ABSTRACT
The Kellogg-Briand Pact of August 1928 was signed by sixty-five nations who promised to renounce war as an instrument of national policy. A direct and unprovoked attack on France would bring the Locarno Treaty powers, of which Britain was one, into the conflict. To make a beginning in remedying the lack of searchlights and guns, it proposed that, over the next five years, 1,730,000 be spent to provide adequate defence against a Germany equal in air strength to France. Technical developments in aircraft increased the importance of defence in depth, and the extreme vulnerability of London made it all the more necessary that Germany be prevented from establishing air bases in the Low Countries. In a debate on imperial defence several days later the subject of an expeditionary force came in for frequent comment.
