ABSTRACT
In the years immediately following First World War, considerable efforts were spent in the search for devices to preserve world peace. The 1922 Washington Treaty established limits for the size of individual capital ships and aircraft carriers, and set a definite ratio of tonnages of such types of ships among the signatory countries. At the second naval conference, held in London in 1930, attempts were made to extend the provisions of the 1922 Washington Treaty to include additional naval craft. The most important part of the London Treaty applied only to the America, Great Britain and Japan. An early attempt to regulate the international trade in arms was made in the General Act for the repression of African slave trade, the so-called Brussels Act, signed in 1890. The Secretariat of the League of Nations began in 1924 to publish the Armaments Year-book on the strength and equipment of states’ armed forces, based on public sources.
