Evening star., 1934-03-11
DISARMAMENT PARLEY
REMAINING ONLY In NAME
Roosevelt Breaks With Policy 1nher.
tied From Hoover of Attempting
to Pacify Rest of World.

sible Is an agreement between four
great powers-France. Germany, Italy
and Great Britain-fixing limits to
future armaments. Although no one
will reduce and Germany and her
wartime allies will rearm, he believes
an actual race in armaments may be
postponed If limits are set now. III
this agreement does not come about,
however. Italy must presently sink to
a second-class power. militarily speak
ing, because she has neither the
money nor the economic material to
maintain parity with Germany or
France.
There Is no reason on earth why
the French or Germans should now
concern themselves with Mussolini.
Some time or other the question of
continental hegemony will have to
be settled between them. Both the
French and Germans know that in
the end Rome will have to follow
Paris and not Berlin, because the
pan-German program of Hitler is
more Immediately and extensively
menacing to Italy than to France.
For Mussolini it would be an admir-
able stroke, as matter of personal
prestige, if he could bring France and
Germany to sign sheet Of paper
without respect to what was written
on it. But it would have no relation
to disarmament or peace.
The rise of Hitler completed the
destruction of all present hope of
disarmament or even of reduction of
armament on the continent. Musso-
lini saw that fact at once and tried
to substitute four-power pact for
the League and a limited contract
between the four great powers for
all disarmament agreements. The
French refused because that meant
the end of their influence in the
center Of Europe, since it doomed
their allies to territorial mutilation.
And the French refusal killed the
four power pact.
President Roosevelt took hand last
Spring and proposed non-aggres-
sion pact and the reduction Of So
called offensive weapons. But that
project died "abornin' because no
one was prepared to guarantee that
that pact thus to be accepted would
be carried out. Japan was signatory
of the Kellogg pact. but japanese
troops were in Manchuria and the
Japanese government stood fast to
the thesis that this was not aggres-
sion. The trouble with scrapping "of-
fensive weapons" was that the French
had them and the Germans did not,
but if France scrapped them Germany
could later build them more raduy
and extensively because Of her su-
perior industrial plant.
Austrian Crisis Became Acute.
When Mussolini and Roosevelt had
failed to break the deadlock the Brit
ish interposed and first Sir John
Simon and then Capt. Anthony Eden
made excursions about Europe. Eng
land now recognized Germany would
eventually rearm and France would
not 6isarm at all, but 1t believed that
If some kind of q pact were signed
there would at least be truce and
the British were now justly alarmed
over the evident danger of a war Of
prevention.
But, meantime. the Austrian prob
lem became acute and here 1t was
disclosed that the Kellogg pact would
apply even less well than In the case
Of Manchuria. For the Germans
were attempting to overthrow gov
eminent of another state not by mill
tary aggression but by subsidizing and
(continued on Fourth Pase.)