§ 49. Captain GARRO-JONESasked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the fact that the Geneva Conference is attempting to deal only with the reduction and limitation of armaments and not with methods of warfare and of the menace to urban populations in Europe of indiscriminate attack from the air, he will initiate proposals for the stricter regulation of methods of aerial warfare?
§ The PRIME MINISTERWhilst His Majesty's Government are fully alive to the potential horrors of air warfare and to the desirability of its stricter regulation, I think it would he inadvisable to complicate further the difficult issues already before the Geneva Conference by initiating at this juncture discussion of the very intricate problems involved, and that such action would he likely to retard rather than assist progress in disarmament. I may add that the regulation of methods of air warfare was considered by an International Commission of Jurists and a code of rules drawn up at The Hague in 1923.