The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 1929 DISARMAMENT FARCE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 732, 3 August 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 1929 DISARMAMENT FARCE

A N American senator has called with a lond voice on Great Britain to sink some o£ her naval ships as a means of reaching parity with the TJ.S. Navy. Mr. Borah did not specify the number of British ships which might be sunk sacrificially, hut he noted that Britain had fifty-nine cruisers, while America had only eighteen built or building. Possibly the shrewd gentleman hoped to have it inferred on a basis of simple arithmetic that forty-one British cruisers ought to he scuttled forthwith in order to provide America with economical and idealistic naval disarmament. Such a challenge to a nation that has practised a bad habit of making too many sacrifices since the world war is the sort of gulf which proves that stupidity need not he a bar to appointment as a senator. But probably nothing better was to be expected from, an American politician who appears to Lave about as much affection for the British Empire as a penguin has for the Tropics. Naval disarmament has been a high purpose as well as the subject of earnest prayer for nearly a decade. And yet all the time in reality it has been something- only a little more serious than a clever diplomatic farce. The idealism of the noble project and its practical side also have been discussed by the League of Nations and its host of experts for nine years. But Geneva genius and Geneva faith have yielded only a slender record of practical achievement. The Washington Naval Disarmament Conference seven years ago did accomplish a substantial sacrifice of battleships more or less obsolescent. Also it limited naval construction for ten years to the building of 10,000-ton cruisers, mounting no guns heavier than of 8-inch calibre. This limitation, however, did not stop competition in the buildiug of formidable warships. Briefly, international interpretation of the Washington Treaty has had the effect of encouraging nations to fancy that, if a fighting ship is not too big. it will never be looked upon as a menace to peace. And a trusting world forgets that men killed by pea-rifle bullets are just as dead as those slain by the shells of a cruiser’s big guns. If there were honest, spiritual purpose behind the dazzling demand for universal disarmament would not the world’s statesmen concentrate more on the eradication of spurious motives for patriotic wholesale slaughter in modern warfare, instead of talking so much about reducing or altering the means of destruction? They are like purring eats which, if stroked too heavily against the fur, will scratch as viciously as tigers. Meanwhile, Great Britain and the United States are turning away from the conflicting methods of experts for the limitation of their navies, and resting hope for disarmament on the wisdom of supreme statesmen. There is a prospect of a heart-to-heart talk soon between President Hoover and Britain’s Labour Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. J. Ramsay MacDonald. Let it be hoped that they will at least succeed in ending the technical squabbles between tlieir experts on the question of parity. General Dawes began liis important task as United States Ambassador in London with a suggestion that the naval experts (who never will agree on measurements) should be shut up together in their own laboratory and left to report on their irreconcilable divergences, while statesmen got down to bedrock and made a final agreement “couched in those simple terms understandable to the ordinary man in the street.” Most excellent common sense, no doubt, hut will simple terms provide a final and fixed agreement ? What, for example, are the simplest facts or terms about the British Navy? The answer is easily understandable to the ordinary man in the street, though perhaps not understandable yet to the extraordinary man in the U.S. Senate. The maintenance of a powerful British Navy is a purely defensive policy. For this very reason it has never been a menace to the peace of the world. The former German Empire’s Navy was regarded as aggressive and menacing because it was an addition to Germany’s preponderating military strength. Great Britain today, it is true, lias a moderately strong Army, hut it lias neither conscription nor even a scheme of compulsory military training. These unique facts help to explain its problem of unemployment. It has been claimed fairly that the situation and circumstances of the British Empire are unique. Sea power is necessary to its vfery existence. The value of its oversea trade and the length of the Empire’s coast-lines demand adequate protection. In spite of these indisputable singularities and necessities, the British Empire is perfectly willing to ration its naval armaments in accord with the increasing desire for disarmament and world peace. But it should not be willing to be rationed at the will of other nations which maintain navies in addition to large conscript armies, or at the will of the world’s richest nation whose spiritual policy neither conflicts with desire for the lion’s share of trade nor drives it into its own ideal creation, the League of Nations. Every serious thinker in the Empire will hope for a happy settlement of its differences with America over the technicalities of naval limitation, but no one will wish for excessive indulgence in quixotic generosity on Britain’s part. Already it has given too much away. Mr. Stanley Baldwin counsels Mr. MacDonald not to be rash, nor too eager to move too quickly. This is a polite expression of the old proverb that “the real fool is the man who makes the same mistake twice.”