ABSTRACT
The idea of disarmament was seriously put forward after the First World War, and was embodied in the Peace Treaty and in the Covenant of the League of Nations. Germany was disarmed by the terms of the treaty and other powers undertook to negotiate among themselves to reduce armaments eventually to the same level. The only semblance of progress towards this goal was made by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 by which the United States, Britain, Japan, France and Italy agreed to a fixed ratio in capital ships. Of this Treaty, Professor Frederick Schuman says 'Success was due to the fact that none of the participants at the time had any political purpose to serve by establishing its naval superiority over any of the others, and that all of them had both a political and a financial interest in stabilizing armaments at existing levels.'2 Nevertheless, subsequent efforts to extend the agreement to smaller ships collapsed and the effects of the treaty on naval disarmament were neither significant nor long-lived. In compliance with provisions of the Peace Treaty a Disarmaments Commission was set up under League auspices in 1925 and continual conferences sat in ensuing years, but nothing was achieved and the World Disarmament Conference, which had convened in 1932, finally adjourned in 1934 having been torpedoed by the advent of Hitler and the clear decision of Britain and France to re-arm.
