7 DECEMBER 1925
Sir Austen Chamberlain and Mr Amery have arrived in Geneva for the meeting of the League Council. The most urgent matters on the agenda are the Graeco Bulgarian frontier dispute and the Mosul question.
The German Cabinet has resigned, a step which Dr Luther, the Chancellor, had stated would be taken after the signature of the Locarno Treaties. President von Hindenburg has accepted the Government’s resignation, and has requested the Chancellor to conduct the country’s affairs until a new Cabinet has been formed.
In his annual report to President Coolidge, Mr Dwight F. Davis, the United States Secretary of War, declares that the present strength of the Army is inadequate and an increase in personnel necessary. Stress is laid on the strategic importance of the Panama Canal, and a ten years’ programme for the increase of its defenders is foreshadowed, as is also a programme for the defence of Oahu.
Mr Lloyd George addressed a meeting at Coventry upon his land proposals, and said they were not submitted as tables of the law immutable. He was sanguine that at the Liberal Conference today and tomorrow complete agreement would be reached which would permit of the submission of proposals representing the whole body of Liberal opinion in the country. The task of liberation which he was asking the Liberal Party to undertake would do its health good; there was nothing like hard work for curing megrims and tantrums.
Mr de Valera denounces the Irish agreement, accuses Britain of cheating, and adds that now that Irishmen have been found prepared to put their hand to an instrument dismembering the country, his only hope is that the people will not consent to it. Sir James Craig, the North of Ireland Premier, had a great reception at Belfast, and said he hoped that the new agreement might have a lasting effect for the good of all Ireland, Great Britain and the Empire.
Mr A. J. Cook, secretary of the Miners’ Federation, speaking in the Durham coalfields, said we would be face to face during the next twelve months with the greatest economic crisis this country had ever known, a crisis that was going to have great political consequences.
The Executive Council of the Shale Miners’ and Oilworkers’ Association, at a meeting at Bathgate, agreed to recommend acceptance of the new terms of settlement in the shale mines crisis.