"Preventive War?"

To start the wheels of the Geneva Disarmament Conference grinding again President Roosevelt's quiet little Ambassador-at-Large Norman H. Davis busied himself in London and in Paris last week with clearing up the "misunderstandings" created when the President, as Europeans think, "wrecked the World Economic Conference" by refusing to stabilize the dollar (TIME, July 10 et seq.). In London Mr. Davis called on Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald who was still snorting over what he considered the President's omission to act in currency matters along the line privately agreed upon when Scot MacDonald visited the White House (TIME, May 8). If the Geneva Disarmament Conference is to make progress Mr. MacDonald must feel confident that this time he and Mr. Roosevelt know each other's minds without possibility of misunderstanding. Last week Ambassador Davis was said to have brought Scot MacDonald a personal letter written in longhand by the President. After chatting at Downing Street, he crossed the Channel to Paris, dropped in on Premier Edouard Daladier who also blames the President for the wreck of the London Conference, and sought to soothe the Frenchman with a cheery verbal message from Mr. Roosevelt. These chores done, Mr. Davis proceeded to sit in at Paris on disarmament parleys with British Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon, French Foreign Minister Joseph Paul-Boncour and Italian Ambassador Count Pignatti-Morano Di Custoza. The French thesis, vehemently presented by shaggy, voluble M. Paul-Boncour, is that French spies have obtained ample proof that Germany is secretly rearming in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, that only by setting up an international authority for inspection and control of European armaments can any progress toward disarmament be made. Sir John Simon, after consulting the British Cabinet, found them agreeable "in principle" to international arms supervision; but he, Mr. Davis and Count Pignatti-Morano Di Custoza emphasized that such supervision must be met by some reduction in the preponderant military strength of France. Press spokesmen for the French Government insisted that this marked a four-power meeting of minds of immense significance. Premier Edouard Daladier called a special meeting of the French Cabinet at Rambouillet to discuss the precise measures of disarmament France might be prepared to take in return for the security resulting from international arms control. Meanwhile restive Paris newspapers raised the bugaboo of Germany's threat last year to withdraw from and wreck the Disarmament Conference unless granted "equality of armaments" (TIME, Aug. 1, 1932). Chancellor Hitler--cartooned by Paris Aux Ecoutes as a hawk with swastika talons hovering over the Disarmament Conference dovecote from which peep Chairman Arthur Henderson, Premier MacDonald and M. Paul-Boncour (see cut)--was said to be ready to press the same threat again. Anxiously Mr. Davis, Sir John and M. Paul-Boncour hurried to Geneva where they were joined by Il Duce's handyman in foreign affairs, Baron Pompeo Aloisi, and began negotiations with Germany's Foreign Minister Baron von Neurath and Minister of Propa ganda Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels when they arrived from Berlin. Officially the Disarmament Conference will not reconvene in Geneva until Oct. 18, but unofficially it began with the arrival of the "Big Five" last week. Ostensibly they came to attend a routine session of the League Assembly, but proceeded virtually to ignore it and negotiate at high pressure in their hotels. Indiscreet, a member of M. Paul-Boncour 's staff blabbed to correspondents what scores of highly-placed Frenchmen think but dare not say: "Unless the Conference succeeds, France and Poland will have to launch against Germany a preventive war."

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