BIGGER & FASTER

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 60, 12 March 1937, Page 10

BIGGER & FASTER

NEW BATTLESHIPS

TREATY PROSPECTS

FIRST LORD'S HOPES

(British Official Wireless.) (Received March 12, 2 p.m.)

RUGBY, March 11.

Continuing his speech in the House • of Commons online Naval Estimates, ' the First Lord of the Admiralty (Sir 1 Samuel Hoare) said that five new battleships would be laid clown during • 1937. because, as 12 of the existing 15 were over 20 years old. they would otherwise-be in a position of serious weakness in. face of naval Powers ■ which had been building new battleships for some years. The new battleships would displace about 35,000 tons and would have 14-inch guns, and were designed for a higher speed than any existing British battleship. As to cruisers, the seven new vessels to be laid down this year would bring ' the under-age cruisers up to 53 and 1 the over-age to 23. The over-age cruisers would not be scrapped but ' armed with anti-aircraft guns for ' escort work in the Narrow Seas. i FUTURE OF NAVIES. Sir Samuel Hoare's concluding words were devoted to the future of naval armaments. Was the world entering upon a new race in which sooner or 1 later it would die either of exhaustion or by. self-destruction in a final catastrophe? He refused to accept a viewso fatalistic, recalling that one field in which so far it had been found possible to reach an agreement on limitation ■ was (he naval. There was. the Washington Treaty, though it had not been renewed, the 1930 Treaty, the AngloGerman Naval Agreement, the Protocol on submarine warfare, and lastly there was every hope that the London Treaty of 1936 would be accepted by a sufficient number of Powers for Britain to ratify it. The position was that negotiations were going, on with a number of other Powers with a view to bringing them within the system of the treaty. The main effort of the British' Government had been directed to ,the conclusion of bilateral agreements with Germany and Soviet Russia, but similar negotiations had been proceeding satisfactorily with Denmark. | Finland, Norway, Sweden, Poland, and Turkey. HOPES OF ITALY. As to Italy, he was glad to say that the Italian Government was, ready to make a valuable contribution by its readiness to accept a maximum gun calibre of 14 inches for capital ships, provided the other principal naval Powers did likewise. He hoped, following the Anglo-Italian Declaration reI lating to the Mediterranean, that Italy I would accede before long to the whole Treaty. He "urged the House not to underestimate the value of the 1936 Treaty,' which he believed might be great. It was regrettable that it embodied no direct quantitative limitation, but if the- Treaty- became general they rru'ght nevertheless obviate a . naval race, which could be qualitative as much as quantitative, and past experience showed that .the first was the ; more dangerous. Competition in types i was more expensive and more detrimental to friendly relations between nations than competition in numbers. The 1936 Treaty gave them the chance to avoid a race of new types and sizes, j and he was not. unhopeful of the future. '