The Disarmament Conference, 1933

Report Outline
Third Session of the Disarmament Conference
Equality and Security; Disarmament or Rearmament
The Macdonald Plan for Reduction of Armaments
Security and the Supervisions of Arms Reduction
Special Focus

Third Session of the Disarmament Conference

The Disarmament Conference, which began on February 2, 1932, will reconvene at Geneva on October 16, 1933, for its third, and probably its last, session. The third session will have the task of drafting a disarmament treaty for adherence by the fifty-four nations participating in the conference. Failure at this session to obtain a treaty acceptable to all the great powers will be tantamount to an abandonment, after fifteen years, of the purpose set out in the Treaty of Versailles to bring about a “general limitation of the armaments of all nations.”

Norman H. Davis, American ambassador at large, told the Disarmament Conference at its last session, in his notable speech of May 22, 1933:

The states of the world must either go forward in good faith to carry out in all its implications the disarmament policy adopted in 1919 or we must recognize frankly that this policy has been abandoned and reconcile ourselves to reverting to a race in competitive armament. If the latter course is taken the consequences are inevitable. Sooner or later there will be the breakdown of the peace machinery which has been so laboriously built up since 1918 and the world will be swept into another war.