6%, 10% & 17% v. Howls

When a new armament policy was launched by His Majesty's Government last week its clean-cut, realistic details were obscured by howls from beyond the Rhine.

Facts are that in London the National Government is faced by a monster straw poll in which 2,000,000 of His Majesty's subjects have voted by latest returns 92% for arms reduction by the British Empire, 86% for abolition of its military aircraft.

Since the British electorate also appears to favor Labor, which in turn explicitly favors unilateral British armament reduction and giving India her freedom; and since Labor has a fine fighting chance to win the next General Election, members of the National Government, as moderate Conservatives, felt last week that what seemed to them popular folly must be resisted to the last. In the teeth of the pinko-pacifist straw vote, his Majesty's Government hurled before the House of Commons defense budget estimates providing in the coming fiscal year 6% more money for the Navy, 10% more for the Army and 17% more for the Royal Air Force.

These budgetary estimates were accompanied by a White Paper signed with the Prime Minister's initials J. R. M. Excerpts:

"The main fleet is the basis upon which our naval strategy rests, but the cover it can provide is rarely complete, and it may always be expected that detached enemy units may evade the main fleet and carry out sporadic attacks on territories and trade. To deal with these attacks, considerable numbers of cruisers are required over and above those forming part of the main fleet.

"In the main fleet the capital ship is the essential element upon which the whole structure of our naval strategy depends. The age of our battleships renders it necessary to commence their replacement at an early date, but the extent of new construction would be subject to any agreement reached at the forthcoming naval conference.

"The advent of an air attack in its present form was unforeseen when our existing battleships were designed, but their anti-aircraft armament is being increased to enable them to perform their primary function.

"The strength of the Navy, fixed by the Washington and London naval treaties, is due for reconsideration this year. Divergencies in national points of view have developed since the negotiations of those treaties, as evidenced by the recent notice of Japan to terminate the Washington treaty and by the programs effected and contemplated by some European powers. It is the hope of the Government to secure an arrangement that will avoid competition in naval armaments whilst leaving us free to maintain the fleet at the strength necessary for our absolute requirements.

"Bases, fueling stations of the fleet and harbors where merchant ships are loading and unloading require defenses against seaborne and air attack. At the present time the defenses of our ports need modernizing. The Army estimates, besides providing for improving and installation of coast defenses on a considerable scale, make provision for a large expansion of anti-aircraft defenses. In addition, the Army requires to be modernized." It was this almost weak White Paper, brimful of readiness to cooperate with any nation sincerely willing to disarm, at which howls arose from beyond the Rhine. Howled also His Majesty's officially Loyal Opposition, the pinko-pacifist Labor Party. At first Laborites urged paunchy, pouch-eyed Laborite "Uncle Arthur" Henderson to resign in protest from his moderately lucrative and seemingly permanent post as President of the League of Nations Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments. Then the Party hotheads realized that "Uncle Arthur" needs the money and left resignation "to his discretion." It was a woman, Mrs. Margery Corbett Ashby, a substitute delegate attached by Great Britain to a Conference Commission, who arrived at No. 10 Downing St. and dramatically resigned last week to the P. M. himself.

"Unsafe for Democracy!" Excerpts from the White Paper debate as it began this week, termed by London papers "the most important since the War":

Major Clement Attlee, introducing the Labor Party's motion of censure: "The White Paper amounts to a repudiation of the League of Nations. ... In passing I proclaim the Labor Party's abomination of Hitlerism."

Stanley Baldwin for the National Government: "We stand on no white sheet of repentance because of the White Paper. . . . The world was never more unsafe for democracy than it is today. . . . Great Britain can do much for the Peace of the World by improving her defenses."

Government scored their first point when revered Sir Austen Chamberlain, Nobel Peace Prizeman, ardent exponent of the League of Nations and co-author with Aristide Briand of the Locarno Peace Pact, lent his prestige to the cause of strengthened defenses by moving approval of the White Paper.

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