The Press Thursday, February 13, 1930. Submarines.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19852, 13 February 1930, Page 10

The Press Thursday, February 13, 1930. Submarines.

The discussion of submarines, at a plenary session of the Naval Conference, has revealed no unexpected agreements or unexpected differences. At the Washington Conference in 1921 Gre»t Britain and the United States were for abolishing submarines, France and Japan against. After the conversations between Mr Mac Donald and President Hoover last year, both statesmen said that they hoped for abolition; and it was made plain before the Conference opened that French and Japanese opinion had not changed. Italy has been non-committal. A cablegram to-day shows that this division is exactly maintained, and it offers no sort of prospect that the opposition will give way. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr A. V. Alexander, who presented the British case, frankly recognised this in his statement that, if the Powers could not agree to abolish submarines, Great Britain would work to secure their limitation in size and number, and would accept the lowest " possible limits "; and on Mr MacDonald's suggestion the First Com? mittee of the Conference is to consider the French motion for an international agreement binding the use of submarines by the same laws as surface ships, and the American motion asking for a report on abolition, legal regulation, and limitation in si?e and number. It would be idle to expect anything more fruitful from the Committee than some recommendations on the two last points. A compromise on limitation, which it seems reasonable to expect, would of course fall regrettably short of what Great Britain hap the best of reasons for desiring; but it would not mean that the hope of abolishing submarines need be given up. Most of the results the Conference is working towards are no inore than interim agreements and first steps, preparing the way to more confident movement in a few years' time, when the effects of present decisions will be studied, and, it is hoped, found wholly good. Limitation is something, and, if agreed on promptly, jnay facilitate other agreements; for

while submarines remain subject to no

restrictions, it is difficult or impossible to limit their enemies, destroyers; and "Whatever obstructs the limitation of destroyers also obstructs the limitation of light cruisers; and ao on. But limitation now is acceptable to British opinion only as a partial gain. Great Britain has of course most reason to

fear the underwater arm, the power of

which, ruthlessly exerted, nearly defeated her in the Great War; and these fears are too real to be soothed by signatures to a promise of strictly legal conduct of submarine warfare. The British vjew, it may be admitted, is one of self-interest, but of vital selfinterest; the Freneh view is severely pjsflptioftl. Submarines are cheap, and they help to jredress an inevitable inferiority in surface vessels. But their possession does not really secure prance, as their abolition would help to secure Great Britain; and the British contention that submarines are weapons of oijenpe, if not wholly true, is much truer than the French contention that j they are defensive weapons. But

thfl opinion of the ordinary man, which may be mQi'e effective than those of experts in the end, is heavily influenced hy hia knowledge of the way the submarine has struck and may strike again, if it is not abolisjied. It is not en-

tirely rational to single out the submarine as an inhuman weapon, when modern warfare cannot be waged Without inhumanity, being the warfare q£ peoples rather than of armies and navies \ but the fact remains that no other weapon lias esq lent itself to the deliberate searching out of commerce, neutrals, and civilians fpr attack. The emotion which protests against even the possibility of its contipued use is a generous emotion, and, though it protests against a particular instrument

of barbarity in ws.r rather than against war's total barbarity, it is a force on the right side.