NAVAL CONFERENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 151, 23 December 1935, Page 9

NAVAL CONFERENCE

TALKS IN LONDON

POINTS CLEARED UP

WORK FOE THE FUTURE

(British Official Wireless.) I (Received December 23, noon.) j RUGBY, December 22. j The Naval Conference has adjourned over Christmas until January 6, and newspapers comment on the progr/Ess so far made in the , discussions, the complexity and difficulty of which are universally recognised. "The Times" thinks the progress has not been urir satisfactory. "The discussions have cleared up the meaning of certain proposals which appeared very uncertain even in the minds of the Japanese themselves," "The Times" states.

The Conference then went on to examine the British proposals, and when it reassembles it will hear the American proposals. These all relate to quantitative limitation, and "The Times" agrees that it is right to take this aspect first, since it is one likely to present the greatest • difficulty and require the. greatest effort of mutual understanding and conciliation. But it is dependent partly on qualitative factors, to the consideration of which the Conference will proceed at a later stage. Relationship is important, moreover, for "The Times" thinks that a quantitative agreement which was not also qualitative would be scarcely worth making. The converse is not necessarily true. There is a large body of opinion which holds that if low enough maximum limits' could be fixed for individual battleships, cruisers, and other types of vessels that would remove the most expensive and the most irritating factor of naval competition. ' ' .

"The' Times" ,notes finally: "Apart from these questions of. actual naval limitation, the Conference will have to frame a general agreement presenting the regulations for the conduct of submarine war on'the lines of those in the London Agreement, w.hich has been accepted .by Great * Britain, America, and Japan, and .which both France.and Italy have declared themselves ready, to adopt." ' . The naval correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph". refers to the rumours to which informal bilateral discussions between the delegates have given-rise that something in the nature of a clandestine* agreement "or the formation of "common fronts" were beins arranged. Sucli rumours can be denied ontxisht. *