The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1933-05-18
PEACE OR WAR
IS REAL ISSUE
UP AT GENEVA
Deciding Factor viii Be
Whether French, Ger
mans Can Agree.
ARMS RACE IS FEARED
United States and Britain
Cooperate to Block
Conflict Peril.
BY WILLIAM PHILIP SINMS
Scripps-HOward Foreign Editor


WASHINGTON, May 18.-Peace
or war was the real issue before the
world disarmament conference when
it resumed its final debates today at
Geneva.
The deciding factor will be whether
or not France and Germany can
come to some understanding with
regard to their ornaments, with the
United States and Great Britain
moving heaven and earth to bring
it about.
Unless Germany will agree to
forego rearming herself a while
longer, and France will yield
sufficiently along the lines advo-
Gated by President Roosevelt and
British Prime Minister Macdonald,
it is feared both here and abroad
that the conference will be doomed.
Failure of the Geneva conference
will be followed by a worldwide ar
maments race and disaster.
So said every world statesman
who has visited the White House in
recent weeks.
May Turn Tables In Paris
Meanwhile, the fear of such dis
aster would cripple, if not wreck, the
world economic conference at Lon
don.
Chou1d ,'xarvoaoxy acoer1f tho Mao
Donald Roosevelt peace and disar-
mament plan, as Chancellor Adolf
Hitler intimated he might do, it
draStically would turn the tables on
France. She would then be obliged
to go along also, else risk the very
same international isolation which
Germany now is counting.
The Northumberland plan
will form the basis of united
Anglo American front at Geneva.
This plan would limit the size of
European armies and abolish strictly
offensive weapons. such as large
tanks, heavy mobile guns bombing
planes and poison gas.
Without such weapons, military
experts declare, an army several
times the strength proposed for
Germany would be powerless to get
past the French frontier, today the
most strongly fortified in the world.
France Strongly Fortified
From the North sea to the Medi-
terranean. France has constructed
what her military men call wall
of steel" Most of it, however, is
underground.
The defenses range all the way
from impregnable pill boxes" houS-
ing machine gun nests, to vast
fortresSes of steel and concrete
which no known weapons could de-
stroy.
Far beneath the earths surface
there are armored "cities with
vast barracks, movies, amuSementS,
electric lights, waterworks, bakeries
and provision stores to make them
safe for light and comfort during
the most protracted siege.
General Weygand, formerly chief
of staff to Marshal Foch and later
commander in chief of the French
army, with Marshal Petain and
General Debeney, is credited with
being the chief author of the
frontier defenSes.
Border Virtually Impossible
But no living soul, save the hand
full at the top, ever has been let
in on all their secrets. Not even
the engineers and workers, who
built them we're permitted to see
more than the particular detail on
which they labored.
This invisible, man-made Gibral-
tar already is regarded as practical
ly impossible. 1t could not pos
sibly be broken save by some new,
weapons of war.
Only some hitherto unknown
poison gas could penetrate to the
defenders, while behind the lines
France would be safe from all save
heavy artillery or giant bombers
poison and high explosives.
Abolition Of all such weapons, as
by President Roosevelt, it
is said, would give France more
che fOSau