possible measure of reduction. These various points of view are all equally comprehensible and indeed legiti mate. 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.

ance.

Another almost insuperable obstacle to any scheme of disarmament based on an international agreement, is the impossibility of securing guarantees for its observThere 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

*

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.

A considerable part of the activities of professed pacificists is also open to grave suspicion. Many of the existing pacificist organisations or their immediate predecessors were intimately associated during the war with movements which aimed at concluding peace at moments when peace would have been exclusively favourable to Germany. Not a few of their members were notoriously acting in the German interest. In the post-war period pacificism has been connected with Bolshevism in Russia and elsewhere, and with those 1 parties in Germany who are determined to upset the whole Versailles settlement and restore the Prussian Junker Imperialist faction, i.e. with the two chief bellicose forces existing in the world to-day. As Mr Bridgeman declared in the British House of Commons while speaking on the Navy estimates on March 21, 1927,* the Socialist fad for slandering their country was responsible for that suspicion which was the chief bar to disarmament.'

It should further be borne in mind that armaments are not the only means of waging war, nor the only manner in which one country may commit aggression against and dominate another people against the latter's will. Transatlantic pacificists are apt to hold up their hands in horror at the wicked bellicosity of Europe,' thereby placing Bolshevik Russia on the same footing with the most civilised Western Powers; but we must remember that the great financial power of the United States is often exercised to bring pressure to bear on weaker States and to establish as real a domination over them as that which can be exercised by means of heavy armaments. This form of Imperialism differs but little from that of Imperial Germany or Tzarist or Bolshevik Russia, it has as little moral justification, is just as likely in the end to provoke war, and is equally unfair, as in many cases the economically weaker country has no means of defence against the stronger.

During the post-war period, war-weary as most of the peoples of Europe were, causes of bitter and even exasperated hostility were certainly not lacking. France was deeply alarmed at the possibility of a German resurrection and at the rapid and constant increase of

* 'The Times,' March 22, 1927.

the German population as compared with that of France, which could only be kept from actually declining by an influx of foreign immigrants. Believing that she could not again count on British, Italian, or American assistance in the event of a new German attack, while she was determined not to reduce her own armaments, she insisted on the disarmament of Germany, and she attempted to create a cordon of vassal states round Germany with large armies organised and staffed by French officers and plentifully supplied with arms and munitions from her own arsenals and from local ones financed by France and managed by Frenchmen. Some of these States, such as Poland and Roumania, had further and more real reasons for maintaining large armaments, inasmuch as they were seriously menaced by Bolshevik Russia; others aspired to sundry additions to their territories at the expense of Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey, while Yugoslavia thought that she could also count on French assistance to wrest from Italy certain territories which she regarded as pertaining to herself. France, for reasons of her own, does not appear to have always discouraged this conviction with as much vigour as might have appeared desirable. The result was that while the discussions on disarmament were going on, most countries refused to reduce their armaments, and many, especially France and some of the States in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, continued to maintain armies far in excess of their apparent necessities. Great Britain and Italy were perhaps the only countries which did effect a serious reduction of armaments during the post-war years, except of course the countries defeated in the war on whom disarmament had been imposed and was to some extent effective.

As the years passed the sense of insecurity, however, has become attenuated; the heavy burden of taxation due to the vast expenditure of the war years, appeared ever more intolerable as the war gradually receded into the distance; and the edifice of international comity, shattered by the great struggle, was gradually being built up once more, an effort to which the League of Nations has undoubtedly contributed. To-day almost every country is in effect reducing its armaments, and during the next few years, if no untoward events occur,