Evening Post. FRIDAY DECEMBER 16, 1927. NAVAL PARITY PROBLEM

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 145, 16 December 1927, Page 8

Evening Post. FRIDAY DECEMBER 16, 1927. NAVAL PARITY PROBLEM

The perilous competition in naval armaments filled a very large space in our cable news yesterday, and not a line, of it contains a grain of corntort for the British Empire. In. a speech at Newcastle Lord Grey who, unlike the leader of his party, is above the suspicion of exploiting international difficulties in .the interests of party propaganda, made a very unpleasant statement regarding the failure of the Three-Power Conference at Geneva. From his general remark that "there has been a most disastrous mishandling of the whole Anglo-American naval problem" few would, take the responsibility of dissenting. But it is distressing to find him putting, if not the whole, at any rate a very large share of the blame upon the British Government. :

If, he says> Britain during- the Disarmament Conference had only said: "We want small cruisers and do not mind how many 10,000-tonncrs the "United States built," the Conference would not liaise failed. If Britain had been prepared to ac-cept-that position there would, so far as the Eriglish-speakihg Powers were ' concernedj have been no failure of the Conference by disagreement, but that it would have failed in its capital objecfe of establishing parity between these two Powers seems to be equally ,clear. The . clash which wrecked the Conference originated in the proposal of the United States to Secure, parity,by the,limitation of die aggregate tonnage, ©f the ships of each class, v;For cruisers the, limits were to be 250,000 to 300,000 tons for the British Empire and the United States and 150,000 to 180,000 for Japan. 'The British objection that the effect of this aggregate parity would be;.to put the.Empire in a position of.actual inferiority prevented ihe acceptance jofthei American; scheme. Compromise., proved .impossible, and the result was a fiasco. ",.

That the British contention was soundly based upon the needs of our widely-scattered Empire and the inevitable effect of an aggregate tonnage limit seems to be beyond reasonable, challenge. The immense mileageof/Britain's trade routes and her dependence upon sea-borne food make-a large number of'small cruisers'for :the"purposes,'not of aggression but' of protection, an absolute necessity of her existence. Not having the same need for small vessels, but desiring especially to extend the effective range of her fleet in the Pacific, America would naturally allocate her quota to the construction of the largest cruisers that the '.Wasliihgj;onL'T^aval' Treaty permits. It was-for this reason that the American delegation opposed the British proposals to limit the number of these cruisers and reduce their size below the Washington limit of 10,000 tons which makes them very formidable weapons of attack.

The deadlock, as the "Round Table" said, was due to the impossibility of reconciling the needs of parity and seeurityVi-M:'the^cruiser class, between two PowersSsQi-utterlyvdifferent in their needs/asd'geographicaT situation as the Bri,tish>Empire and the. United States. Had Britain accepted the aggregate tonnage limit the : : ; deadlock would have/been resolved, but at a very heavy price. Whiie she continued to maintain a large fleet of small cruis-"erS::-for;:the protection of her trade; routes^ concentration °n the larger vessels' would have given America the supremacy in battle strength.

. That Britain, which at the Washington Conference accepted the principle of equality with the United States in battle fleets, should have accepted at Geneva a position of inferiority is certainly a startling contention. Deserted by the Dominions, which ever since the War have always been ready with their sympathy but never with their help, and which are still glorying in their recently declared right to remain in the Empire as- passengers or to bredifc away at their convenience, Britain may some day bedforced into*that position, and it will'■be no solace to her that the Dominions may be;• worse sufferers from: the change than herself. The rate at which things are moving makes it possible mat that, evil day is not far ..off, but surely the-British Government cannot be blamed for declining at a Conference convened for the promotion of parity, to be manoeuvred into a periloiis disparity. It is easy, for Lord Grey to blame them, for he sees no peril in disparity but in the attempt to avoid it. In an Armistice Day comment on Anglo-American naval rivalry he made this quite clear.

The longer the idea of parity between the British and American fleets continues, he said, the more difficult the situation will grow. It will result in tha two nations building against ono another even if they are not doing so now.

If parity is not an ideal worth striving for, the procedure both of the Washington and of the Geneva Conferences was surely based upon a dangerous misconception. In his Newcastle speech Lord Grey has at

any rate carried the matter no further than he had on Armistice Day, for he had already gone the full length.

Before the War, Lord Grey points out in his Armistice Day utterance, Britain's naval programmes took no account of the United States naw.

What reason, he asks, has arisen since the AVar "to make us regard war against the United States as a contingency? The answer is supplied by a phase of the Great War itself of which Lord Groy has as intimate a knowledge as any man living. The British blockade of Germany came within measurable distance of bringing America into the war -on Germany's side. America thought that her commerce was being unjustly damaged. The reason is touched by Mr. Wickham Steed in the "Review of Reviews" a propos of Britain's reluctance to accept compulsory arbitration.

Our frontiers, he writes, "are the sea. Hitherto we have not admitted that our acts at sea can'be rightly judged save in accordance with British Maritime Law. The Americans have a Maritime Law of their own which differs in some important points from ours, and there is a body of legal doctrine called International Maritime Law. Obviously we cannot bind ourselves in advance to submit to arbitration any maritime question without knowing which law the arbitrators would administer; but is there not a stroTig^ prima facie case .for seeking to promote an international agreement upon Maritime Law so that we may know where we stand?

Britain's relations both to the United States and to the League of Nations would be much, improved, and the obstacles to disarmament greatly diminished, if such agreement could be reached.