NAVAL ARMAMENTS

Evening Star, Issue 20993, 6 January 1932, Page 7

NAVAL ARMAMENTS

THE COMING CONFERENCE BRITAIN'S PROPOSALS Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright, LONDON, January 5. (Received January G, at 9 a.m.) The 1 Daily Telegraph’s naval correspondent says the British programme to be laid before the Disarmament Conference includes a reduction in the size of battleships from 35,000 tons to 25,000, and guns from 16in to 12in or 15.5 in. No future cruiser is to exceed 8,000 tons or to carry guris larger than Gin, also complete abolition of submarines.

Unlike the 1927 Naval Conference, these proposals will be pressed as an essential preliminary to any serious relief in naval armaments. The British delegates will not again easily yield to United States contentions that only the largest ships have a radius action, which America considers essential. British delegates will argue that the largest American ships have a cruising range inferior to certain small cruisers.

The decision to persevere with the British proposals is made despite the report that instructions were given to the American delegates at Geneva at the week-end that they must resist at all costs a cut in the existing tonnage standards of battleships and cruisers.