Preparations, Policies and Personalities

Abstract

In 1930 the League of Nations Preparatory Commission which had first assembled in May 1926, finally fulfilled the task for which it had been created. The Draft Disarmament Convention was intended to be the basis from which the World Disarmament Conference would negotiate an international disarmament agreement. However, despite the years of labour, the Convention satisfied no-one. It had never been the intention that it would define actual figures, but the compromises which had been made in its formulation ensured that it could hardly even form the basis for discussion. Anthony Eden observed that it failed to propose specific limitations on anyone but Germany,1 and the contemporary analyst John Wheeler-Bennett commented that ‘[it] gave as much satisfaction to a weary and waiting world as did the Red Queen’s dry biscuit to a tired and thirsty Alice in Wonderland’.2 The British Foreign Office clearly recognized the significance of the Draft Convention: The completion of the work of the Preparatory Committee and the fixing of the date of the Disarmament Conference bring us right up against it. Let no-one blame the Preparatory Committee. It as spun out its work for 5 years or more: without that rather astonishing feat of procrastination, the crisis would have been on us before now.3