FREEDOM OF THE SEAS.

Evening Star, Issue 20315, 25 October 1929, Page 8

FREEDOM OF THE SEAS.

Like tiie late Marshal Haig, Mr Hoover says little. It is the rarest thing for him to bo moved to any emotional utterance. One might almost imagine the conversations between Mr Ramsay MacDonald and him as a series of impassioned suggestions on the one side and of nods on the other. There is a glow, however, in the reference which the President has made to a saving of four million pounds—half the cost of a battleship—a year conceivably to be made, for the benefit of internal development, as the result of an agreement for naval limitation. “Nothing,” ho declared, “could bo a finer or more vivid example of tho conversion of swords to ploughshares.” That the preliminary naval conversions have not been unproductive wc have Mr Hoover’s word as well as Mr MacDonald's. But we have not heard of any understanding being reached on tho subject of “ freedom ol tho seas,” which really underlies, or may underlie, the whole discussion. It is taken for granted by America’s correspondents that it was not burked by tho world leaders. Information goes no further than that. In those circumstances special interest attaches to a despatch which was sent from Washington to Chicago a fortnight before the talks at the fishing camp by an American who has his finger on the pulso of most things, Mr Edward Price Bell. It was sent on from Chicago to British and other papers ns being of “extraordinary interest to all nations, especially to naval nations,” and it deals with this question. Mr Bell is a journalist who is as> veil known in Great Britain as in America. He has made it his business to be tho interpreter of each nation to tho other, and, somewhat in tho maimer of Colonel House in a more exciting period, by tactful interviews with • persons of importance, and also by his pen, to smooth out differences as they have threatened to arise. He was for over twenty years the European manager of tho foreign service of tho Chicago ‘ Daily News,’ and he has a reputation for correct prophesying to keep up, since ho was tho author of what are known as tho “ six letters ” U. ‘ The Tiroes,’ definitely foretelling America’s entry into fcho war. Mr Bell writes; “ The ‘ freedom of the seas ’ denotes a question concerning which two important statements safely may be made now. They are, first, that America’s traditional doctrine relative to tho matter is likely to be reversed; second, that this probable event will demand a thorough international review of tho world naval situation.” America’s doctrine, as wo have shown before, has been followed when she has been at peace and abandoned as often as she has been at war. This “ glaring inconsistency,” Mr Bell affirms, “does not sit well in the consideration ot statesmen who can think and who are honest. They want the msitioi regularised. They want '.mcricn to I- > intelligent in her raval theories am s .raightfenvard in her applied n of them.” What fellows r America is a naval ration much more than it is a military one. Mr Bell has no doubt that its new naval policy will bo that of a nation which, because it has its own battleships, and a lot of them, docs not want oceanic immunity in war. Mr,;

MacDonald wants complete “ freedom of the seas” for peaceful peoples—but only for euch. Tho full power of navies would naturally be used against the transgressors of international covenants meant to ensure peace, as President Wdsoi' in his time contemplated. And these covenants have been completed now by the Kellogg Pact. Mr Bell goes or. to say • “It is true that neither out people nor our Government has yet definitely declared itself disposed to join in closing the seas against an aggressor—hence a violator of the Briand-Kellogg Pact —but that, one rationally maj assume, is exactly what we now are maintaining a navy to do. . . . The President wants the financial load of navies to bo as light as it can be made prudently. Ho wants also the moral example of naval reduction—and he wants something else. He wants naval strength reduced until by ho stretch of the imagination can it be deemed a menace to the rights and liberties of any nation.” If that lino is taken by Mr Hoover at the naval conference to bo held in London it will be the most promising conference of tho kind that has yet been held.