ANOTHER CONFERENCE

The Prenaratory Commission on Armament Limitation which convened at Geneva last week has adjourned until Spring with the optimistic hope that it may be possible to hold the actual Disarmament Conference before the end of next year.

The important event of the meeting was that Russia has apparently resumed its normal place among nations. This was undoubtedly the only meaning of the speech by M. Litvinoff, who opened the session by outlining a scheme calling for immediate and complete abandonment of all military and naval forces. Such a plan is hopelessly beside the point and was not intended to convince anyone, for the League has definitely decided that disarmament must be on the basis of security, which calls for no more than the reduction of armaments to the minimum needs of each nation. The proposal was boldly put and of course politely sidetracked. But it was not unpremeditated. M. Litvinoff had silenced the Trotzky opposition at home and, at the same time, managed to oppose the League plan in such a way that while openly committed to the most drastic sort of disarmament, Russia may remain outside all security agreements and thus continue to maintain the second largest, perhaps the largest, army-in the world.

Security is the scheme advocated by the lesser nations who are in more constant danger of war, but it relies upon the strength of the powerful, who certainly will not act unless it happens to agree with their immediate as well as their ultimate interests to do so. Nor is any security pact to which America is not a party really capable of enforcement.

In spite of the rapidity with which public opinion is manufactured by the press, the wise say that the fostering of an international spirit must be a gradual affair. The more foolish say that fighting is a natural instinct. But that the permanent peace which the world must have and the strong nationalism which has universal dominion over the human imagination are in complete opposition to one another and that one of them must be abandoned, diplomats either do not see or else do not care to see.