The United States Navy

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22305, 20 January 1938, Page 10

The United States Navy

It is not at all surprising that United States naval leaders should be pressing President and Congress for the increased naval appropriations to carry an expanded building programme. The international stage is set perfectly for such demands; and when the Chief of Naval Operations tells the Appropriations Committee of the House of Representatives that conditions in Europe and the Far East make it “ impossible to “ restrict defence without jeopardising national “ security ” he uses a modest formula. But it is as clever as it is modest, for it suggests that the United States has been pursuing some policy of restriction, which it is necessary now to abandon. The fact is, on the contrary, that no navy has been more favoured by the post-war treaties and none has been built into a more favourable position, under the usual comparative tests. At the beginning of last year, for example, the United States had afloat 15 battleships, 26 cruisers, 182 destroyers, and 80 submarines. Great Britain had 12 battleships, 56 cruisers, 148 destroyers, and 55 submarines. Japan had nine battleships, 40 cruisers, 97 destroyers, and 61 submarines. The United States was building two battleships (Great Britain five), 12 cruisers (Great Britain 27, Japan five), 54 destroyers (Great Britain 49, Japan 20), and 17 submarines (Great Britain 21, Japan 10). The Washington treaty “yardstick** was cut to an American length; and the application of the principle of parity with the British Navy, under the Vinson-Trammell Acts, assured the United States of continuous development, old tonnage being steadily replaced by new. The construction and reconstruction programmes that have been carried out make the American fleet of capital ships the most powerful in the world, the cruiser strength is in somd respects also superior to that of any other naval power, and the aircraft-carrier division is easily the world’s best. If the American naval leaders’ desire is attained, even the parity check of the VinsonTrammell Acts on naval expansion will disappear; and if it does, it can hardly be doubted that American building will be set to a standard above that of the British naval rearmament programme. Not that this will trouble, or ought to trouble, the authors of British naval policy: that L, not directly. But in so far as American expansion stimulates (or provokgs) expansion in other navies, it may be impossible for Great Britain to resist the pressure towards further expansion. This is an unhappy prospect. There lies across it, moreover, the shadow of the fact that American admirals and “ big navy campaigners have been outstandingly unreliable as witnesses in their own oause. Professor

Charles Beard, the author of “ The Rise of American Civilisation,” published a few years ago a work on the American navy, the effect of which was to discredit one naval expert after another by putting on record their testimony at official inquiries or before Congressional committees. Admiral Jones, for example, laid it down that it was “vital” for the safety of the United States that three more eight-inch gun cruisers should be built; but he had forgotten the written evidence, a year earlier, in which he argued the superiority of the six-inch gun because of its greater firing rapidity. During the Great War the submarine building programme was entirely recast for no better reason than that Rear-Admiral Kimball, commanding the submarine division, had picked up the reports of an American boy of Ifi, who had served for a short time on a German submarine and had two photographs of its deck. No doubt Admiral Leahy, the Chief of Naval Operations, has a case which cannot be completely summarised in the formuia about “ conditions more “ threatening than at any time since 1913”; but since his plea is for freedom and authority to build beyond the tremendously high level which will now be set by parity with the British Navy, it is to be hoped that the case for it will be thoroughly tested—with the thoroughness of such sceptical realists as, in the “ threatening “ conditions,” may survive on the Naval Affairs Committee and the Appropriations Committee. For it is quite certain that, i ' the Vinson-Tram-mell check is removed and American building accelerated to a pace exceeding that of British rearmament, both in Europe and the Far East the armaments race will enter a new and more costly and more dangerous phase.