of a four-power pact between Great Britain, France, Italy
 
and Germany, with a guarantee that, if any one of the
 
four powers undertook to commit any new act of aggression,
 
the other three powers would immediately combine to take
 
act ion against the offending power.
 
         I said to the Minister that in the event that such
 
negotiations were undertaken I wondered if he would not
 
find that far more than that was required, and by that I 
 
said I meant an agreement upon measures of real disarma-
 
ment, and a satisfactory measure of international control
 
of offensive types of aviation, as well as the control
 
and the destruction of Certain categories of other offens-
 
ive armaments. The Minister immediately said that he
 
quite agreed that such a step could and should be taken.
 
         I said that one of the great difficulties of the past
 
twenty years had been that when attempts at disarmament
 
had been made, they had been made at periods when nations 
 
were tired, when their moral muscles were flabby, and when 
 
they had permitted questions of alleged national honor,
 
prestige, and the prejudices of military and naval authori-
 
ties to rise as obstacles to the attainment of any real
 
practical disarmament. Perhaps, I said, the brink of the
 
precipice upon which they were now palsod might prove to
 
be an incentive to all peoples to strive towards a real
 
and actual disarmament, and the means of practical security
 
which that alone could afford.
 
     The Minister told me that during his conversation
 
with Ribbentrop in Rome, Ribbentrop had spoken of Stalin
 
as of a second Christ; that Ribbentrop had said that his
 
conversations with Stalin in Moscow had been the greatest
 
                              experience