The Race Begins

For 17 months the Japanese, the Italian, the Frenchman, the Englishman, the Indian and the two Poles who make up the League's Technical Committee of the Commission on National Defense Expenditure of the Disarmament Conference have been meeting several times each week in an effort to find out just how much money the world spends on armaments. So pleasant did they find each other's company that one weekly meeting was converted into a Beer Club. Last week they published their report and sadly blew the froth off a final meeting. Seventeen months of effort could produce no authoritative figures later than 1931, when the world spent about $6,000,000,000 for guns, warships, tanks, poison gas, airplanes, bombs and bullets of every variety. And even for that year many small nations would submit no complete documentation of their military expenses. A full meeting of the entire Disarmament Conference is called for the end of May, but the beer-drinking technicians knew last week that disarmament was dead as Queen Anne, that another great international race to rearm was well under way.

Disarmament's headstone last week was a bulky 7,000-word White Paper from the British Government which detailed solemnly and without comment Disarmament's faltering steps into its grave since that day last October when Hitlerite Germany withdrew from the Conference and announced its withdrawal from the League rather than wait until 1938 to attain arms equality with France (TIME, Oct. 23). Eight documents paralleled the following events:

Oct. 21. Germany formally withdraws from the League.

Nov. 22. Disarmament Conference formally adjourns.

Jan. 1, 1934. France replies to a secret note from Germany, offering to cut her army (607,000 men) during the next few-years and make a 50% reduction in aircraft, providing other nations do likewise.

Jan. 19. Germany replies to the French note, rejecting the French offer and demanding immediate disarmament from France. Deadlock.

Jan. 31. Acting individually Great Britain and Italy offer separate plans to break the deadlock, which would allow a certain amount of rearmament by Germany. The Italian plan would limit the new German army to 300,000 men. The British plan offers a compromise of 250,000 men but goes further than the Italian in calling for the abolition of offensive weapons. Both plans are quietly rejected by France and Germany.

Feb. 16. Handsome, dapper Capt. Anthony Eden, Lord Privy Seal of Britain, and White Hope of the Foreign Office, is sent to Paris, Berlin, and Rome to explain in private conversations the advantages of the British Plan for the peace of Europe. Berlin and Rome are cordial, but the newly installed Doumergue cabinet in Paris refuses to budge. Before France will agree to any disarmament she insists that international control over Germany's rearmament be installed, that Nazi Storm Troops and other semimilitary bodies be dissolved.

March 13. Germany denies the military nature of her Storm Troops, but says that she is willing to accept international military supervision, providing all nations do likewise.

April 14. Spain, Holland, Denmark, Norway. Switzerland and Sweden send a joint message advocating limited reduction of armaments for heavily armed powers, moderate rearmament for the rest.

April 16. Germany sends a note to Britain demanding the right to an air force of short-range planes (excluding bombers) not to exceed 30% of the combined air forces of Germany's neighbors, or 50% of the French air force (2,286 planes) at once, and full air equality with Germany's neighbors to begin after five years. To the world's alarm, Germany's 1934 budget adds some 40% to her army appropriation, triples the 1933 outlay for air defenses -- an increase of 352,000,000 marks in all.

April 19. France, aroused by the figures in Germany's new budget sends a last stinging note to the British Government.

Nervous about its effect, Foreign Minister Louis Barthou brought to a cabinet meeting two drafts of a note to be sent to Britain. After heated debate led by Premier Doumergue, a majority of the Cabinet voted for the stronger message,which a Quai d'Orsay spokesman boiled down to a single sentence : "France realizes the gravity of her act, but henceforth France will not disarm to the extent of a single gun as long as Germany continues to rearm." It was necessary for France to repair her military alliances. Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia--the Little Entente--had already approved the note to Britain, but Poland was wobbly. Foreign Minister Barthou hopped a train for Warsaw to see what he could do to bring Poland back into line.

It took no flaming headlines to convince the rest of the world that the international armament race was on in earnest.

P: Belgium, dodging the expense for over a year, last week decided abruptly to continue across her own territory, right up to the North Sea, the "Maginot Wall" of steel and concrete pillboxes which guards France from the Swiss border to Luxembourg.

P: Neutral Spain voted $11,000,000 for her small navy.

P: Switzerland, aware that she may be the Belgium of the next war, prepared to reorganize her entire army (494 men).

P: Looking over canny Neville Chamberlain's new budget (see below), observers suddenly discovered an unaccounted -L-11,000,000 which may be used for emergency military expenditures without increasing taxation.

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