84. Today in 1920s Turkey: 11 May 1925 (Conference of the Weapons)
Türkçe
Harb-i Umumi zan etmeyiniz, tahrir-i teselliyat komisyonu!English
Don’t be mistaken, this is not a World War, it is a consolations commission!
Comments:
Today’s cartoon presents a recognizable scene cast with many familiar “characters” and therefor legible to the broadest possible audience. Crowded around a rectangular table are nine, armed, saber-rattling men yelling over one another. Each man represents a member of the League of Nations and a participating party from World War I. Included are personifications of Turkey, the United States (“Uncle Sam”), Britain (“John Bull”), Russia, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, and Greece. Among the many weapons present are sabers, handguns, rifles, bayonets, bombs, cannons, battle ships, and daggers. So numerous are the weapons that they break the cartoon’s frame — a detail that alludes to physical aggression and territorial transgression.
The text below the cartoon focuses our attention on the contradiction highlighted by the cartoonist. While recognizing that the scene appears warlike, he assures us that this scene merely depicts an airing of grievances. This image most certainly refers to a current event from the news. And in fact, on 4 May 1925, a week prior to this publication, the world witnessed the League of Nation’s first international conference on limiting arms: the Geneva Arms Conference held in Switzerland. As a result, a month later, in June 1925 the participating major world powers agreed to no longer use poisonous gasses (which were used during WWI) during warfare.
The 1925 meeting was technically a preparatory conference for the official World Disarmament Conference held between 1930 and 1937, which ultimately bore few fruits before the advent of WWII. Overall, the conference was a failure and achieved little, for instance, in preventing the onset of WWII and the arms race that preceded it in the Interwar Period. As the above cartoon points out, this should not come as a surprise as one cannot expect the same warmongers who brought about WWI to also somehow bring about peace.
Originally published at https://steemit.com on May 11, 2017.
