ABSTRACT
The Preparatory Commission for the Disarmament Conference had suspended its sixth session in May 1929 primarily in order to allow progress through private discussions among the chief naval powers. Decisions on policy were postponed, however, as the naval conference convened and the energies of Cecil and the Foreign Office were swallowed by preparations for the meetings of the Committee of Eleven and the Committee on Arbitration and Security. The continuation of the adjourned sixth session of the Preparatory Commission for the Disarmament Conference opened in Geneva on 6 November 1930. The belief in the Foreign Office had in fact been that the Preparatory Commission would meet again in early 1930, and hence that Britain had to be ready. Derogations from the disarmament convention were allowed during its lifetime if ‘a change of circumstances’ constituted in the opinion of any state ‘a menace to its national security’.
