The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1929. DISARMAMENT AND PARITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 292, 10 December 1929, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1929. DISARMAMENT AND PARITY.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance. And the good that tee can do.

The Five Powers Naval Conference wliic! is to meet in London next month has a nmnbe of difficult and complicated problems to handh Naturally we are accustomed to regard th question of disarmament mainly from th British point of view, and we include Americ, in our outlook chiefly because of the effort already made to reach a definite understandinj on this subject between Britain and th United States. But the Anglo-American nava difficulty is not, from the European standpoint the only serious question that the Conferenci will discuss, as the controversy now in progres: between France and Italy may remind us. A short time ago Italy officially made ar offer to France to arrange her plans for nava maintenance and development on the basis oJ parity. But M. Briand, though in a sense i pacifist and an internationalist, is far toe patriotic to sacrifice his country's interests and he has very definitely rejected the Italian proposals. The French memorandum points out that it is practically impossible for Italj and France to approach naval parity even tc the same extent as Britain and the United States. For France's navy is now at least 50 per cent stronger than Italy's, and this superiority is fully justified by the difference in their respective needs. France has a great colonial empire and world-wide commerce, and if she were to consent to reduce her navy to the level of Italy's, she would be compelled to neglect some of her most important responsibilities, and while striving to do justice to them she could not maintain her strength on an equality with Italy's in the Mediterranean, where alone her naval power would have political weight and value. These arguments appeal to us with especial force because in their implications they completely justify Britain's claim for special consideration in regard to naval strength as against America. It is difficult to believe that the French naval authorities had not Britain and the United States in view quite as much as France and Italy when they drafted the impressive schedules accompanying the memorandum. These figures show that, if area of territory, length of coastlines and communications and volume of external and seaborne trade be taken into account, the relative naval needs of the Powers would be represented by 100 for Britain, 42 for the United States, 30 for France and 10 for Italy. Thus France claims that her actual requirements justify a navy three times as strong as Italy's, and incidentally she has proved that on the same basis Britain ought to have a navy at least twice as large as the navy of the United Statef.