation of the various types of ships, which would have proved advantageous to Powers already possessing the largest number of ships of each type. The British members of Sub-committee A raised objections to the idea of the interdependence of armaments, on which other delegates insisted as necessary for any practical and equitable scheme of limitation of armaments.

The factors,' they declared, which occur in so indisput

It should be admitted that the military delegates often showed greater sincerity and even political sense than some of their civilian colleagues.

able a manner in Continental countries, do not occur to the same degree in an island country. An island country having large overseas territories and interests is obliged to maintain forces for reasons which differ from those applicable to Continental countries. Thus an island Power maintains naval forces for two principal reasons: (a) the safeguarding of its commercial routes for its trade and supplies; and (b) the defence of its coasts and of those of the distant portions of its Empire.'

The French delegation proposed that countries with overseas possessions should be entitled to a certain tonnage of warships for colonial defence, in addition to their fleets in metropolitan waters. To this the Italian delegation, supported by those of other countries not possessing large colonies, retorted by insisting that a fleet is a single unit and cannot be divided into a metropolitan and a colonial force, as in time of war it would be easy enough to concentrate the whole of it at any given point. Similarly on the question of submarines Great Britain was notoriously favourable to their suppression, or at all events to their very considerable reduction, whereas countries with smaller navies regarded them as an essential means of coast defence; for purely Mediterranean Powers the submarine is the only weapon for defending their interests outside the inland sea. Another point of divergence was the distribution of tonnage. The larger naval Powers insisted that the amount of tonnage assigned to each class of ship for each country should be carefully defined, whereas the weaker naval Powers refused to accept this limitation, and demanded that each power should be free to distribute the total tonnage assigned to it under the agreement for limiting naval armaments among the various types of ships as it deems best for its own peculiar conditions. The German delegation demanded that no account be taken of civil aviation in considering possible reductions of the air forces, because in Germany the number of aeroplanes for commercial purposes is very large, whereas the delegations of other countries where civil aviation is less developed insisted that all classes of aeroplanes should be taken into consideration in any

Report of Sub-Committee A. League of Nations Document C. 739. M. 278. 1926. P. 27.

possible measure of reduction. These various points of view are all equally comprehensible and indeed legitimate. It is natural that each Power or group of Powers should demand that any agreement for limiting or reducing armaments should not injuriously affect its own interests or aspirations. I merely mention these divergences to show how difficult it is to conciliate them.

At the various disarmament conferences and in the vast mass of literature devoted to the subject, we find the proposal for the creation of a League of Nations army for the enforcement of peace frequently recurring. Apart from the unsuccessful attempt to constitute the Vilna force and the French proposal already alluded to, there has been as yet no concrete practical plan for its realisation. But it is an idea which appeals to many disarmament enthusiasts. Were it ever to assume practical shape it would merely mean the formation of a new army in addition to those already existing, for it is hardly likely that the various Governments would be prepared to entrust their security wholly to such a force and scrap their own national armies. Moreover, how could this force be raised? Where would men be found ready to risk their lives not for the defence of their own country, but for the enforcement of principles of abstract international justice? They might perhaps be recruited from among the cosmopolitan adventurers and rapscallions of the great cities, but men of that type would appear hardly suited for the forming of a fine fighting force inspired by the ideals of the League of Nations. The delegate of one of the Powers at a meeting of the T.M.C. remarked that he would not envy the condition or even guarantee the personal safety of those international policemen should they be sent to the mountain frontiers of his own country. To this one of his colleagues, a staunch supporter of the Second International, replied that we should have to accustom ourselves to far more than this in the future!

The more fanatical advocates of disarmament have in fact no real grasp of the subject and wholly misunderstand the political, economic, and social conditions of foreign countries, often even of their own, and they are apt to tilt at windmills, inveighing against imaginary

or obsolete dangers. Thus we hear much about 'military castes' who are out for war at any price and on any pretext, in order to affirm their own position and indulge their bloodthirsty instincts. Such castes may have existed before the war in Germany, Austria, and Russia, but to-day they are not to be found anywhere except in some of the Balkan and the minor Latin-American States, and possibly the Prussian Junker class would like to revive the tradition in Germany if it could; but there is not and never has been anything of the kind in Britain, Italy, France, or the United States. The spirit of military discipline and of sound patriotism does still exist in those and other countries, and is no bad thing; but it is very different from that form of militarism which makes the flesh of the professed pacificist creep.

Some writers on disarmament, such as Prof. Philip Baker,* see one of the chief obstacles to it in the existence of conscription. But apart from the educational value of conscription, which even Prof. Baker admits, it is an economic necessity, as few countries can afford the luxury of a highly-paid professional army; we should also bear in mind the strong prejudice existing against such armies in Continental countries, where they are regarded as much more likely to create a military caste than conscript armies. The example of Austria, where, after the war, the non-conscript army was thoroughly imbued with a revolutionary spirit and represented a serious obstacle to national reconstruction and security, is hardly edifying.

Another almost insuperable obstacle to any scheme of disarmament based on an international agreement, is the impossibility of securing guarantees for its observance. There are so many possibilities of evasion that the people of each country are apt to be very sceptical as to the disarmament of their neighbours. Indeed, the very Powers most inclined to aggression are those who would most probably try to evade their undertakings, whereas those who tried to fulfil them loyally would be placed at a serious disadvantage. In order to provide such guarantees some form of international control is regarded in certain quarters as the only solution; but

* 'Disarmament,' p. 38.

it is very unlikely that any Government would submit to such control in so delicate a matter as its own national security. At the Preparatory Committee the French delegation did, it is true, propose international control by the Permanent Disarmament Commission to be set up by the League in their draft convention; but the general impression was, even in French circles, that the proposal had only been made to please the Left-wing parties in France, and that when it came to the point no French Cabinet, not even a Socialist one, would dare to ratify such an arrangement. The control commission would comprise delegates and officers from other countries than the one whose armaments were being investigated, and there would very naturally be a suspicion as to their impartiality. Nor would it be easy in practice to exercise this control in such a manner as to satisfy the countries who demanded the inquiry. We have before us the case of Germany, a vanquished Power which, until the recent changes, was forced to submit to investigation and control by a permanent inter-Allied commission residing on its own territory over its armaments which had been reduced to a minimum by the terms of the Armistice and Peace Treaty. Yet even in those conditions there are very serious doubts as to the reality of German disarmament and to the possibility for that commission to discover the true state of affairs. It is easy to realise how much more difficult it would be for a commission comprising Finns, Dutchmen, and Venezuelans, to inquire into the state of French armaments. At the same time it is impossible to conceive of a procedure better calculated to provoke those very international disputes which disarmament is supposed to eliminate, than this system of international investigation. The difficulty would certainly not be solved by the scheme suggested by Prof. Baker,† that the obligation to disarm should be enforced by an international commission assisted by the co-operation of the Socialist and Labour parties of the various Parliaments. Here we have the ground prepared for an admirable blending of international conflicts with civil strife.

French Draft Treaty, Art. 26 (League Document C. P. D. 43 (1), Geneva, March 22, 1927).

† 'Disarmament,' p. 42.