THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1930. CRUX OF THE CONFERENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20496, 22 February 1930, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1930. CRUX OF THE CONFERENCE.

The Naval Conference stands adjourned until Wednesday next. This does not mean that the intervening time will be lost. In the interval, indeed, vital progress may be made,

for leading members of the delegations are remaining in London and are keeping " informal contact." Experience proves that it is in such parleys the chief opportunity resides for bridging difficulties. Quite apart from this probable gain, there is another, announced as certain — the completion of the work of an

expert committee engaged in analysing lists of vessels and allotting " special vessels " their places for the purposes of any agreement that may be reached by the conference. In this matter, too, there is the testimony of experience to show that such expert work is an essential preliminary to any finding of value, so that the days of this so-called " naval holiday " ought not to be reckoned as lost. But in any event,

the French political crisis made ad

journment of the full conference inevitable. The French experts continue to collaborate in the work of the committee, but to come to

any decision on policy in the conference itself, without the attendance of the political leaders of the French delegation, all of whom have been recalled to Paris by the crisis, is palpably impossible. So the next plenary session is necessarily de-

ferred. To those sanguine souls impatiently regarding progress as too slow, and to others cynically inclined to think the conference an unconscionable time in dying, it is enough to point out that the Washington Conference, which had a task of less complexity, lasted nearly two months. This conference has just completed its first month, and most of the issues have been faced. They have not been settled, by any means ; no decision has been reached on any point, and none is in sight. But, with the. problems very thoroughly opened up, there is at least a possibility that progress may soon be more rapid, whatever its ultimate direction.

How impossible it would have been to iproceed at once, without the leaders of the French delegation, to any profitable discussion of national policies is evident from the predominant importance that the

French demands have assumed

Casually noted, this importance may seem ill-founded. Considered in terms of naval strength and requirements, France has only a fractional claim to consideration compared with Britain or the United States, or even Japan. The famous Washington ratio of 5—5—3, these figures being an approximate representation of relative tonnage for the pur-

poses of capital-ship replacement, applied in that order, to Britain, .the United States and Japan. France, like Italy, was allowed only a third of the tonnage allotted to the two leading Powers —175,000 tons to their resjjectivc 525,000 tons. This capi-tal-ship comparison may seem to discount the French demands. But the matter is not disposed of so simply. It has been found impossible to rule out considerations beyond the strict scope of the conference. This was summoned to deal with naval armaments, in the hope that it might make a useful contribution to the wider accomplishment of reducing and limiting all expenditure on means of warfare, on land and sea and in the air. But, when national policies are considered in such a relation as this confeYence regards as basic, the three means, even as means of defence, must be viewed as interlocking. They cannot each be shut off from the others in thought-tight compartments. So

France, still oppressed with her chronic dread of attack—and who will say that this malady is induced by auto-suggestion rather than facts? —refuses to view the naval prob-

Icm as capable of insulated handling. To her, the question demands answer only with a larger navy as part of a.defensive precaution, or a treaty of security more inflexibly binding than any yet propounded. This French envisaging of the problem has become the crux of the conference, and a recognition of the truth of this checks light hope of an easy or satisfying outcome. The task at Washington, as already suggested, was simpler, by virtue of its path-finding and tentative nature. Agreement ..bout capital-ship and aircraft-carrier tonnage was amply sufficient to satisfy its sponsors, its participants and the onlooking world. That was a great achievement; and to touch lightly on cruisers, even to fail concerning submarines, was no discredit. But London, with the same five Powers in conference, takes up the question where Washington laid it down, ! where Geneva dropped it again after a futile attempt to carry it further. Now, to justify its calling and not to disappoint the world, this conference must look closely and practically at all categories of warcraft, and is virtually pledged to find ways of reduction and limitation of them all Ro, as. the three means of warfare, on land and sea and in the air, interlock, its wide envisaging of the task brings other than naval requirements into view. They are at least ort the rim of vision. The case of France is not isolated, liaising it, she has spoken for other nations. Italy has echoed it. Powers not represented in the conference sympathise with the demand. American politicians, however sanguine they may have been about getting an agreement of strict limits, isolated from the general problem of disarmament and particularly from Europe, must have awakened by now to the realisation that the task is greater than their earlier view of it. To go on without France, though she be a Power of relatively small naval strength and needs, is seen to be impossible; and, the French delegates absent, the conference must needs halt, save in the technical work so essential as a preliminary to any acceptable policy worth the name.