NAVAL CONFERENCE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20966, 4 March 1930, Page 9

NAVAL CONFERENCE

APPEAL FOR REDUCTION. PROMINENT AMERICANS. (United Press Association.) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) NEW YORK, March 3. (Received March 3, at 11 p.m.) An unusually intensive telegraph campaign resulted in the filing of a cabled message signed by 1200 prominent men and women throughout the United States appealing to the American delegation at Bondon to accomplish reduction and not mere limitation of armaments. The message pointed out that the Kelogg Pact signed by all the participants to the parley wherefore the agreements should guide the conference and be the principle of the joint conference to settle disputes, should be adopted. BRITAIN’S CANCELLATIONS. LEAD NOT FOLLOWED. ■ • . LONDON, March 2. (Received March 4, at 1 a.m.) The Daily Telegraph’s naval correspondent says: “Excepting the British .Empire, all the conference Powers are not only demanding total tonnages exceeding their present strengths, .but are continmng warship building 6sth undimimshed energy. The British! policy °-f-u 8 h an J disturbing contrast, with its drastic measures for cutting dm ™ the navy. It is not generally reamed that our original programme fpr the construction from 1924 to 1929 of 23 8-inch cruisers, eight of which have been cancelled. Within the same period no other Power dropped a single cruiser; on the contrary, .the loiiowing new ships were either laid down or authorised:—United States 15, Japan 4, France 7, Italy 8. Thus 34 foreign cruisers were legislated for compared with Britain’s 15.” Detailing the actual building work of the other Powers, the writer points out that not a single contract timetable has been altered, and the great majority of foreign ships being built, or authorised, have been begun since Britain began curtailment in 1927. Thus, if our successive cancellations were made in the n Pe ,i°L pr ° ducil ?S similar reductions abroad they have had precisely the opposite effect. 11