NAVAL AGREEMENT

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 October 1928, Page 10

NAVAL AGREEMENT

BRITAIN AND UNITED STATES.

Speculation has been rife on both

■ ’des of the Atlantic since Sir Austen Chamberlain told the House of Commom; a fortnight ago that we had comb to a new naval agreement with Franco, (writes “Scrutator” in the London “Sunday Times”). The most extreme inferences have been drawn from the statement and from such fragments of fact as have been allowed to fall from the various Foreign Offices. One French interpretation is that at last the “humiliation” of the Washington Treaty has been lifted, and in other quarters we are told that there is more in the Agreement than appears on the surface, and that it amounts in effect to<a. new naval alliance which will have important and perhaps dangerous political consequences.

if our Foreign Office was not ready to tell the whole story it is a pity that Sir Austen said anything at all about the Agreement, for half-truths are dangerous. and to excite curiosity without satisfying it is to give a start to misrepresentation and malice, which the tardier truth may never catch up. It may have been Sir Austen’s intention to publish the document as soon as it had reached all the interested Governments, and his regrettable illness may have delayed his purpose. But if a negotiation is sufficiently advanced for the House of Commons to be informed about it, publication of the full details ought to follow as a matter of course, if only as a measure of self-protection. It is to be hoped that the Foreign Office will make amends by publishing the whole document without further delay. All that is known for certain about the Agreement is that France and England have adjusted their naval differences on the Disarmament Commission of the League last year. These were of a very serious nature, and were quite sufficient ’in themselves to wreck the work of the Commission. Our position on the Commission was that when you had found an appropriate ratio of naval power you should proceed to reduce each category of naval ship in proportion. France, on the contrary, resisted the reduction by separate categories, and argued that it was sufficient to reduce the total tonnage of ships irrespective of the categories. She argued (much as we argued with America about light cruisers) that different nations had need for different kinds of ships in different proportions, and that so long as the total tonnage of all ships did not exceed the ratio each nation should be free to specialise in its favoured types. The favoured types in the case of France were submarine, so that if the French view had been accepted, disarmament might have taken the form of hen ceasing to build capital ships altogether and putting all her tonnage into submarines; and if it be true that the submarine is the most effective type of warship, and can establish a real blockade, that would have meant that France, by concentrating on submarines, might, in the name of dis-* armament, become the strongest naval power. It is most unfortunate that the roses of France’s friendship should have so many .and such sharp thorns, and that she should give special attention to forms of defence like submarines and aircraft, which are extremely dangerous to us. It almost looks as though she valued our friendship so highly that she must needs insist, as an added security, on the danger to us if we lost her friendship. It is not, therefore, surprising that the Disarmament Commission failed to agree on a formula of naval disarmament. Nor was the Conference later that was held on the initiative of America any more successful, and it was further unfortunate in leading to -a misunderstanding between this country and the United States.

Two Propositions. How the old differences between us’ and France have been compromised, whether the compromise is fair and safe to this country, whether if other Powers failed to subscribe to our agreement it would lapse, or whether it would persist as a bilateral agreement, and whether in the latter case it would not amount to a naval alliance and have important political consequences—on all these questions we are completely in the dark until the actual text of the agreement is published. It is said that both America and Italy are displeased with the turn of events, but in our present conjectural knowledge of the facts there is little to be gained by speculative discussion of the causes of their displeasure. But there is good anchorage for discussion in the two propositions that are now to be advanced. The

first proposition is that France, with

a great submarine fleet, jvould be a greater danger to us at sea than Germany ever was. Germany's exits to the open sea were few and not difficult to bar. But France has a longcoast line fronting on the main highways of our ocean commerce. Moreover, the guerre de course is an old naval idea of hers, and her people have the adventurous and daring temperament which would make this kind of warfare exceedingly dangerous. In the writer’s opinion France could, if she had enough submarines, successfully blockade this country in time of war, and he would be exceedingly dubious about any scheme of disarmament which left France free to build as many submarines as she liked, even though these were limited to the smaller types. The second proposition is that, of. course, nations must be free to make separate arrangements of disarmament with each other as their policy requires. It would be ridiculous if

because all could not agree to the same formula of disarmament that no one was free to conclude partial agreements that might alleviate his own difficulties. If that he the objection of America and Italy to the new agreement, it seems to be unreasonable and inadmissible.

The writer’s criticism is on wholly different grounds. Let it bo granted that a very large fleet of foreign submarines in the Channel might constitute a terrible danger to this country in. the event of war, and that we have a. good right to concert with any Power whatever measures of disarmament seem desirable to reduce that danger. Is it not a signal proof that there is something wrong with the whole perspective of the Foreign Office that in such circumstances it should turn to France rather than to America? Perhaps the Foreign Office should not bear the whole blame. The Admiralty has contributed by its obstinate conservatism and its reluctance to modify any of its traditional ideas about the protection of our overseas commerce. When a diplomatic problem about sea-power passes under the joint control of an Admirality which has still the dead hand of Nelson’s day upon it and a Foreign Office which in its work for peace still revolves in the war orbit of France, no perversity

need surprise us. For perversity it is that, faced with difficulties ’such as have been described, turns to France for their solution.

The solution is an active policy of co-operation in all these naval matters with the United States. The only subject of naval disagreement between us and the United States that matters, and the occasion of the last war between us, is our insistence on the rights of capture at sea. If our Admiralty were so minded, and our Foreign Office devoted one-half of the ability and amiability now expended in Paris to understanding the mind of America and reconciling it with ours, we might have a real treaty of naval disarmament with America to which every nation must needs subscribe, for nothing could resist an Anglo-Ameri-can combination at sea.

Freedom of the Atlantic.

That agreement should take the form of a Treaty between us declaring the whole of the North Atlantic between the longitudes of New York and the Goodwins a Free Sea for the commerce of the two countries, and announcing that any interference, whether by submarines or by surface craft with the commerce of either would be treated as an act of war by the other. The effect of such an Atlantic agreement would be to remove the only conceivable occasion of war between this country and America, to make naval competition between them ridiculous, inasmuch as the two fleets would exist largely for the same joint object, and, last and most important to make blockade of this country impossible. An enlightened Admiralty and a Foreign Office which could shake off the Continental idiom of the late war, and think in its own British vernacular, would make this the supreme object of British policy. Nor would such a Treaty have any hostile point against any other nation. On the contrary, it would be open to any other Power to accede, and -thereby gain for its commerce an appropriate extension of the area of exemption to its home waters. And such extensions might be the real solution of the problem of diarmament. At present the notion of disarmament seems to be to discover how many aeroplanes equal a cruiser squadron, how many battleships equal an army corps, and how many Oontemptibles make a flotilla of submarines, and having thus reduced all the factors of power to a common denomination to reduce in an agreed ratio. It is a hopeless method.*’’ The true way of disarmament is by progressive regional neutralisation.