NAVAL CONFERENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 143, 21 June 1927, Page 9

NAVAL CONFERENCE

OPENING AT GENEVA

ARMS LIMITATION

(British Official Wireless.)

RUGBY, 20th June.

The first sitting of the Naval Conference at Geneva will tako place this afternoon. It is known that the chief British delegate, Mr. W. C. Bridgeman, First Lord of the Admiralty, will propose an important and definite scheme for the limitation of naval armaments. After these proposals are made known, they will be examined and discussed in committee. Great importance is attached to the proceedings, both here and in the Dominions and in India, all of whom are represented by delegates.

The conference is undoubtedly the most important of this kind since that which negotiated the ■Washington Treaty five years ago. At Washington Britain, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy signed a Treaty, fixing the tonnage of capital ships and aircraft carriers that might be laid down and limiting the displacement of cruisers. The ratio then fixed for capital ships and aircraft carriers meant that to each 5 tons of British battleships or aircraft carriers United States was to have 5, Japan 3, and France and Italy 1.75.

Newspaper comment here upon the conference shows a desire that a further stage of naval limitation should be achieved.