The article stated: The Members of the League agree that the manufacture by private enterprise of munitions and implements of war is open to grave objections. The Council [of the League] shall advise how the evil effects attendant upon such manufacture can be prevented The Council was instructed to formulate plans for the reduction of arms to be considered and reviewed at least every ten years. Peace advocates interpreted this article as a mandate for disarmament and began to mobilize pressure for the convening of a world disarmament conference to implement the required general reduction of armaments.
The Versailles Treaty prohibited Germany from acquiring what were defined as “aggressive” weapons, including tanks, heavy guns, military aircraft, submarines, large battleships, and poison gas. Peace advocates seized upon this provision of the otherwise despised Versailles agreement. They called for universalizing the ban on aggressive weapons and for actualizing the commitment to disarmament. For liberal opinion disarmament was to be the linchpin of the new era of international cooperation and collective security.
Government leaders had different ideas, however, and had no intention of reducing armament levels. Soon after the guns fell silent officials in London, Tokyo, Washington, and other capitals announced plans to continue naval shipbuilding. In the United States pacifists were incensed when the War Department proposed compulsory military service in 1919 and a major expansion of naval shipbuilding in 1920. The dormant AUAM reawakened and joined with leaders of the women’s movement to build a public campaign for disarmament. Internationalists in the LEP expressed concern that renewed arms build-ups would undermine international cooperation.
Isolationist members of Congress also raised concerns about the federal government’s turn toward militarism so soon after the recent war. Senator William Borah took the lead in proposing an international conference to limit naval shipbuilding. The public response to Borah’s initiative was positive, and support for the proposed disarmament conference increased. Progressives and internationalists lobbied for the conference as a step toward fulfilling the disarmament mandate of the League of Nations, hoping that US leadership in such a conference would improve the prospects for eventual US membership of the League.
Borah and isolationist Republicans in the Senate supported the proposed conference for exactly the opposite reason, as an alternative to the League. In May 1921 the Senate approved Borah’s amendment to the naval appropriations Bill calling on the president to invite other countries to a naval disarmament conference. The Harding administration, initially cool to the proposed conference, bowed to political reality and agreed to invite nine nations to Washington for negotiations, which opened on Armistice Day in November 1921.
The Middle East
