Disarmament Debate

The world press partly discovered and partly created a new hero last week. His very stature is heroic—six feet six—and his broad shoulders support a massive head crowned impressively with snowy hair. As the representative of the British Empire, he strode into the Glass Room of the League of Nations, at Geneva, and delivered a speech which was soon compared to the great orations of Cicero. . . .

The maker of this flattering comparison was the U. S. Ambassador to Belgium, suave Hugh Simons Gibson, who represented the U. S. before the League. The new hero, the orator who was discovered to resemble Cicero, is Baron Cushendun, who last fall replaced Viscount Cecil of Chelwood at Geneva.

Last week everyone forgot that less than six months ago Lord Cushendun was only Rt. Hon. Ronald F. M'Neill, Financial Secretary to the Treasury. He loomed suddenly as a champion of Western Europe against Soviet Russia. The occasion for his Ciceronian oration was the most important meeting thus far held by an august body whose title runs to 22 words: The Preparatory Commission for the Disarmament Conference, being a Commission to prepare for a Conference on the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments (TIME, May 24, 1926 et seq.).

The Commission had assembled amid acute embarrassment. It found itself forced to consider, at last, the breath-taking proposal for "immediate and complete disarmament ... of all nations" which was challengingly submitted to the League, some months ago, by Soviet Russia (TIME, Dec. 12).

To ignore Utopia, thus offered on a platter, was impossible last week. Already resolutions endorsing the Soviet proposal had poured in from 124 prominent societies and political organizations in 13 countries. The Soviet Government had neatly placed the Commission in the difficult position of having to explain to the world why it could not favor "immediate and complete disarmament."

Further to harass the Commission, there was present in Geneva the author of the Russian project, Comrade Maxim Maximovitch Litvinov, a round-faced, round-bodied but keen-witted little man who is Soviet Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs. Bustling straight to the point, he stood up before the Commission and charged that, although the League Assembly & Council have considered the problems of disarmament on 38 separate occasions, and although its deliberations have been continued by 14 committees during more than 120 series of sittings, still the fact remains —said Comrade Litvinov—that "not a single real step had been taken [by the League] toward realization of disarmament."

Since the League road is thus proving so infinitely long, why not take the Soviet short cut? Solemnly Comrade Litvinov concluded: "The Soviet Government declares it is ready to abolish all military forces in accordance with its draft convention as soon as a similar decision is passed and simultaneously carried out by other States. The Soviet Government asks the other Governments represented here if they also are ready."