NAVAL CONFERENCE

Taranaki Daily News, 17 June 1930, Page 11

NAVAL CONFERENCE

EFFECT ON THE PACIFIC. AUSTRALIAN DELEGATE’S VIEWS. “Although . brie can never say for certain, it appears to me that -there should be nothing to trouble us in the Pacific before 1935,” said the Hon. J. E. Fen-; ton, Australian Minis't’er of Trade and Customs, who is returning to Sydney by the Aorangi after representing Australia at the Naval Disarmament Conference in Loudon. "I am hopeful that before that year serious efforts will be made to bring about a world peh.ee, which' will be more certain than ever,” he. added. ■ Mr. Fenton, who attacked the signature of Australia to the three-Power Naval Pact, said he thought the Powers did as'well as they possibly could under the circumstances. The pact was a good one as far as the nations of the Pacific were concerned. If, however, France went in for a big building programme, as he hoped she would not do, Great Britain would be compelled to build against her. That was the reason why the safeguarding clause was inserted in the treaty. “As a result of the decisions of this conference and that of the Washington Disarmament Conference, it is certain that the day of the battleship has gone,” Mr. Fenton said, “This will mean enormous savings. From what I could gather at the conference, there is a pronounced desire among all nations for naval reduction and peace. At any rate, I am ono of those who rejoice in the fact that Anglo-Saxon peoples have come closer together. We do not need to go on building while the pact operates. “One of the most hopeful signs of the conference, apart from bringing the nations together, was the fact that the agreement, as it stands between Great Britain,. the United Sates and Japan, affects 650,000 people. The arrangement between the five Powers affects over two-thirds of the total population f the world. That applies to the agreement regarding the holiday in battleship building, the humanising of submarine warfare, and the classification of aircraft-carriers.” Mr.. Fenton said Australia would undoubtedly feel the benefit cf the conference decisions in the way of substantial economies. Speaking of : <al retrenchment schemes, he referred with satisfaction to the proposal advanced for moving the Jervois Bay Naval College, where naval officers had been trained, to the Flinders Naval Base, which so far had been used for training seamen, gunners, wireless operators and- other ratings!. Thus the two training- establishments would be co-ordinated on a more modest scale. - : '