"Bad Faith!"

Representatives of every nation of any consequence, including the U. S. and Soviet Russia, met in Geneva last fortnight to take up the work of the League of Nations Preparatory Disarmament Commission where it was left last year (TIME, April 2, 1928). Chairman was a Dutchman, gruff, able, patient Jonkheer J. Loudon. Presently the delegates were asked to express individually their approval or disapproval of the following general principles: 1) Appreciable reduction by all nations of their existing armaments; 2) Acceptance by each nation in proportion to its size of a proportional degree of disarmament; 3) Adoption of a mathematical formula for determining the proportion.

In specific terms the application of these general principles would mean that the Great Powers, being proportionately larger than the Minor Nations, would make deeper slashes in their armaments. The U. S., Great Britain, Russia, France, Italy, Japan, for example, might cut their armaments in half. Such lesser lands as Chile, Siam, Belgium might reduce theirs by onequarter. All states in a given category such as "Great Powers" would reduce their armaments by the same fraction. The strengths of the Powers relative to each other would then be exactly the same as before the scrapping took place. The advantage to the taxpayers concerned would lie in saving the operating and replacement cost of the scrapped ships.

Eighteen months have passed since virtually every Government in the world received officially a copy of the plan outlined above. However, when the delegates were asked their opinions, last week, they nearly all sat silent. After a considerable pause General Alberto de Marinis, representing Signer Benito Mussolini, expressed approval for the first point of the plan only. "We stand ready to reduce our armaments," he said, "to any figure, even the lowest, provided all other nations do the same."

Ambassador Hugh Simons Gibson, representing President Herbert Clark Hoover, smiled and said nothing. Baron Cushendun of Great Britain frowned in silence. Outside the Commission room they both expressed themselves to correspondents in scathing terms, though "not for publication." The plan was not worthy of criticism or consideration, they indicated, because they believed it had been "offered in bad faith." They did not offer any alternative plan, perhaps because the Commission long ago became almost inextricably entangled in its so-called Draft Convention for a Disarmament Conference (TIME, April 4, 1927).

The tainted and unmentionable plan was and is, of course, the one presented by Comrade Maxim Maximovitch Litvinov, Assistant Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union. When he first went to Geneva (TIME, Dec. 5, 1927) he said that Soviet Russia was ready to completely disarm within one year, if all other nations would do likewise. Since then, plump, indefatigable Comrade Litvinov, who looks like a squirrel with a nut in either cheek, has been slowly learning that whatever plan he may offer will be pigeonholed, at least for some time to come.

The second major proposal of last week was offered on behalf of Germany. It envisions an international agreement pledging every nation to make public all details concerning its armaments. Although very unpopular among the Allied Powers, this plan cannot be ignored as offered in "bad faith," because it happens to be only a very slight extension of Article VIII of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which provides that League states must confide to each other all about their armaments, though in practice they never do.

Chairman Loudon of the Commission introduced still another plan by reading a letter signed "Clifford Harmon, President of the International League of Aviators." Mr. Harmon was present to hear his letter read. He flushed very red when Baron Cushendun observed at the close of the reading: "I know nothing about the gentleman who wrote the letter, but everybody knows there are organizations with high sounding titles which, it is possible, consist of an office on the fifth floor and a letterhead. I think the letter itself of no value, but even if it were valuable I believe it very improper that an outside individual, probably having no authority whatever, should attempt to influence the opinion of this Commission.

So squelching a rebuke from the representative of a Great Power, would have flustered most Chairmen, but sturdy Dutchman Loudon said evenly that he had read Mr. Harmon's letter because he considered that it contained a valuable suggestion. In brief, Airman Harmon's plan is to equip the League of Nations with a volunteer army of aviators, and each aviator with a bombing plane, ready at command to blow the night lights out of the capital of any nation which started a war.

Airman Harmon, monied amateur, is by no means unknown to persons less air-unconscious than Baron Cushendun. A contemporary of the Wrights, Curtis, Bleriot, Farman et al., and an ardent balloonist, he now lives in Paris where he attends to the affairs of the International League of Aviators. Most potent of these affairs is the annual presentation of the ornate Harmon trophy for achievement in aviation. Recent recipients of the trophy include:

Shirley Short, U. S. Air Mail pilot; Pelletier ("Paris to Peking") D'Oisy; Col. Charles Augustus Lindbergh; Lady Mary ("London to Capetown") Bailey.