File 1355/1917 Pt 1 ‘Peace Settlement- The Arms Traffic Convention 1919’ [‎257r] (518/600)

No. 9G of 1917.
GOVERNMENT OF INDIA.
FOREIGN AND POLITICAL DEPARTMENT.
SECRET. EXTERNAL.
To the Right Honourable EDWIN MONTAGU,
His Majesty's Secretary of State for India.
Delhi,
Sir, 21st December 191
We have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your predecessor’s
Secret Despatch No. 13, dated the 20th April 1917, inviting our criticisms or
suggestions on the report of the Sub-Committee appointed by the Prime
Minister to consider the question of the arms traffic after the war.
2. We have read the Sub-Committee’s report with deep interest and
much profit. We are at one with them in viewing the danger of a widely
extended arms traffic as a result of -the war with grave concern, and have no
hesitation in endorsing the general tenor of their recommendations regarding
the manner in which that danger should be faced.
3. In particular we endorse their recommendation that the whole
question of the future control of the arms traffic should be raised at the
Peace Conference as a high moral issue, and that a strenuous endeavour
should be made to negotiate an International Convention on the lines they
suggest. But like them we are,under no illusions as to the permanent value
of any International Convention, however skilfully framed, unless it is backed
by the sanction either of self-interest or the reprobation of the civilised
world. In the arms traffic the interests of the different Powers, where they
do not directly conflict, are so unequally divided and in the nature of things
so liable to change with territorial and other international readjustments, that
although it is doubtless a wise instinct to enlist the powerful aid of self-
interest wherever possible, it seems Utopian to hope to find the final solution
to the problem in any elaborate balancing of interests. It may seem more
Utopian still to seek it in the awakening of the civilised conscience; but if
this most difficult problem admits of any permanent solution at all, it is only
here that it is to be found.
4. Moreover, the success that attended the campaign against the abolition
of slavery in the last century encourages the hope that it is not altogether
visionary to look for success from a campaign for the abolition of this
iniquitous trafficking in arms among uncivilised peoples. Never before,
perhaps, has the time been so ripe for such a campaign. The war is already
and increasingly stirring the conscience of the world to its depths : it is not
merely that the horrors of war are imprinting themselves on the world ; the
-moral sense of the world is being kindled by the high moral issues which
the Allies have proclaimed as their goal; and in the reaction that will set in
when peace is at last declared, not the least powerful or enduring of the
emotions dominating the world will be, we cannot but hope, an abhoiienceof
any removable cause calculated to lead to a renewal of bloodshed and a
passionate desire to uproot it. If this be true, then the impelling need of
the moment is to bring the world to a full consciousness of the evils wrought
by this arms traffic among savage and semi-savage peoples and of the great
danger to which it exposes the peace of the world. We earnestly urge,
therefore, that no time should be lost in inaugurating a widespread campaign
against' it, in an endeavour to rouse so great a volume of public opinion m
all civilised countries as shall render it impossible for any civilised
Government to connive at or tolerate it.
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