The controversy which has been raised by the letter of
the British Government dated July 5th, rejecting the League's draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance, continues. The Treaty has been violently attacked by the extremists of both the Left and the Right, and this in itself would certainly prejudice the Spectator in favour of it. But we do not think that anyone who studies the text of the Government's letter can fail to be impressed by its objections to the Treaty, at any rate as it stands.- In essence, these objections are that the Treaty attempts to bring about disarmament and general pacification in far too definite, detailed and concrete a manner. The Treaty, with its scheme of general guarantee, super- imposed on a system of regional guarantees, is extremely complicated, and defines exactly the obligations that each State would have both to the other States in its own region of guarantee and to the League as a whole, and it entrusts the Council of the League of Nations with the task of defining who is the aggressor State in any outbreak of hostilities and of mobilizing the armed forces of the other guarantors against it. We agree with Mr. MacDonald's destructive criticism of this scheme. It is at once far too elaborate, ambitious and definite, and we think he is absolutely right in saying that the States involved would not make any appreciable reduction in their armaments on the strength of it.
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